Kansas head coach Bill Self applauds his players as they close in on the Texas Tech lead during the second half on Saturday, March 1, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Whatever pent-up anxiety Kansas basketball fans might have felt about KU actually fielding a full, competitive team — anxiety that might have been eating away at them for weeks prior to Tuesday and Wednesday’s significant commitments — they can finally breathe easy.

It took a month following the addition of developmental prospect Corbin Allen from Oak Park High School, and more than two months after Melvin Council Jr. signed on the dotted line as a transfer from St. Bonaventure, but the Jayhawks filled their urgent needs for an off-ball guard with perimeter-shooting potential and a backup big man to aid Flory Bidunga.

Kohl Rosario, a 6-foot-5 guard from Miami in the midst of a meteoric rise, reclassified and signed with KU on Tuesday. Then Paul Mbiya, a 6-foot-11 center from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who has been playing in France, signed on Wednesday after having withdrawn from his previous plan to play for N.C. State.

As head coach Bill Self put it in a statement — an understatement, really — “We’ve had a good last couple of days recruiting.”

Earlier in June, Self had acknowledged that the Jayhawks were in the midst of a quieter offseason, one creating “an appearance that we haven’t gotten as highly respected guys, nationally,” while also asserting, “You recruit to fit your needs and nobody knows our needs better than we do.”

It took three months in all, including one scary period in which KU’s roster was totally devoid of returning experience with the prized Bidunga briefly in the transfer portal, but KU has quite apparently filled those needs ahead of the 2025-26 season.

The Jayhawks have one of the presumptive best players in the country in highly touted guard Darryn Peterson. They have an extremely long and athletic group that should be able to switch on defense far more effectively than either of the last two KU teams. On offense, they have capable ball handlers in Peterson, Melvin Council Jr. and Elmarko Jackson, shooters on the wing in Rosario and Jayden Dawson, a veteran glue guy in Tre White and threatening presences inside in Bidunga and Mbiya. That’s not even mentioning someone like Bryson Tiller, whom Self has called a future pro.

Will this team be preseason No. 1? Surely not, given KU’s massively disappointing results when anointed as such each of the last two seasons — and even beyond that, the Jayhawks still haven’t had the kind of splashy offseason that attracts the adoration of the national media. Also, half of KU’s dozen scholarship players are freshmen: Allen, Calderon, Mbiya, Peterson, Rosario and Tiller. They could have a low floor along with their high ceiling.

But KU now looks like a legitimate contender in a way it didn’t, at least not quite as obviously, in the spring when pundits like Jon Rothstein were saying that KU wasn’t even a top-five team in its own conference and ranked it outside the top 25 nationwide.

The Jayhawks may not even be done, given they could theoretically add up to two more players depending on whom they choose as Designated Student-Athletes (DSAs) who will not count toward the new roster limits imposed by the House v. NCAA settlement. But they now have a cohesive and well-rounded roster as it stands.

Now, there are some reasons for concern, or at least a bit of circumspection, with the players KU added.

Rosario, KU’s shooter of choice, hasn’t always been the most consistent with his 3-point shooting. He only shot 27% from deep during the lengthy Overtime Elite regular season, a fairly large sample, one producing a number that contradicts his more encouraging results from the Elite Youth Basketball League and Adidas NextGen Euroleague. He certainly hasn’t done it at the college level like some of the veteran players the Jayhawks had sought this offseason.

Mbiya’s measurables are almost comically excellent — who can compare with a 7-foot-8 wingspan? — and he fills what was the biggest void on KU’s roster for nearly its entire offseason. He’s also a little older, as he turned 20 in April, which is good considering KU gets to bring him in as a true freshman regardless.

From an on-court perspective, it remains to be seen how well he can withstand some of the power post presences who gave his teammate and countryman Bidunga trouble last season. Mbiya nearly exclusively faced under-21 competition last season at ASVEL and will be dealing with more experienced and stronger players some of the time in college. The lanky center weighed in at 240 pounds at the same Young Star Game where he recorded the 7-foot-8 wingspan, which is solid. KU then announced his weight at 260 pounds when he signed on Wednesday; that’s even better, but he doesn’t necessarily give the impression of a bruiser on tape.

There were going to be minor issues with anyone KU brought in at this point in the offseason, though. In fact, there may have been such possible nitpicks with virtually any player, even someone fully formed like Texas Tech transfer Darrion Williams, who nearly picked KU before going to N.C. State.

Almost any international big man — and the Jayhawks were connected to quite a few of them — was going to experience some sort of significant adjustment moving into high-level college basketball. And Camron McDowell, a Division II transfer wing from Northwestern Oklahoma State who visited before the Rosario signing and reclassification came together, would have been making his own jump up in competition while also adjusting to a much smaller role — not to mention that it wasn’t even clear how he would become eligible after playing portions of four collegiate seasons at Division I and Division II schools.

It’s like Self said upon signing Rosario, “It’s not often there’s a player of his potential to become available at this point,” and that could apply just as easily to Mbiya. There may have been players who were more “sure things” than either of KU’s early-summer additions — certainly Williams, a known entity at this point in his career, comes to mind — but it’s hard to argue that the Jayhawks considerably raised their ceiling in just two days.