Fresh off of earning a spot in the top 10 of the national rankings, the Kansas men’s golf team will head to Houston next week with its eyes on the Big 12 Match Play title.

“Right now, the team is playing with a lot of confidence,” KU coach Jamie Bermel told the Journal-World. “We need to carry that into match play.”

Ranked No. 9 in the nation according to this week’s Golfweek Rankings poll, the Jayhawks are one of the hottest teams in college golf and their lineup features the reigning Big 12 Player of the Month in sophomore Luke Kluver.

Bermel said the unique match play format — where it’s holes won and not total strokes that matters — will allow for his team to play “a little more aggressive” than in normal competition.

“But we still can’t just give any holes away by being too aggressive,” he added.

The tournament will be played Monday through Wednesday at The Clubs at Houston Oaks and will consist of pool play for two-and-a-half days (five sessions) followed by a final round the afternoon of day three. Match play will occur during all rounds and each team match will consist of six individual matches.

The Jayhawks enter the event seeded fifth and will be in a pool with No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 4 Texas Tech, No. 8 West Virginia and No. 9 Kansas State. Oklahoma State, Texas, TCU, Baylor and Iowa State will compete in Pool B.

During the pool play portion of the event, each team will play four matches. Teams will get three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss. At the conclusion of pool play, each team will be ranked 1-5 within their pool based on the amount of points scored, and the two pool winners will square off in the championship round, with the second-place teams in each pool dueling in the third-place match.

KU’s lineup next week will consist of Kluver in the No. 1 slot followed by senior Harry Hillier, senior transfer Callum Bruce, senior Ben Sigel, sophomore Davis Cooper, sophomore Hank Lierz and freshman Wolfgang Glawe. Six of the seven Jayhawks will compete each day.

“We need to get the right matchups,” Bermel said. “We don’t have a lot of experience with our sixth man, but that doesn’t mean they can’t win their match. This is an event where you only need 3.5 points each match to win, but we have very little margin for error.”

Baylor won the inaugural Big 12 Match Play title in 2018 and last year’s title, as well. Texas Tech won in 2019.