photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas head coach Bill Self looks at the scoreboard during the second half of an NCAA college basketball gameagainst Colorado, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Lawrence. Kansas won 71-59.

Salt Lake City — The fateful selection show on which it will learn its seeding for the NCAA Tournament is still four weeks and a handful of games away, but the NCAA March Madness Men’s Bracket Preview show, aired on CBS on Saturday morning, projected Kansas to receive a No. 4 seed.

The projection, which preceded KU’s Saturday night matchup with Utah at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, followed an inconsistent stretch for the Jayhawks in which they alternated wins and losses for three straight weeks.

It also placed KU, rated the No. 15 team overall, in the Midwest Regional, meaning that if it makes out of the first weekend — something it has done just once since 2018, when it won the title in 2022 — it will play Sweet 16 games in Indianapolis.

Four Big 12 teams came in ahead of KU: second-seeded Houston (No. 8 overall), third-seeded Iowa State (No. 9), third-seeded Arizona (No. 12) and fourth-seeded Texas Tech (No. 13). Five of the top six teams came from the SEC.

The Jayhawks’ region included No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Purdue and No. 3 Iowa State.

KU has been a No. 4 seed on four occasions since Bill Self took over as head coach in 2003, including most recently last season, when the Jayhawks lost to Gonzaga in Salt Lake City in the second round.

Last year’s bracket preview had KU on the No. 2 seed line, but the Jayhawks went 3-4 in the following seven games while also struggling with injuries to key players.

High standard

In a press conference on Thursday before KU departed for Utah, Self said the coaching staff was aware of the potential impact of the Salt Lake City altitude but wasn’t going to discuss it much.

“Game’s indoors, so it really shouldn’t affect us,” he joked.

It’s a line Self has used for years; after a game in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, a then-junior Cole Aldrich said, “The freshmen believed it. All the veterans just laugh at him.”

Regardless, the sheer extent to which the elevation was not a talking point among the Jayhawks had become clear shortly before Self’s comments, when guard David Coit, who said he had never been to Utah, expressed some incredulity about the potential stamina depletion the altitude could cause in the first place: “So you say I’m going to be more tired? This is like a scientific fact?”

Coit, a native of Columbus, New Jersey, played for Northern Illinois for two seasons before joining the Jayhawks over the summer.

“Got to work some conditioning after practice today, I guess,” he said with a smile. “I never played in, I guess, the altitudes or whatever, I ain’t never paid attention to none of that. But if it is a real thing, I hope it’s on our side.”

The Jon M. Huntsman Center and Marriott Center, home of KU’s next opponent BYU, are both at about 4,650 feet above sea level. The Jayhawks will soon play at the CU Events Center in Boulder, which has an elevation of 5,400 feet.

Itinerary info

KU plans to spend part of Sunday undertaking some sort of team bonding activity. Self teased it on Thursday as “something that will be out of the ordinary.” He has said that he believes the extended road trip through Utah will help make up for, in an off-the-court sense, the lack of a Thanksgiving week trip to Hawaii or the Bahamas like the Jayhawks have often had in recent years.

KU will also practice at the Utah Jazz’s practice facility on Sunday, he said. The Jazz’s current roster features former KU guard Svi Mykhailiuk, but Self said he wasn’t sure if they would see him or not.

Monday morning, the Jayhawks will leave Salt Lake City for Provo, Utah, a 45-mile drive to the south, ahead of the 8 p.m. Central Time tipoff Tuesday night at the Marriott Center.

Kind-hearted

Halfway across the country, a pair of former Jayhawks recently met up to visit the staff at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.

Current Indiana Pacer Johnny Furphy, a rookie who spent one season at KU, and former three-year Pacer Scot Pollard, a first-round pick out of KU in 1997, both took part in the event to commemorate American Heart Month.

“It’s pretty special, yeah,” Furphy said in a social media video posted by the Pacers. “It’s pretty cool to know that Indiana’s so passionate about supporting the Pacers and just sport in general.”

Pollard said the facility has been “a big part of keeping (him) around.” He received a heart transplant last February at Vanderbilt’s medical center in Tennessee after initially listing himself at Ascension St. Vincent, not far from his home in Carmel, Indiana.

“It’s a pretty cool story of his, and then obviously we got the KU alumni connection, which is pretty cool as well,” Furphy said. “So I’ve been following his story for a while.”

Added Pollard: “I’ve done a lot of appearances for the Pacers over the years gladly and happily, but this is the first one where I’ve run into people that have helped save my life.”