A sea of red Kansas fans await the starting lineup Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

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 their most intense defensive showings of the year to lock down the Cougars, but Self said postgame that it didn’t have all that much to do with the Cincinnati upset.

“I don’t know what the players said, but I don’t know that it did,” he said. “I think we would have been excited to play tonight against Houston regardless. I don’t think that had much to do with our energy level being better or anything like that. I think if we’d have played well Saturday, I think we would have been the same team tonight.”

The two performances may not have been correlated on the court, but the second certainly did a lot to help the Jayhawks atone for the first in terms of KU’s long-term outlook. After KU had given up its advantage for a top-four seed and double bye in the Big 12 tournament with the Cincinnati loss, it forced itself back into a tie for second place in the league — and it may soon be tied with additional teams against which it has quite a favorable record, should it come down to tiebreaking scenarios.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Jayhawks stabilized their position on the No. 3 seed line for the NCAA Tournament after dropping a couple places (and six spots in the AP poll) due to the Cincinnati result. They had been No. 10, the second of four No. 3 seeds, in the East region of the NCAA basketball committee’s bracket preview on Saturday, before the loss.

ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, in his Tuesday update, placed KU in the East region (Washington) again as a No. 3 seed facing No. 14 Austin Peay in Greenville, South Carolina. The Greenville site, hosted by Furman and the Southern Conference, would be an unusual destination for the Jayhawks, who have only played in the Palmetto State once in their history (Jan. 7, 2007, a 70-54 victory at South Carolina). Austin Peay is the leader in the Atlantic Sun Conference with a 15-1 league record. The Governors lost to KU in the 2016 NCAA Tournament.

KU and Austin Peay are paired with No. 6 Louisville and a play-in spot contested by No. 11 seeds Missouri and Santa Clara.

CBS Sports also had the Jayhawks and Governors paired on Tuesday morning, but placed them in the South region (Houston). In CBS’ projection, the No. 6 seed is, unusually, Big 12 foe BYU (which cannot play on Sundays and so is limited to Thursday/Saturday sites) and No. 11 is Santa Clara.

Some other Tuesday morning projections: Bleacher Report had KU and Austin Peay in Buffalo, New York, as part of the East region, and USA Today had KU down on the No. 4 line facing UNC Wilmington in Tampa, Florida.

Of note, a drivable first-weekend destination like Oklahoma City or St. Louis is not out of the question for KU at this juncture — the Jayhawks still have an opportunity for another marquee win at No. 1 seed Arizona on Saturday and, later, the whole Big 12 tournament — but they will need to find a way to box out other teams in the region like Houston, Iowa State or Nebraska and get a fortuitous draw.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL UPDATE

The KU women’s basketball team’s rivalry win on Sunday at Kansas State was a positive sign for the team’s late-season prospects, but didn’t seem to register all that much in the work of ESPN bracketologist Charlie Creme, who still has the Jayhawks as the third team out.

KU is 17-11 overall and 7-9 in the Big 12 and has its biggest game of the year coming up on Wednesday night — senior night — against No. 20 Texas Tech, a team to which it suffered a narrow 70-65 loss at United Supermarkets Arena on Feb. 10.

Close losses have been the story of the season for the Jayhawks as they have angled for a return to the NCAA Tournament. To say nothing of their bevy of tight road losses against ranked teams — Tech, Iowa State by three points on Dec. 21, TCU by two on Jan. 29 — the Jayhawks have missed opportunities at home against the likes of Utah, which is the second team out in Creme’s field, and Colorado, which is the third team in. Both of those were three-point losses.

The combination of veteran star point guard S’Mya Nichols and forward Jaliya Davis, one of the nation’s top freshmen, will give the Jayhawks a chance against anyone down the stretch, and they may need to go on a run in the Big 12 tournament to reach the postseason.

Other bracketologists besides Creme, by the way, have wide-ranging assessments of KU. Connor Groel, for CBS, had the Jayhawks down in the Next Four Out. Omni Rankings, meanwhile, placed KU as the final team in the field of 68 in a ranking that was only updated through Saturday. (It’s very possible that if the Jayhawks do make the tournament, they could find themselves in a play-in game just to reach the first round.)

The picture will become much clearer soon, as KU has just two games left — against Tech on Wednesday and then at Oklahoma State on Saturday — before the Big 12 tournament.