Kansas head coach Bill Self fist bumps Kansas forward Bryson Tiller (15) as he and Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr. (14) exit the game late in the second half on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

The Kansas-UCF series, which favors KU 3-1, has been something of an adventure over the course of the Knights’ first couple seasons in the Big 12 Conference.

The Jayhawks lost to the Knights in the first-ever Big 12 game at Addition Financial Arena in 2024, then came back a year later and beat them by the largest margin in any Division I road win in school history. They then played two additional of too-close-for-comfort games against UCF: One, at Allen Fieldhouse, was the only game Dajuan Harris Jr. missed in his career, one, at the T-Mobile Center, was the best game AJ Storr played at KU and both came down to the final few possessions.

KU and UCF are fielding dramatically different rosters this time around, but the range of outcomes is just as wide heading into Saturday’s Big 12 opener, set for 1 p.m. Central Time at Addition Financial Arena.

KU guard Melvin Council Jr., a breakout player from the Jayhawks’ 10-3 nonconference schedule, said head coach Bill Self has given him an idea of what to expect entering his lone season competing in the Big 12.

“Every game (is) going to be the hardest game of our life,” Council said. “It’s Kansas. Everybody wants to beat Kansas.”

A few teams managed to do so prior to the start of league play — North Carolina, Duke and UConn — but the Jayhawks finished on a strong note with four straight wins entering the holiday break, including one in a true road game at N.C. State. Then they picked up where they left off in practice and “came back like we never left,” Council said. As a bonus, they should have star guard Darryn Peterson back in the fold for Saturday, Self said on Thursday.

UCF is off to its best start in the 10-year tenure of head coach Johnny Dawkins. The Knights are 11-1 with their only loss to unbeaten Vanderbilt, albeit with an undistinguished nonconference schedule in which the best win was 86-74 on the road at Texas A&M.

Self said he’s been impressed by the Knights’ ability to score from all five spots, pointing to a game against Florida Gulf Coast in which they hit 19 3s. UCF is shooting 39.8% from deep, which is 12th in the country; KU counters with what is currently the fourth-best three-point defense.

The Knights lost 7,522 of a combined 7,525 minutes from last year’s roster but have rebuilt quite a productive rotation that includes four players scoring between 12.6 and 13.8 points per game: guards Themus Fulks (Milwaukee) and Riley Kugel (Mississippi State) and forwards Jordan Burks (Georgetown) and Jamichael Stillwell (Milwaukee).

“You know that they can shoot the ball,” Self said, “and it seems like to me they really play well together considering that they’re all newcomers, vast majority of portal guys, and they seem to blend and are all fitting in nicely together.”

Fulks is dishing out an impressive 7.2 assists per game, making him one of the league’s top distributors, and Burks, Kugel and reserve guard Carmelo Pacheco have combined for 65 3-pointers on the year. The Knights have plenty of size with 7-foot-2 John Bol, an Ole Miss transfer, supplementing the two 6-foot-9 forwards, and as a result they have been an excellent offensive rebounding team to this point.

They don’t have much in the way of rim protection, though, with three blocks a game as a team, and the rest of their defensive metrics — scoring, field-goal percentage and so on — are unexceptional despite their schedule. As of Thursday, they ranked 35th in offense on KenPom compared to 99th in defense.

UCF Knights (11-1) vs. No. 17 Kansas Jayhawks (10-3)

• Addition Financial Arena, Orlando, Florida, 1 p.m. Central Time

• Broadcast: Peacock

• 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

Wreaking havoc: The last time KU took the floor, for its home win over Davidson prior to the holiday break, it looked like a team bent on creating more turnovers. The Jayhawks recorded 13 steals after generating seven or fewer in each of their prior 12 games. As Self said, their switch-heavy defensive style should lend itself well to taking the ball away; they also look best when they play with pace, which is easier to accomplish off steals. He said they should hope to get eight to 11 steals per game. Council vowed that the Jayhawks will do better: “He talks about that a lot, how teams could turn us over but we can’t turn them over. Don’t get me wrong, we be trying to turn teams over, it’s just some teams don’t turn the ball over like that.” That said, Self also noted that it’s possible to be an elite defensive team without being elite at every single aspect of that side of the ball, citing the defensive rebounding rate of Arkansas’ famous “40 Minutes of Hell” teams.

Old friends: UCF features a pair of players who were supposed to attend KU in recent years and never ended up wearing the crimson and blue. Chris Johnson committed to KU in the class of 2023 but backed out and went to Texas instead right before players were supposed to report for the summer; he moved to Stephen F. Austin but played in just three games after showing early promise and then went on to UCF. Kugel was set to join KU as its first transfer acquisition in the 2024 offseason, but the deal never came to fruition, reportedly because of issues with his credits transferring from Florida. He ended up going to Mississippi State and is now putting up career numbers for the Knights. Self said, “I want them both to do well, just not at our expense.”

Practice makes perfect: Self said it had been “kind of screwy” for his team to practice with Peterson and then play without him, because of the adjustments in style the Jayhawks kept having to make from practices to games as a result. If that’s the case, then one would now expect them to experience a rather seamless transition heading into Peterson’s return on Saturday.

Off-kilter observation

KU’s Samis Calderon played with Bol for Cold Hearts in Overtime Elite.