photo by: Carter Gaskins/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas' S'Mya Nichols (12) calls a play against Oklahoma Saturday, March 2, 2024, at Allen Fieldhouse.

After two weeks off from competition, the Jayhawks headed to Los Angeles on Thursday in preparation for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, where they will face ninth-seeded Michigan on Saturday at 1 p.m. Central Time.

“It was a week without playing, it was a while, definitely, but we took a lot of days just to focus on ourselves … and why we are playing well, and just continue going,” guard S’Mya Nichols said.

This year’s tournament marks the second tournament appearance for fifth-year seniors Taiyanna Jackson, Zakiyah Franklin and Holly Kersgieter, whose postseason experience holds great value for Kansas.

“It could potentially be their last game, so I feel like it’s our job to make sure it’s not their last one yet,” said the freshman Nichols, who will make her first appearance in her inaugural year as a Jayhawk.

Both Franklin and Kersgieter acknowledged that their first postseason trip came without any sort of advice from their teammates at the time regarding the tournament experience. This time, though, it’s different, with Jackson, Franklin and Kersgieter being able to take their previous tournament experience to instill some wisdom and preparation into Nichols and plenty of other freshmen and newcomers on the squad.

“It’s just different, and it’s hard to really explain to them until you’re there and you feel it,” Kersgieter said. “We’ve done our best to explain it to them, but all we can do is get there and (have them) experience it.”

While the veterans have done their best to prepare Kansas’ newcomers for the chaos and uncertainty of March, anything can truly happen come tournament time.

“The anticipation, the pressure … These last few practices have been tough, but they’ve been tough for a reason,” Kersgieter said. “We’ve talked several times about, like, this is March, there isn’t room for mistakes.”

While there may not be room for mistakes, the Jayhawks have had that mentality much longer than just the month of March, as they won nine of their final 11 games en route to securing a comfortable spot in the tournament as a No. 8 seed. This has set Kansas up in a rather favorable position, as they ended up in the Portland 3 region, which allows them the opportunity, if they win, to go up against the third-ranked No. 1 seed USC, rather than most projections, which placed them in a region with undefeated South Carolina.

“This feels a little better (than last time),” Kersgieter said. “Our bracket’s a little better, we feel better about our team and we’re excited for L.A., it’s someplace we’ve never been before.”

She continued: “I just think matchup-wise USC is better. Just having that veteran experience, we know what to expect going in now a little bit more, and kind of just have a more level head … matchup-wise, we got really good seeding.”

This contrasts with the 2022 NCAA Tournament appearance that gave Kansas a favorable first round against Georgia Tech, but a very tough draw with a big and versatile Stanford squad that shut the Jayhawks down inside and outmatched their guard play.

“We’ve got a good inside presence with Taiyanna Jackson, (so) we’ll be kind of looking to play inside-out if we have to, but also knowing that they’re guard-heavy, but we’ve got good guards too,” Franklin said about the Michigan matchup. “I think it’ll be key if we can honestly just focus on the defensive end, that’s kind of been the thing that we’ve been focusing on all week. I feel like we have good ball-screen defense, and just maintaining our matchups and doing a good job of keeping them in front of us.”

Michigan’s offense relies heavily on its starting trio of guards, as it holds no player taller than 6-foot-4 on its roster and starts a nontraditional lineup of three guards and two forwards.

“They have an even rebounding margin of their guards, I think that’s also their strength, is that they have guards who go up and down … so you don’t know what to expect or who it will be,” Kersgieter said. “So I think that prepping that any one of their team members can go off at any moment and just being prepared for that is best.”

The Wolverines’ guard trio will match up well against Kansas’ Nichols, Kersgieter and Franklin, but the Jayhawks trust their guard play and know the advantage that Jackson brings them on both sides of the ball.

“It’s a huge advantage just to have a great inside presence on the rebounds,” Franklin said of Jackson.

“We have some pretty dominant guards as well, and I think it helps that we have a dominant post,” Nichols added. “So we will utilize our post definitely on offense, and then on defense just locking down.”

Even with the extended break leading into this season’s tournament, the Jayhawks feel confident in the team they have and the heat they’ve brought to end the season, which included a second-round matchup in the Big 12 Conference tournament against Texas (which also earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament) that prepared them for the big stage of March.

“You just understand that the little things matter,” Nichols said. “And we really focused on that, just how anything can switch up the season.”

After months of Big 12 play that featured some of the top posts in the country on a nightly basis, Kansas will have a different matchup with the guard-heavy Michigan, but it is looking forward to the change in pace and new preparation tactics for its biggest game of the season thus far.