Kansas players shoot around toward the end of practice on Thursday, March 19, 2026 at Viejas Arena in San Diego. Photo by Nick Krug

SAN DIEGO — Though they had not previously been acquainted, Jamari McDowell became very familiar with the small Alabama-based Christian university Samford very quickly in March 2024 when the Bulldogs pressed relentlessly and made the Jayhawks work for 40 minutes to earn a 93-89 NCAA Tournament victory in Salt Lake City.

“How intense, and how much joy they played with, it was amazing,” McDowell recalled on Thursday. “That was a really electric team in the first round. I personally didn’t even know who they were, and I for sure know who Samford is now. They played great and I took that with me even into last year: Everyone’s going to come out, and especially with us being who we are as well, everybody’s going to come out and try to hit us in the mouth.”

That was the wisdom McDowell gleaned from his previous NCAA Tournament experience — he redshirted during the 2025 season, when KU lost in the first round to Arkansas — and it will certainly hold true on Friday night at Viejas Arena, when the Jayhawks take on another opportunistic underdog, Cal Baptist, to open this season’s March Madness run.

“I don’t think we got any pressure on us, really,” said Cal Baptist’s 7-foot forward Bradey Henige. “We’re the 13 seed. All the pressure’s on Kansas, so we’re just going to go out there, play with a chip on our shoulder, go and hoop.”

Cal Baptist, which won the WAC tournament as an automatic qualifier, is playing in its first-ever NCAA Tournament, and essentially none of the Lancers have experienced stakes and publicity remotely resembling those of Friday’s matchup.

“I haven’t played in any game that’s anywhere near close to this level,” said Cal Baptist’s star guard Dominique Daniels Jr. “We’re super excited to play this game. We just got to stay locked in on what we need to do in order to win.”

Some have taken part in the Division II playoffs or the junior-college playoffs, but those, perhaps unsurprisingly, don’t quite compare.

“We lost in the first round of the playoffs,” said CBU guard Martel Williams of his Region 18 tournament run at Utah State University Eastern, “so we didn’t make it that far.”

“I think it’s more popular at the D-I level,” added Miles Daniels, who spent four years at Chico State, of the NCAA Tournament. “But it’s definitely (still that) you’re playing a lot of different teams you’ve never seen before, a lot of great teams. So it’s like the competition is still there, but the amount of people and everything that goes on is a lot different.”

The experience of playing a team like Kansas might not be totally foreign to the Lancers. They faced off against three Big 12 teams all in a row as part of a brutal early-December road trip and lost to each of Colorado, BYU and Utah, albeit while keeping things close against the Buffaloes and Utes, lower-end teams in the league this season. Henige said those teams were vastly more physical than the mid-majors CBU played over the course of the season.

“I’ve learned that a lot of teams more so pay attention to me,” Dominique Daniels Jr. said of the Big 12 battles. “That just gives my other teammates some room to shine.”

And yet Daniels still managed to put up 25 on Colorado and 31 for Utah, which even for him is above his average.

“We’ve played that level of competition, so we know we can compete and perform at that level, so we’re not really trying to change anything,” said guard Martel Williams, the second option on offense. “Some teams try to change certain things, but we believe that what we’ve been doing and the process that we’ve been on, we can compete and get a game done.”

KU guard Melvin Council Jr. knows that firsthand because he’s been on the other side. (“A lot of people don’t know about that,” he added.) He made the tournament with Wagner in 2024 and won in the First Four, only to lose to No. 1 seed North Carolina, 90-62.

“Anybody can beat anybody,” he said. “We was right there, we just had seven players. If we had more players, we probably would have won that game or made the game close.”

That two-game stint makes Council one of KU’s more experienced players when it comes to March Madness, along with McDowell and Jackson, who had their two games each in 2024.

Against Samford, KU led by 22 points early in the second half but let the Bulldogs creep within single digits with nine minutes to go, then within one point with five minutes left. Samford still remained in contention until a questionable foul call with 14 seconds left and a missed 3-pointer doomed the Bulldogs late.

“If you have an opportunity to put an opponent away,” Jackson said, “you got to do it.”

Jackson turned the ball over five times that game but also threw the ball off a Bulldog in the final seconds to secure possession for KU.

Technically, on an underclassman-heavy roster, the Jayhawks’ most experienced player in the NCAA Tournament overall is Tre White, who has one win in his three games, between one appearance with USC as a freshman and another with Illinois as a junior.

“The tougher team usually wins,” White said. “The more disciplined team usually wins. It comes to the little things, I feel like, and this time of the year we know every play, we know all the plays that the team’s going to run, they know all our plays. It just comes down to execution and who’s tougher.”

Flory Bidunga played a rotational role for the Jayhawks in their one-and-done loss to Arkansas the following season (he is the only returning player who played minutes in that game). He said on Thursday that he “didn’t stay long enough” in his lone tournament trip.

“I feel like with this team it’s different,” he said. “We’re trying to make a big run and I think we’re capable of (doing it).”