Kansas guard David Coit (8) and Kansas guard Dajuan Harris Jr. (3) converse during a break in action in the second half on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

When Kansas beat Colorado 71-59 at Allen Fieldhouse on Feb. 11, KU coach Bill Self said a CU player told him in the postgame handshake line, “See you in two weeks.”

Just under two weeks later, both teams have rapidly arrived at Monday’s rematch, and it finds them in dramatically different places than when they met not that long ago.

A 96-64 victory over Oklahoma State has reinvigorated KU after it faced the low point of its season — and one of the low points of the Self era — when it lost back-to-back road games in Utah.

Self admitted his team had been in dire need of some self-esteem ahead of its domination of OSU on Saturday night.

“We needed (a) confidence boost,” he said after the 96-64 victory, “and we got it from a lot of people today. So we should feel better about ourselves … We need to be more of a confident group going to Boulder, and hopefully today helped with that.”

The challenge for KU is that it will also face a more confident group of Buffaloes when it gets there.

CU had been searching for its first Big 12 Conference win of the season when it came to Lawrence, and it left Allen Fieldhouse unhappy with an 0-13 league record.

However, the Buffaloes immediately turned around and beat UCF 76-63 four days later, though, and have now won two out of three after defeating Baylor 76-74 at the CU Events Center on Saturday afternoon.

They will now welcome KU to CU’s first sold-out crowd in three years. (The last time the Buffaloes packed their arena, they beat then-No. 2 Arizona 79-63 in 2022.) Self suggested it won’t be as KU-friendly a crowd as the ones that used to show up in Boulder, either, because Colorado has changed its ticketing policy to make fans buy packages of games rather than standalone tickets.

“It’ll be a pro-Colorado crowd,” he said, “and we’ll have to certainly build off of what we did today and go out there and be a confident and connected group.”

The game will require a quick turnaround for both squads, as KU plays its second of three Big Monday games, this one with an unusual 10 p.m. Central Time (9 p.m. local time) tipoff.

“These Big Mondays, I ain’t used to them,” KU wing Rylan Griffen said. “We got to come out and not let what happened at BYU or Utah happen. We just got to start off good.”

The last game between the Jayhawks and Buffaloes was more competitive than the teams’ respective records would have suggested.

KU took a 14-point lead into the break but got outscored 19-10 in the first seven minutes of the second half. Led by freshman Sebastian Rancik, who scored a career-high 19 points, CU stayed within striking distance and wasn’t out of contention until Zeke Mayo stretched KU’s lead to 67-56 on a late 3-pointer. Hunter Dickinson led the Jayhawks with 19 points of his own on a night that Self called “bland” for the team as a whole.

They’ll have to watch out for Rancik, who has scored in double digits two additional times in three games since breaking out against KU, and forward Andrej Jakimovski, who hit five 3-pointers in CU’s upset victory over Baylor and scored a team-high 17 points overall. Guards Julian Hammond III and RJ Smith, who were nonfactors in the previous matchup with the Jayhawks, both reached double digits as well against the Bears.

The Buffaloes shot 58.3% from the field in the second half and 21-for-25 from the free-throw line on the night to get past Baylor.

“We got to make sure that we play even better than we played here, because I feel like (if) we play the way we played last time against them, it’s not good enough, because we barely beat them at home,” Griffen said. “But I think we’ll come out and have energy. I think this game was a great kick-start to that. I believe in the team and think we’re going to come out with a lot of energy.”