TUCSON, Ariz. — Some teams could draw two early fouls on Kansas forward Bryson Tiller and not do all that much to improve their chances of winning. Tiller is a strong and steadily improving player, of course, and the Jayhawks are better with his scoring spark. But for Arizona — one of the most physical teams in the country, with a front line of bruising forwards Ivan Kharchenkov (6-foot-7, 230 pounds) and ...
After Kansas beat Houston on Monday to bring itself into what eventually became a four-way tie for second place in the league standings, KU guard Melvin Council Jr. said the Jayhawks were focused on securing a double bye in the Big 12 tournament — that is, finishing as one of the league’s top four teams so they can begin playing on the third day of the event, March 12. They are not fully out of contention ...
Jamari McDowell has by any metric exceeded expectations this season. The offseason acquisitions of players like reclassifying freshman wing Kohl Rosario and Loyola-Chicago transfer guard Jayden Dawson seemed poised to push McDowell far down the rotation, especially because both those players came to Lawrence with reputations as reliable 3-point shooters. Instead, McDowell’s development during his redshirt ...
The increased numerical size and broader geographical footprint of the new-look Big 12 has generated a number of situations in which teams have been scheduled to play back-to-back opponents in the same distant state or region of the country, and so chosen to stick around for a couple days in between games. The first such opportunity didn’t go so well for Kansas last year when it took on Utah in Salt Lake City ...
A victory for Kansas men’s basketball on any given Big Monday at Allen Fieldhouse under head coach Bill Self has been a certainty over the last 23 seasons, but the result KU produced on this particular Monday — an impressive 69-56 win over No. 5 Houston — hadn’t looked by any means assured after the Jayhawks got run out of their own gym by unranked Cincinnati two days earlier. They responded with one of ...
It’s quite common for Kansas coach Bill Self to tell reporters a player needs to be more aggressive to develop into a more consistent part of the Jayhawks’ offense. In the case of Tre White, though, with how much he appeared to be pressing during a recent slump, the opposite remedy was in order. “I think he was less aggressive,” Self said of White after KU’s 69-56 win over Houston on Monday, “and ...