Fans at the south end of the Fieldhouse go wild as the starting lineup is announced prior to tipoff against Brown on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Not much of Kansas’ nonconference men’s basketball schedule came as a surprise.

The vast majority of the Jayhawks’ prominent matchups had been previously reported, including the cornerstone of the home schedule — UConn — mere hours before KU officially announced the slate, and games like North Carolina, Duke and N.C. State were public much further in advance.

That said, the schedule still possesses its fair share of interesting elements to dissect.

Here’s a look at some of my most salient takeaways from the 2025-26 KU nonconference men’s basketball schedule — which, by the way, isn’t totally finalized, with matchups for the Players Era tournament during Thanksgiving week still pending.

The difficulty level is brutal

It has been pretty rare for KU to lose more than a pair of nonconference games under Bill Self. Even over the last two seasons, both of which ranked among the worst of his tenure, the Jayhawks lost three combined — against Marquette in the Maui Invitational in 2023, then back-to-back road matchups at Creighton and Missouri in 2024.

If the Jayhawks can enter Big 12 play at 11-2 this year, it will have been an incredible accomplishment.

Even avoiding two losses in the seven-game stretch that encompasses Duke, three games at the Players Era, UConn, Missouri and N.C. State all in a row — no breaks, no mid-majors in the middle for the Jayhawks to at least catch their breath — would be an impressive showing.

Next year’s team won’t be young, per se — transfers Melvin Council Jr., Jayden Dawson and Tre White are all veterans — but its premier player (Darryn Peterson) will be a true freshman and its only returner who actually played last season is a sophomore (Flory Bidunga). There could be quite the learning curve as the motley crew of Jayhawks begins to jell, but they don’t have a lot of time because the North Carolina game is four days into the season and the gauntlet continues from there.

McLendon missing?

Each of the last two seasons, the Jayhawks honored trailblazing former college basketball coach John McLendon, a KU alumnus, during a matchup against a historically Black university in their season opener. The McLendon Classic, which KU Athletics characterized as an annual event, featured custom pregame warmup shirts and highlighted various KU affinity groups. The first time the event took place, there was even a connected film screening and round-table discussion the night before the game.

While it’s not out of the question that KU could choose to honor McLendon in some form during one of its nonconference games, it definitely won’t carry quite the same weight if they do so, say, at the season opener against Green Bay instead of in a game against an HBCU or at least some school with a connection to McLendon. I was surprised not to see one on the schedule and the omission could certainly hamper any attempts to make the so-called “Classic” into a true annual tradition.

Kansas City Border Showdown just isn’t right

I understand that it is not uncommon for college basketball rivalry games to take place at neutral sites. Even the University of Missouri’s other basketball rivalry, the Braggin’ Rights game against Illinois, has a decades-long history of taking place in St. Louis, including most recently in the arena that is home to the St. Louis Blues.

I am a bit of a rivalry-game traditionalist, as evidenced by my prior take that the football Sunflower Showdown should be during rivalry week instead of a random weekend in October. The key point with Braggin’ Rights is that it is traditionally in St. Louis. The Border Showdown, meanwhile, has historically had nothing to do with the T-Mobile Center. It hasn’t been played in Kansas City, Missouri, since 1997, and I struggle to see the benefits of putting it there — where, by the way, it will remain next season in the final year of the current contract between KU and MU.

About that contract: Originally, it would have worked in such a way that in 2025, KU would technically be the home team and “have the first right to offer Contest tickets as a part of its season ticket package,” before MU could do so. Then the remaining tickets would be sold to the general public and, after facility fees, the revenue would have been split 50/50, with KU and MU switching roles in 2026.

Well, in February 2024 the two schools amended the deal such that the home team “shall control all ticket inventory and shall have the right to price and sell such inventory and to retain all revenue from such sales.” The home team will also have to pay facility expenses. That certainly simplifies things, but it also means that each team is essentially just hosting a home game at an arena with slightly under 3,000 more seats than its usual venue but, especially in Missouri’s case, far removed from its students and usual attendees.

In any event, no matter who is selling tickets, the atmosphere won’t be the same and the arena will not be sufficiently suffused with the burning hatred that characterizes the rivalry.

The gap between nonconference and conference play is strangely long

Two years ago, when KU released its nonconference schedule, the press release appended a note stating that “There is still one game to be added on the Kansas schedule,” and then KU eventually filled one spot at the very end of December.

I half-expected to see that postscript again this time around when I looked at the bottom of the list and saw that KU’s final nonleague game is against Davidson on Dec. 22. But then, if you go through and count, the Jayhawks are maxed out — they do indeed have 13 nonleague games packed in between Nov. 3 and Dec. 22 to supplement their forthcoming 18 conference contests.

Dec. 22 is just an oddly early conclusion. If the Big 12 Conference league follows a similar scheduling pattern to when it last had 18 league games during the 2023-24 season, it could start league play on Jan. 3, a Saturday. That’s an essentially unprecedented 12 days later, whereas KU’s break between games during the holidays is usually eight or nine days.

Meanwhile, some schools like Houston and Iowa State already have reported nonleague games scheduled for days like Dec. 29, a full week later than the conclusion of KU’s slate. That means conference play can’t possibly start too much sooner than Jan. 3.

Avoiding direct conflicts with football is a plus, but it’s not all roses

In an unequivocally positive development for all involved, while there were two days last year on which KU had both football and men’s basketball games — albeit at non-overlapping times, even if those times were announced not long beforehand — no such conflicts exist this season.

In addition, while the Players Era tournament, which took place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday during Thanksgiving week last year, initially seemed poised to conflict with KU football’s senior-day battle with Utah, that is no longer the case.

That doesn’t mean the logistics are perfectly ideal — far from it.

The basketball exhibition at Louisville is the night before the football Sunflower Showdown, much like what happened last year with Arkansas, but at least Bud Walton Arena and Bill Snyder Family Stadium are within driving distance. (The exhibition is also the same night as the first volleyball match in Allen Fieldhouse in 12 years.)

The UNC game was moved a week earlier from its announced date, which would have been during a football bye week. Instead, it’s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the night before a football game in Tucson, Arizona, making it nearly impossible to attend both unless the football team gets a late-night time slot.

Finally, back to the Players Era: if KU men’s basketball is playing in Las Vegas through Thanksgiving itself — a possibility given that it’s now supposed to get three games between Monday and Thursday — it may not be possible for fans or any other stakeholders to make it back for an 11 a.m. football kickoff on Black Friday.