photo by: Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas coach Nate Lie directs his team against West Virginia on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 at Rock Chalk Park.

As Kansas sophomore midfielder Jillian Gregorski puts it, the Jayhawks have a lot of “unfinished business” with the other teams that made the Big 12 tournament.

Above seventh-seeded KU, which finished 6-4-1 in league play — its exact mark in last season — after a 2-1 home loss to Colorado on Thursday, are the four teams it lost to and the one it tied (plus one it didn’t play).

It might be good news, then, that the Jayhawks got paired with the one team they tied, No. 2 seed West Virginia, as their first-round opponent for 5:30 p.m. Monday night in Fort Worth, Texas. KU could even have taken three points from that 2-2 matchup on Oct. 16 in Lawrence if it hadn’t conceded a long-distance equalizer to Alexis Ré just before halftime, or if it had taken advantage of its numerous second-half corner kicks.

On the other hand, the Mountaineers are the only team in the league that hasn’t lost a conference match, period, this season. KU will need to change that if it wants to defend its tournament title from 2024 — one that it earned in part by escaping WVU on Lexi Watts’ double-overtime golden goal in the second round at CPKC Stadium.

It’ll be a challenging road this time, but the Jayhawks should have no issues with motivation, thanks to those scores to settle that Gregorski mentioned.

“We want it more than we wanted it last year, and we wanted it bad last year,” she said. “But I think just (because of) what’s at stake — back-to-back’s at stake, a higher seed in the NCAAs is at stake — we can’t take it for granted and we won’t. We want more and that’s what I love about this team.”

KU’s 2025 season has followed a vastly different arc than its 2024 campaign, when the Jayhawks came out of nowhere and got hot late for a lengthy winning streak that took them through nearly all of October heading into the tournament. This time, KU entered with higher expectations, got through its entire nonconference slate unbeaten (which continues to buoy its RPI), suffered a midseason slump with three losses in four matches and then restored its high-level form late in the year — except for in an infelicitous 2-1 loss to No. 11 Colorado on Thursday at Rock Chalk Park.

The Jayhawks had already clinched a berth in the Big 12 tournament, which is limited to eight teams this season, prior to the CU match, and head coach Nate Lie said he hoped that hadn’t affected his team’s sense of urgency.

“It’s our job as coaches to not let that happen, but human nature is a real thing as well,” he said.

KU will now need to bring a certain intensity into the Big 12 tournament despite already having positioned itself as a surefire NCAA Tournament team, which it wasn’t at this time last year. The Jayhawks were No. 12 in the RPI before their loss to Colorado, the No. 10 RPI team.

“I do think that will be the determining factor of how long we could keep playing,” Lie said, “is can we play with urgency and desperation, can we win the 18s, and can we execute when the time matters.”

Added Gregorski: “The amount of urgency, the amount of concentration, the amount of effort, winning plays, we need everyone from minute one to minute 90, and if we can bring that same urgency and energy and focus, we’ll be great.”

Lie said he thinks his team has grown over the course of the regular season.

“I think we’re a better team than we were on day one and I think we’re a better team today than we were a couple weeks ago,” he said on Thursday. “I think we’ve started to get a little bit of role identity, I think we’ve learned to manage situations a little bit better, so even though we were down today I didn’t think we panicked.”

WVU, for its part, has trailed very rarely over the course of what is now a 15-match unbeaten streak. The Mountaineers are led by Taylor White, one of the top forwards in the Big 12 with 10 goals and eight assists. Goalkeeper Bailey Herfurth leads the league in goals against average at a mere 0.636 and has been needed for just 30 saves over the course of the season. Three separate players — Nyema Ingleton, Jacey Rase and Roxane Vilain — have earned Big 12 defensive player of the week honors at various points this season.

The winner of Monday’s matchup will move on to Wednesday to face the winner of No. 3 Colorado’s game against No. 6 UCF.

• Daniel Schmidt contributed to this report.