The Jayhawks huddle up during the second half on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

The Kansas men’s basketball team got its season back on the right track during a well-timed homestand with a pair of dominant wins, 84-63 against then-No. 2 Iowa State and 80-62 over Baylor.

Now, back above .500 in what are still the early stages of Big 12 play, the newly 19th-ranked Jayhawks will look to extend their momentum beyond the confines of Allen Fieldhouse.

“We haven’t taken our act on the road, really, and been very good,” head coach Bill Self said. “We won at N.C. State, and we weren’t great, and then of course lost in Orlando and Morgantown. So yeah, this week is another two games that’s a great opportunity to go and try to play well away from home, and even though home court doesn’t guarantee anything, it is different playing in this building when guys are so confident playing here.”

KU can develop an even greater level of confidence ahead of this weekend’s Sunflower Showdown in Manhattan if it performs well on Tuesday night at 10 p.m. Central time on the road at Colorado.

Last season it took Colorado 16 games to get its first two wins since rejoining the Big 12. This season the Buffaloes were far more expedient, as they opened 2-0 in league play with a road win over Arizona State and home win against Utah.

CU nearly pushed its record to 3-0 with what would have been a stunner against Texas Tech on Jan. 10, as the Buffaloes rallied from down 23 with 17 minutes to go to cut their deficit to two points on a 3-pointer by Sebastian Rancik with 42.3 seconds remaining. They got the stop they needed, but Isaiah Johnson got stuck in a double team on the final possession and Barrington Hargress’ contested shot for the win at the buzzer bounced out.

Since then, the Buffaloes have slumped to two additional losses on the road at Cincinnati and West Virginia and will look to correct their course against KU.

CU has only just inserted its leading scorer, the freshman guard Johnson from Los Angeles, into the starting lineup for the first time. He played a season-high 37 minutes in Saturday’s loss to WVU but scored just 12 points; he’s now averaging 15.8 with 44.3% shooting from beyond the arc. Hargress, another premier addition as a transfer from UC Riverside, is even better from distance at 24-for-45 (53.3%), albeit at low volume, and contributes 13.7 points and 4.7 assists on the whole.

The frontcourt is quite versatile and a bit more familiar from last year with 6-foot-11 stretch forward Sebastian Rancik, a sophomore whose breakout game (19 points, nine rebounds) came at Allen Fieldhouse last season; the lanky, athletic 7-footer Bangot Dak; and powerful 6-foot-10, 270-pound center Elijah Malone, a sixth-year senior who played his first four seasons in the NAIA.

In total, they have made for a much more cohesive group on offense (No. 62 in KenPom) than defense (No. 125, third-worst among Big 12 teams).

CU’s inconsistent results stretch back to nonconference play, when the Buffaloes needed overtime to beat Eastern Washington and lost to Northern Colorado but also picked up wins along the way against solid foes in Providence and Washington. Even with veterans like Malone and Hargress in the fold, head coach and former Jayhawk Tad Boyle is fielding one of the youngest rosters possible, with a whopping eight players listed as freshmen and four sophomores.

Colorado played KU close twice last season when it was the worst team in the Big 12 — particularly in their matchup at the CU Events Center. Now it’ll present an even greater challenge for the Jayhawks as they look to keep the good vibes going.

COLORADO BUFFALOES (12-6, 2-3 BIG 12) vs. No. 19 KANSAS JAYHAWKS (13-5, 3-2 BIG 12)

• CU Events Center, Boulder, Colorado, 10 p.m. Central time

• 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

Tightened up: After beginning the year in the starting lineup, Kohl Rosario has essentially fallen out of the rotation with two combined mop-up minutes in KU’s last two games. Self said after the game that the Jayhawks have been playing better with a tighter rotation — with Elmarko Jackson and Jamari McDowell as their two players off the bench: “I want everybody to play, but we got to win games.” A key question entering Tuesday’s game is to what extent KU can sustain its seven-man rotation — or if it should even try to do so given the altitude.

Swiper: Jackson has made himself useful in several ways to cement his spot in the rotation, but one of his biggest contributions has been his ability to derail opposing offenses. Over the last four games, he’s averaging 3.3 steals — this for a team that needs every extra possession it can get as it continues to force among the fewest opponent turnovers in the country.

Pushing through: Each conference contest provides another opportunity for KU’s freshman star Darryn Peterson to make it through the end of a game, something he has not reliably done while dealing with cramps. The Jayhawks haven’t needed him to do so of late, as they’ve put games out of reach in the early stages of the second half, but his unbelievable per-minute production to this point — he’s scored 123 points in 136 minutes in league games — certainly has fans dreaming of what he could look like while fully healthy.

OFF-KILTER OBSERVATION

Among the relatively small number of NCAA college basketball players from Montreal, Quebec, two will be on opposite sides of this matchup: KU’s Nginyu Ngala and CU’s Felix Kossaras.