photo by: AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

Kansas' Tre White (3) gestures after making a three-point shot during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Duke Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025, in New York.

From one ACC opponent to the next, from the Big Apple to Sin City, the Kansas men’s basketball team will continue progressing through its nonconference schedule when it faces Notre Dame at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Monday afternoon.

The Jayhawks have already taken their lumps, with a pair of losses to blue-blood programs North Carolina and Duke yielding a rather aesthetically displeasing 3-2 record through five games. But Tuesday night’s 78-66 defeat to fifth-ranked Duke, in which the Jayhawks trailed by three with five minutes to go, showed some encouraging signs — Flory Bidunga’s dextrous post game, Tre White’s shot creation, Melvin Council Jr.’s second-half surge — that KU will hope to carry over to three rapid-fire games in Las Vegas, even though the Jayhawks will once again be without freshman star Darryn Peterson.

“We have reevaluated and he’s right there close, but he hasn’t quite done enough to put him in position to go out to play multiple games in a short span like that,” KU coach Bill Self said. “We’re hopeful he’s running and cutting and doing all those things while we’re in Vegas, but not to the point where he’s probably ready to play.”

The availability of KU’s blue-chip guard, whose presence certainly could have helped the Jayhawks get over the hump instead of enduring a brutal four-minute scoring drought in the closing minutes against the Blue Devils, will continue to be a hot topic. In the meantime, this ephemeral form of the 2025-26 Jayhawks will take the floor in Las Vegas for three games in either three or four days as part of the Players Era tournament.

“We’re going to be scrappy, tough,” Council said. “We’re not going to be able to score like that without Darryn, so we got to do other things like get steals and run out in transition.”

The tournament is valuable in multiple ways — quite literally due to the name, image and likeness payouts KU’s players will receive for their participation in the unique event, but also for the possibility of bonding between the Jayhawks over the course of the multi-day competition.

“You spend all your time with each other, and if you’re not playing or practicing, you’re in the film room with each other,” Self said. “You’re talking about certain things and making adjustments and it’s kind of just us, even though families will be there … The bottom line is it’s just us, and I think those things are good.”

Added Council: “We were just talking about at practice today, this’ll probably be an AAU tournament. We all played AAU back then, man. We played three games in one day and stuff like that. We can’t wait to go out there in Vegas.”

First up when they get there will be Notre Dame, an unfamiliar opponent.

Picked to finish 10th in what is now an 18-team ACC, Micah Shrewsberry’s Fighting Irish squad features some intriguing pieces. The headliner is Markus Burton, a dynamic 6-foot guard who averaged a whopping 21.3 points on 44.2% shooting and 37.5% from deep last year. At 6-foot-8, 250 pounds, sixth-year forward Carson Towt led the nation in rebounding last season at Northern Arizona and shows no signs of slowing down from his pace of more than a dozen boards per game. Freshman wing Jalen Haralson, Notre Dame’s best recruit in its recent history, is the latest in a parade of highly touted first-year players to face the Jayhawks. An early-season hit to the head hampered him a bit, but he scored 17 points on 6-for-6 shooting in a 78-58 home win over Eastern Illinois on Nov. 11.

Burton was limited to 3-for-14 from the field in Notre Dame’s most challenging matchup to this point, a 64-63 road loss to Ohio State. Sharpshooting guard Braeden Shrewsberry, the coach’s son and a high-volume 3-point shooter, put the Irish ahead by a point with two minutes to go, but Burton missed on Notre Dame’s next three possessions and the Buckeyes made the Irish pay with Christoph Tilly’s game-winner with 13 seconds to go.

“I think they’ve got two really good perimeter scorers (Burton and Shrewsberry) and then they got a big guy (Towt) that looks like he could be a tight end type or a defensive end type in the NFL,” Self said. “He’s a strong, powerful dude and a great screener and a great rebounder. They’ve got nice personnel, there’s no doubt about that.”

The Irish have won four games against mid-majors, most recently against Bellarmine on Wednesday, so the Jayhawks will provide their steepest test yet. The historic series between the two teams has gone decidedly in favor of Notre Dame, but the key word is “historic”: this will be the first meeting of the two programs since 1988.

No. 24 Kansas Jayhawks (3-2) vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (4-1)

• MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, 2:30 p.m. Central Time

• Broadcast: TNT

• 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

Center stage: For a self-described Swiss army knife, Tre White looked for all the world on Tuesday like 2022-23 Jalen Wilson or 2023-24 Kevin McCullar Jr., capable of earning points for his team with hard-charging drives into the paint and outside shots alike. That is not White’s ultimate role on the team — KU brought him in because he could score on cuts, grab rebounds and do the little things — but it’s hard to say no to 22 points and nine rebounds against one of the best teams in the country. The well-traveled senior won’t do that every night, but KU would happily accept it as long as Peterson is out and maybe even afterward.

Same old song: It’s already a bit of a tired point at this early stage of the season, but foul trouble continues to be an issue for KU’s big men, and Flory Bidunga and Bryson Tiller playing together, as they have more often in recent games (and will likely continue to do so, with Self saying it’s the Jayhawks’ most talented lineup right now), means more chances for opportunistic opponents to draw fouls in high numbers. The fact that Bidunga and Tiller had two fouls each late in the first half against Duke essentially forced Self to play four guards around big man Paul Mbiya, which did not work well and helped result in the key run that allowed the Blue Devils to take control. Notre Dame doesn’t have a frontcourt on the level of Duke, but it does run two bigs with Towt and Garrett Sundra. Unless KU goes small, it’ll be both Bidunga and Tiller in there again, and the Jayhawks will need them for as long as possible.

Off-guard intrigue: Kohl Rosario’s high potential is eminently clear whenever he steps on the floor, and he continues to hustle hard, but at 7-for-24 (29.2%) he’s not shooting up to his potential. Neither is Jayden Dawson in his own small sample size (5-for-19, 26.3%), but with Elmarko Jackson struggling, Dawson’s minutes have crept up to exceed Rosario’s each of the last two games. Whoever is taking them, KU will need outside shots to start falling. Self said the game is moving too quickly for Rosario and also a little too quickly for Dawson, although Dawson has improved of late.

Off-kilter observation

Two of the nine games KU has lost to Notre Dame occurred on consecutive days, Dec. 28-29, in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1928.