Kansas head coach Bill Self pulls his players in for a huddle during the first half against Arizona on Thursday, March 13, 2025 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. Photo by Nick Krug

Past Kansas men’s basketball teams have embarked on grueling paths through the NCAA Tournament, but not since 2000 have the Jayhawks stared down the prospect of encountering a dramatically higher-seeded team in the second round.

That’s exactly the situation KU faces this postseason, after a series of puzzling losses midway through conference play and missed opportunities in the first two weeks of March left the Jayhawks with a 21-12 record and a probable No. 6 or No. 7 seed in the tournament.

Scattered bracket projections, including CBS Sports’, left KU on the No. 6 line even after its late slide in an 88-77 loss to Arizona in the Big 12 tournament quarterfinals on Thursday night, but the consensus view among bracketologists about a day ahead of Sunday’s 5 p.m. selection show was that the Jayhawks were bound for their first tournament as a No. 7 seed since 1981.

That was before the tournament expanded to 64 teams. In the most successful season of the second half of Ted Owens’ tenure, KU entered the postseason with considerable momentum after upsetting Missouri and Kansas State to win the Big Eight tournament. The Jayhawks beat Ole Miss and knocked off No. 2 seed Arizona State in Wichita before falling to Wichita State in New Orleans, 66-65.

This year’s KU team, though it has played better since hitting the reset button in its season in late February, doesn’t have a lot of big wins to show for it.

“The new-season motto, it kind of helps us to get our mind right, but it just sucks when you keep losing these games like this,” senior forward KJ Adams said on Thursday. “But I think we’ll get it together and start playing our best game in March.”

He later added, “I think the main media kind of gave up on us anyway, so what do we got to lose?”

Projections ahead of Selection Sunday

With its turbulent season, KU has not earned the privilege of playing close to home in Wichita. Much like they did last year, the Jayhawks will have to go farther afield. Unlike last year, they will have to face either one of the nation’s best mid-major squads or one of numerous low-level power-conference bubble teams, many of which hail from this year’s highly competitive SEC.

As of Saturday morning, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had placed KU in Lexington, Kentucky, at Rupp Arena.

The home of the Wildcats has actually been kind to the Jayhawks during Self’s tenure, as they have taken three out of four matchups from Kentucky dating back to Jan. 9, 2005 — their first-ever victory at the venue.

photo by: AP Photo/James Crisp

Fans line up outside Rupp Arena to see Mark Pope, the newly named head coach of the Kentucky men’s NCAA college basketball team in Lexington, Ky., Sunday, April 14, 2024.

This could be the first time KU faces a team other than UK at Rupp since 1994, when a No. 4 seed KU team under Roy Williams took down both Chattanooga and Wake Forest in first-weekend action.

On this occasion, Lunardi projects the Jayhawks to face Utah State. KU leads the all-time series against the Aggies 5-2, including a 64-61 victory in Oklahoma City in the 2003 NCAA Tournament.

This year’s USU team has essentially secured a third straight at-large bid despite being on its third head coach in three years and fourth in the last five. The man in charge this time is Jerrod Calhoun, newly arrived from Youngstown State, whose Aggies have compiled a 26-7 record, their resume bolstered by a nonconference road win at Saint Mary’s.

Utah State split a pair of regular-season meetings with Colorado State but fell to the Rams 83-72 in the Mountain West tournament on Friday night despite a late comeback.

The Aggies have had the top offense by field-goal and 3-point percentage in their conference, categories in which they ranked 15th and 56th nationally, respectively, as of Saturday. They are led by the hot-shooting guard duo of fifth-year Maryland transfer Ian Martinez and in-state redshirt sophomore Mason Falslev.

photo by: AP Photo/Eli Lucero

Utah State guard Ian Martinez, left, celebrates with fans after defeating Boise State in an NCAA college basketball game Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025, in Logan, Utah.

The other half of Lunardi’s bracket projection includes No. 2 seed Alabama, a school that has achieved wild success in recent years under Nate Oats, and one with which many Jayhawks are familiar even as KU has never faced the Crimson Tide. KU wing Rylan Griffen was a starter on last year’s Alabama team that went to the Final Four, and guards Shakeel Moore and Noah Shelby faced the Tide regularly during their tenures in the SEC.

This year’s Tide features former KU signee Labaron Philon at guard, though its star player is fifth-year guard Mark Sears, one of the top players in the country.

photo by: AP Photo/Butch Dill

Alabama guard Labaron Philon reacts to fans after the Tide defeated Auburn in overtime in an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, March 8, 2025, in Auburn, Ala.

Alabama’s projected opponent is 15th-seeded Wofford, which won the Southern Conference tournament as a No. 6 seed.

Over at CBS, bracketologist Jerry Palm, meanwhile, has assigned the Jayhawks to an even less familiar location in Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island. KU has never competed in the state of Rhode Island, nor has it ever played NCAA Tournament games farther east than Greensboro, North Carolina.

photo by: Business Wire

Amica Mutual Pavilion is a 14,000-seat arena that is home to the AHL Providence Bruins and the NCAA Big East Providence College men’s basketball team.

Despite its more favorable positioning in the overall bracket, as the highest-ranked of Palm’s No. 6 seeds, the Jayhawks do not necessarily get an auspicious draw. Palm pits them against Virginia Commonwealth, currently still in competition as the top team in the Atlantic 10 tournament, and familiar to KU fans for upsetting the Jayhawks in the 2011 Elite Eight. The Rams that year became the first team to advance from the First Four all the way to the Final Four.

This year’s team is guided by head coach Ryan Odom, who was one of those several Utah State coaches in rapid succession but is perhaps best known for leading UMBC to its 16-over-1 upset of Virginia in 2018. Ahead of Saturday’s matchup with Loyola-Chicago, the Rams ranked in the top 10 nationally in scoring defense and field-goal-percentage defense. One standout player is Max Shulga, a senior guard from Ukraine (via Utah State) stuffing the stat sheet with 15.1 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.8 steals per game.

photo by: AP Photo/Mike Kropf

Virginia Commonwealth’s Max Shulga (11) defends the ball from Dayton’s Javon Bennett (0) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, in Richmond, Va.

If KU could beat VCU (something it has never done) in Palm’s bracket, it would face either No. 3 Maryland or No. 14 UNCW.

The Seahawks, who took down upstart Delaware to win the CAA tournament, are already well known to the Jayhawks, as the two met at Allen Fieldhouse on Nov. 19. UNCW trailed by just two points 16 minutes into the game and hung with KU until the break but conceded a 16-4 run out of halftime and lost 84-66.

Maryland has engineered quite the turnaround after a sub-.500 season in its second year under Kevin Willard. The Terrapins haven’t lost a game by more than six points all year and have emerged as one of the top squads in the Big Ten Conference, bolstering their resume with recent ranked wins over the likes of Illinois and Michigan.

A onetime KU recruiting target, center Derik Queen became Maryland’s first-ever Big Ten freshman of the year and was averaging 15.9 points and 9.2 rebounds per game as of Saturday morning. All five Terps in a remarkably consistent starting lineup (28 of 32 possible games) averaged double-digit scoring, including three guards shooting at least 38.2% from deep at a high volume.

photo by: AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Maryland center Derik Queen (25) reacts to a play against Illinois during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Conference tournament in Indianapolis, Friday, March 14, 2025.