photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas head coach Brandon Schneider talks with guard S'Mya Nichols during a break in play against Texas Tech in Allen Fieldhouse, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025.

The Kansas women’s basketball team enters the first round of the Big 12 tournament coming off a gritty performance against No. 21 Oklahoma State on Sunday, in which its comeback attempt just fell short in a 57-51 loss.

The Jayhawks now could have to begin their postseason run facing No. 14 Texas Tech without their second-leading scorer, junior guard Elle Evans, whose outlook for Wednesday is uncertain.

Evans didn’t suit up for Sunday’s season finale after playing all 28 of Kansas’ previous games, as she dealt with a quad injury. In postgame media availability, head coach Brandon Schneider said that the team had only one day of practice to prepare knowing that Evans wouldn’t be available on Sunday, suggesting the injury occurred late last week. In their only other game last week, at BYU on Feb. 25, Evans led the Jayhawks with 24 points on 7-for-12 shooting while playing 36 minutes.

The ESPN+ broadcast of Sunday’s game indicated that it wasn’t clear whether Evans would return this season, and Schneider didn’t provide any further updates after the game.

But with Kansas entering the 16-team tournament as the No. 11 seed, it got a favorable draw against a Texas Tech team that the Jayhawks beat 57-50 in their final game of January. The Lady Raiders also rely on a guard-heavy attack, which gives Kansas the advantage of not having a defensive mismatch down low. Even so, Tech was able to score 20 points in the paint against Kansas in the first matchup, but the Jayhawks answered with 34 to win that battle despite an above-average scoring performance by the Lady Raiders’ main post player, Sarengbe Sanogo.

“They’re a great driving team for one, and they do have some really good shooters, but we just had to trust the process of helping each other,” said first-team All-Big 12 selection S’Mya Nichols following KU’s win over Tech on Jan. 29. “We were plugging off of everyone and just trying to protect the paint as a team… We’ve been practicing what we just did on the court all for the last three days. So, I mean, we did execute. We got the job done. That’s all that matters.”

The thing that hurt Kansas the most in that first matchup was second-chance points, as Texas Tech scored 11 and the Jayhawks only racked up three. KU finished with a double-digit (plus-17) advantage in rebounding, an extremely rare feat for this year’s smaller team. But that performance on the boards came almost entirely on the defensive end, as Kansas grabbed three fewer offensive rebounds (seven) than the Lady Raiders (10) despite the large disparity in rebounds overall.

While Evans’ possible absence is a negative for a Kansas team with a winnable first-round matchup, there could be some solace in the fact that Evans scored only seven points in the first matchup against Texas Tech.

“We tried pretty hard not to come off with Evans as much as possible because we have a lot of respect for the way she shoots the basketball,” Texas Tech head coach Krista Gerlich said back in January. “We’ve done a decent job of defending the 3-point line this year. But if people can get to the rim every single time or get an and-1, that really defeats the purpose.”

Instead of the outside shooting that the Jayhawks so frequently display, they focused on set plays with Regan Williams coming up to the top of the key before cutting back in for a layup, scoring about a dozen points. Opponents are shooting only 28.7% against Texas Tech from long range, and Kansas actually didn’t sink a single 3-pointer in the first meeting, which marked its first game in at least five years without a 3-point bucket on the box score.

“When we look at their foul rate and how many free throws their opponents shoot, we knew it was going to be difficult to get many 3s, just by the nature of how they played,” Schneider said. “So, you know, we just tried to attack the pressure the best we could.”

With that in mind, the Jayhawks likely could have adopted a similar approach coming into this matchup even if Evans was available.

The first meeting was messy, with a combined 50 fouls and 36 turnovers, and while that is unlikely to happen again, both teams could come out with defensive pressure and attempt to force another low-scoring game as Kansas focuses on its inside game and Tech relies on its guards finishing in the paint.

“We certainly wanted to try to turn them over, that’s just part of our system,” Gerlich said. “Trying to get extra possessions, trying to speed them up a little bit, and then trying to get some offense off of our defense… We’re not great in the halfcourt, and we need to be able to get some fast-break points off of people’s turnovers.”

After winning a game at the Big 12 tournament for the first time in three years last season, Kansas will look to pile on at least one more victory as it faces Texas Tech in the late matchup of Wednesday’s first round, as the game tips off at 8 p.m. at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The winner will face Utah the following day.