photo by: AP Photo/Kathleen Batten

The Kansas bench watches as the Jayhawks fall behind West Virginia during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Morgantown, W.Va.

The Kansas men’s basketball team’s struggles early in conference play have turned what would under any circumstances be one of the biggest games on the calendar — a showdown with unbeaten Iowa State at Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday night — into an extremely important opportunity for the Jayhawks to set their season back on course.

“We need to get back on the right track — but understanding, also, that it’s also mid-January and you don’t want to stress that this game is actually bigger than what it actually is, even though we all realize it’s a big game,” KU coach Bill Self said on Monday, “in large part because we haven’t played well since league play started.”

The Jayhawks have given up an average of 89 points across their first three conference games, and only a miracle last Tuesday against TCU saved them from what would otherwise be an 0-3 start, as they lost 86-75 at West Virginia on Saturday. KU’s defense, which looked potentially elite early in the year, has been lacking intensity and physicality: “We have to play stronger, but we also got to play tougher,” Self said.

And, on Tuesday, in comes a team capable of testing KU’s toughness as much as anyone in the conference or the country — not just any Iowa State squad, but “probably the best team that T.J. (Otzelberger)’s had,” Self said.

ISU has matched its highest ranking in program history, No. 2, as a result of its unbeaten start and previous No. 2 Michigan’s upset loss to Wisconsin on Saturday. The Jayhawks, for their part, would with a loss on Tuesday fall to 1-3 in the Big 12, matching their worst four-game start to conference play since 1988. (It bears mentioning that the 1988 team won the national championship.) In order to produce such a result, ISU will need to win at Allen Fieldhouse for the first time since Feb. 4, 2017.

The Cyclones certainly have the talent to pull it off.

There are familiar faces from the steady ISU teams of years past, like the ever-reliable point guard Tamin Lipsey (14.5 points, 5.5 assists per game), who is both scoring at the highest rate of his career and leading the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio. Wing Milan Momcilovic is the nation’s best 3-point shooter by a wide margin at 55.0%.

The top scorer for the Cyclones overall is forward Joshua Jefferson, another returning player who came in as a transfer from St. Mary’s last year and has become even more of a focal point this season with 17.7 points and 7.8 rebounds per game.

“T.J. said the other day that he thought he had the best point guard in the country in Lipsey after the Baylor game (a 70-60 win on Jan. 7), which you can make a case for that, when you talk about winning and all that stuff,” Self said. “No doubt about that. But what’s amazing about that statement is their 4 man has 10 more assists on the year than he does. So that just tells you how good Jefferson is playing.”

Joining them in the starting lineup are French freshman guard Killyan Toure, who impressed at the Players Era tournament when Lipsey was battling injury, and Jefferson’s frontcourt partner Blake Buchanan, a 6-foot-10 Virginia transfer.

“The thing about it is, they’ve always been good defensively, but they’re better defensively now with the freshman guard Toure,” Self said. “I mean, he’s good, and he’s probably about as good a perimeter defender as we have in our league.”

photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Iowa State guard Tamin Lipsey drives to the basket during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Oklahoma State, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Ames, Iowa.

photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Iowa State forward Joshua Jefferson (5) drives past Oklahoma State guard Anthony Roy (9) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Ames, Iowa.

photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Oklahoma State guard Kanye Clary (1) fights for a loose ball with Iowa State guard Killyan Toure (27) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Ames, Iowa.

ISU has what may be the single most impressive win by any team in college basketball this year, an 81-58 demolition of then-No. 1 Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana, on Dec. 6. Other high-level teams it has beaten include St. John’s and Iowa. The Cyclones are as usual an elite defense — ninth in the country at 62.9 points allowed per game, sixth with 17.1 turnovers forced. At the other end of the court, they rank among the national leaders in field goal percentage (No. 9 at 51.9%) and 3-point percentage (No. 4 at 40.8%, albeit not on particularly high volume with 348 attempts this season), boosted in both categories by Momcilovic’s impressive efficiency.

The Cyclones have not had a dazzling start to conference play and got a bit of a test from Oklahoma State at Hilton on Saturday, but still managed to win 83-71 and are 3-0, including a 21-point win over the West Virginia team that just knocked off KU.

The Jayhawks will find themselves in the unfamiliar role of home underdog. In the same position in December, they took UConn to the brink but suffered an ill-timed late scoring drought. Tuesday night’s match provides a chance to flip the script.

KANSAS JAYHAWKS (11-5, 1-2 BIG 12) vs. NO. 2 IOWA STATE CYCLONES (16-0, 3-0 BIG 12)

• Allen Fieldhouse, Lawrence, 8 p.m.

• Broadcast: ESPN

• 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

Massive moments: Reflecting on KU’s defensive performance against WVU, Self said he felt like the Jayhawks didn’t win the most important possessions of the game. Certainly the evidence backs that up; they couldn’t do anything to stem the tide as the Mountaineers scored 16 in a row, then as soon as KU ended the run it promptly gave up a four-point play, and then when it got relatively close one final time it conceded a putback dunk. If KU is to beat ISU on Tuesday, it will need to lock in to a much greater extent on these pivotal possessions and at game point.

Any minute: It flew under the radar to some extent, at least compared to in past games, but star guard Darryn Peterson didn’t finish KU’s loss to WVU. Once again, he came in for a brief shift late — this time with 2:21 to go — and left 53 seconds later after hitting a 3-pointer. Self confirmed on Monday that Peterson did deal with cramps again. He also said that it’s difficult to be sure how KU will manage Peterson’s minutes going forward because there’s essentially no way of knowing what might cause his legs to start bothering him in the second half and “there’s also no indication that we know of that the load” — that is, the amount of minutes he has played — “actually impacts when that actually occurs.”

Filling the void: KU’s bench scores 13.5 points per game. That mark ranks 352nd of 361 Division I teams. Self has deployed a wide variety of players off the bench in different rotations from game to game and no single player has provided a reliable spark. Elmarko Jackson’s eight points against WVU equaled his total from his previous five games combined, but he also scored all of them with less than four minutes remaining. Could he increase his aggressiveness enough to become a reliable bench scoring option? Could Jayden Dawson, or Kohl Rosario, or Jamari McDowell? Bench minutes are certainly up for grabs, and while defense will always get players on the floor under Self, some scoring certainly wouldn’t hurt either.

OFF-KILTER OBSERVATION

The last time the Cyclones were No. 2 in the AP Top 25 was precisely a year ago — in the Jan. 13, 2025, edition of the poll — and they also faced KU that week, beating the Jayhawks 74-57 at Hilton Coliseum.