photo by: Emma Crouch/Kansas Athletics

Kansas head coach Todd Chapman watches his team during a match against Wichita State on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

The Kansas tennis team is headed to its eighth NCAA Tournament under head coach Todd Chapman after receiving an at-large bid as part of Monday’s postseason selection show.

KU will travel to face No. 6 overall seed Oklahoma on Saturday at 2 p.m. SMU and Wichita State make up the other half of the Sooners’ pod in Norman, Oklahoma; the winners will face off the following day.

“It’s great to be back in the tournament two years in a row and three of the last four years,” Chapman said in a press release. “It’s an extremely tough draw, playing one of the top teams in the country, and one we know very well. I think that our section of four teams is probably the deepest section of four teams in the draw, and you play this time of year to play the best, and we’re going to get a chance to do that.”

The Jayhawks concluded the regular season with a 14-10 overall record and 9-4 mark in Big 12 play (including one forfeit win over Oklahoma State). They lost their first match in the conference tournament to fellow postseason qualifier Arizona, 4-2 on April 16, but had enough strong wins over the course of the year to earn their spot in NCAA competition.

KU, ranked No. 63 at the time, upset then-No. 19 TCU 4-3 in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 13, with the decisive point coming from Anna Putilina at No. 6 singles in a comeback win over the Horned Frogs’ Letizia Corsini.

TCU went on to win the Big 12 tournament, but the Jayhawks also had a 4-1 victory against regular-season champion then-No. 19 UCF in Lawrence on March 19.

After dropping consecutive matches in Arizona, KU won five straight without dropping a single point as a team (including the OSU forfeit) to close out the regular season.

Junior Kyoka Kubo, from Yokohama, Japan, has had a strong year for the Jayhawks after a memorable run to the quarterfinals of the individual NCAA singles championship last fall. She is ranked No. 77 nationally in singles and is 12-5 on court No. 1 for KU this spring. The doubles team of Kubo and South African senior Heike Janse van Vuuren ranks No. 79 and is 5-2, although both have also paired with other players.

Besides Kubo and van Vuuren, the rest of the Jayhawks’ recent singles lineup included, in order, junior and former JUCO transfer Yerkezhan Arystanbekova, sophomore Meriem Ben Ezzedine, freshman Nahyeong Cho and the sophomore Putilina. In doubles, KU paired Arystanbekova with Putilina and Ben Ezzedine with junior Montana State transfer Meg McCarty.

Oklahoma has several nationally renowned players, including No. 9 Evialina Laskevich in singles and the No. 1-ranked doubles duo of Roisin Gilheany and Gloriana Nahum. The Sooners’ record is 23-5 with a 13-2 mark in SEC play

KU, which lost in the first round to South Carolina in North Carolina last season, will look to upset OU, take down a second foe and make its first trip to the Sweet 16 since 2019, its best season of Chapman’s tenure. The Jayhawks and Sooners, former conference rivals, last faced off on March 30, 2024, in a 7-0 win for Oklahoma.