Kansas players huddle up as UConn mounts a comeback during the second half on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Kansas’ struggles on offense in the second half of what became a 61-56 home loss to UConn on Tuesday occurred with the Jayhawks’ star freshman, Darryn Peterson, in street clothes as he missed a seventh straight game due to a hamstring injury.

“It’s one of those deals, without DP, we don’t have the firepower not to execute, and we haven’t executed the way that we should,” head coach Bill Self said on Friday.

It should be a welcome development for the Jayhawks and their inconsistent execution, then, that Peterson is still taking part in practice and — barring a setback, Self said — should make his return to action for Sunday’s rivalry matchup with Missouri, set for noon at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

“I think it’s good for the game to play against your rivals,” Self said. “So we’ll look forward to it. This would always be one of the most looked-forward-to games on our schedule, and certainly that hasn’t changed at all.”

The Tigers beat then-top-ranked KU 76-67 at Mizzou Arena last December, their first victory in the basketball Border War since it returned in 2021. The Jayhawks have a dramatically different roster this season with only one returning player from that game, Flory Bidunga, and three total who have taken part in the rivalry.

“I’d probably say we came out flat last year, something that we’ll not do this year, for sure,” Bidunga said on Friday.

Self said he’s spoken to the team about the matchup.

“I did tell our players this, that the attention that this one game will get will be more than the attention that Notre Dame, UConn, Duke and Tennessee got combined,” Self said. “I did tell our players that.”

Last year, Missouri rebounded dramatically in its third season under Dennis Gates, compiling a 22-12 record and 10-8 mark in an insanely competitive SEC, a run that it had kick-started at least in some sense by beating KU. But the Tigers’ season ended in anticlimactic fashion with six losses in eight games to end the year, including a first-round defeat in the NCAA Tournament against No. 11 seed Drake.

This year, Mizzou enters the rivalry matchup on a bit of a down note after suffering its first loss of the campaign. In their second true road game and second overall game against a power-conference opponent, the Tigers lost at Notre Dame, 76-71. Mark Mitchell scored 26 and Jacob Crews had 22 off the bench for Mizzou, but the Tigers allowed Cole Certa to hit a game-tying 3-pointer with 1:35 to go and then a go-ahead tiebreaking 3 with 17 seconds remaining, and they lost 76-71.

KU, of course, has that opponent in common, having beat the Fighting Irish in Las Vegas 71-61 on Nov. 24.

Missouri’s best win by far to this point among the eight it has earned was an 83-60 victory over Minnesota on Nov. 12. The Tigers got five players in double figures that night, led again by Mitchell, the 6-foot-9 forward from Kansas City, Kansas, who has served as their top scorer this year (and last year hit the backbreaking corner 3 to abort KU’s comeback attempt against the Tigers). The former Duke transfer has 18.1 points and 6.1 rebounds per game this year and is playing in the frontcourt alongside some familiar transfers in Shawn Phillips Jr. (Arizona State) and Luke Northweather (Oklahoma) and a less familiar one in Jevon Porter (Loyola Marymount). The fact that the 6-foot-11 Porter and 7-foot Phillips are starting alongside Mitchell gives Mizzou some imposing size.

The Tigers are missing one of their most exciting backcourt players in Jayden Stone, who previously played at Detroit Mercy and lost the whole 2024-25 season to injury while at West Virginia. While he was not starting for Mizzou, he was averaging 13.3 points before suffering a hand injury on Nov. 24 that was expected to keep him out for three to four weeks.

The actual starting backcourt consists of Sebastian Mack and Anthony Robinson II, both fringe double-digit scorers, with Mack a UCLA transfer and Robinson a returning defensive standout.

The most notable Tiger not yet discussed is Crews, a sixth-year senior wing playing at his fourth university who was a peripheral player last year at Missouri after arriving from UT Martin. His share of minutes has steadily increased, however, and he has attempted 20 3-pointers — and made nine — across the Tigers’ last two games. On the year, he’s shooting 49% from deep and averaging 5.2 rebounds. In Stone’s absence, Mizzou is counting on Crews for a heavy share of its 3-pointers.

“I like their team,” Self said. “I’ve always liked their point guard (Robinson). I thought he’s been good against us when we played, and of course Mark, we recruited Mark hard, so I’m very familiar with him. He’s a lot like (Duke forward Cameron) Boozer in a lot of ways in that he’s so good at driving and drawing fouls.”

The neutral-site nature of Sunday’s matchup creates an unusual dynamic for the rivalry. It will be the first time since 1977 that a regular-season Kansas-Missouri game is not contested in Lawrence or Columbia — and it will happen again next year.

No. 21 Kansas Jayhawks (6-3) vs. Missouri Tigers (8-1)

• T-Mobile Center, Kansas City, Missouri, 12 p.m.

• Broadcast: ESPN2

• Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network (in Lawrence, KLWN AM 1320 / K269GB FM 101.7 / KKSW FM 105.9 / KMXN FM 92.9)

Keep an eye out

Rotation calibration: Bidunga’s minutes have begun to climb, which makes sense given how essential his production has been for the Peterson-less Jayhawks and how much better he’s gotten of late at avoiding foul trouble. But he has now played more than 30 minutes in six of nine games this year compared to just once during his freshman year, including 37 in consecutive appearances. Self said after the loss to UConn, “He’s not a 38-minute guy, he’s a 30-minute guy, so I think we played him too much.” To lessen the load on Bidunga, Bryson Tiller will likely need to be more productive on the boards and in the paint. Paul Mbiya hasn’t carved out a consistent role just yet.

Settling back in: As much as the rest of the Jayhawks will need to learn to play around Peterson if indeed he returns on Sunday, Peterson will also need to get acclimated following a period of more than four weeks without game action. How much will he assert himself in his return, and can he really be totally unencumbered by the hamstring issue (Self said he wanted Peterson “totally symptom-free”)? If Peterson does go against the Tigers, it’ll give him a window of four more weeks to build back up as the Jayhawks proceed toward Big 12 play. As Self put it on Friday, “He’s not going to be the player on Sunday that he will be a month from Sunday.”

Doling out praise: Self said KU’s defense has been better than he expected at this early stage of the season. The Jayhawks currently rank No. 10 in adjusted defensive efficiency on KenPom and have been rock-solid, switching extremely effectively against ball screens, with the exception of one poor half that cost them their second game of the season against North Carolina. Missouri presents the latest chance for KU to keep its hot streak going on that side of the ball and help reduce the burden on its offense.

Off-kilter observation

When Northweather, playing for Oklahoma at the time, connected on two 3-pointers for the Sooners against KU on Jan. 13, 2024, he had previously hit one in his career. That was his only game with multiple 3s during the 2023-24 season, though he has had seven more such games since.