There was a time near the conclusion of the 2023-24 season when, as Kansas coach Bill Self put it, “That was not a very good team we were putting out there at the end.” The Jayhawks were thin from the start of the year but at one point were even missing both of their top two scorers, Kevin McCullar Jr. and Hunter Dickinson, in the Big 12 tournament due to injuries. Looking back, Self said it reminded him ...
During the first few weeks of the college football season, the popular narrative about Kansas and its early-season struggles was that new coordinator Jeff Grimes, Jalon Daniels and the offense were letting down a resurgent, high-intensity, physical KU defense. That storyline got twisted on Sept. 21 in Morgantown, West Virginia, after a lengthy lightning delay, when the Jayhawks’ defense needed just one stop ...
As Kansas coach Nate Lie put it on Thursday, after his Jayhawks battled back twice to earn a hard-won 2-2 draw against BYU, "A tie is nothing to celebrate." Lie, in a press release, praised his team's effort and resilience, particularly after it had struggled in a 3-0 home loss to Oklahoma State the previous weekend. As he noted, BYU is a talented team less than a year removed from a Final Four appearance. But ...
As the Kansas football team climbed back to national prominence in 2022 and 2023, the Jayhawks’ special-teams units often lagged behind. Consider the SP+ rankings compiled by ESPN’s Bill Connelly. The Jayhawks finished the 2022 campaign with a minus-1.7 rating for special teams that was one of the worst marks in the country at 127th nationwide. By the end of 2023 they had skyrocketed (in comparison) to 0.4 ...
Kansas baseball head coach Dan Fitzgerald is no stranger to roster turnover. Most notably, he dealt with a brand-new roster when he arrived in Lawrence two years ago, ahead of his debut with the Jayhawks. But Fitzgerald’s history working with large groups of new players stretches much further into his past. “This is exactly what we did in junior college every year,” he told the Journal-World in a recent ...
For the second year in a row, the Big 12 Conference’s coaches picked Kansas to win the league and chose KU center Hunter Dickinson as the preseason player of the year. The selections were announced on Thursday afternoon. Dickinson is the first player ever to receive the preseason player of the year honor twice, and he was the only unanimous selection to the all-league first team. Point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. ...