The year 2023 featured a conference championship in men’s basketball, a Women’s National Invitation Tournament title in women’s basketball, broken records in women’s golf, a football bowl victory and plenty more.
What will 2024 have in store? As usual, the Kansas athletic department features an intriguing mix of programs on the rise and more established teams looking to secure their position in the rapidly changing world of collegiate athletics. Here’s some of what awaits them.
How will the Gateway District proceed?
Probably the biggest story in Kansas Athletics as a whole right now is the ongoing large-scale renovation of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Its first phase, which includes the construction of a conference center on the north side of the stadium, focuses on the north and west portions of the venue and is expected to conclude in time for the 2025 football season.
Demolition of the western stands began in December and coincided with the implementation of live cameras on kugatewaydistrict.com that allow interested fans to monitor the project’s progress.
A substantial portion of this remodel will take place over the course of 2024. KU is expected to select a firm to serve as the lead developer of the so-called Gateway project by March after originally planning to do so by December. In all, the first phase of renovations is expected to cost $448 million, as approved by the Kansas Board of Regents in November, an increase from an original $335 million estimate.
The year will also bring a new football season to the in-progress facility, one during which KU initially said it planned to play there with a substantially reduced capacity.
However, Chancellor Douglas Girod has since told the Journal-World that the university has been in discussions about using Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, due to the fact that playing more games at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium could push back the construction schedule. A decision is expected in January.
How avidly fans support KU during 2024, at whichever location and capacity, may also play a role in the final quantity of seats selected for the Booth in 2025 and beyond.
Kansas guard S’Mya Nichols shoots during a game against Southeastern Louisiana in Lawrence on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023.
What will S’Mya Nichols do next?
In her first official game with the Jayhawks, Nichols accidentally carried the ball out of bounds after a Taiyanna Jackson block, thinking that Southeastern Louisiana’s shot had gone in. Otherwise, there have been very few indicators that the 6-foot guard from Overland Park is a freshman.
She arrived on campus as one of the highest-touted recruits in recent KU women’s basketball history and has fit in well alongside a lineup of four returning starters from the Women’s National Invitation Tournament title team. She’s dangerous on the drive and can get to the line very well, which isn’t a surprise. But she’s also been an effective passer and connected from deep when teams leave her open. At one point in December, she reset her career high in scoring in consecutive nonconference games with 20 points against Houston Christian and 23 at Wichita State — still just her eighth and ninth games.
She will play many, many more games in 2024, of increasing difficulty, and continue to develop and grow into the collegiate game. At least three key contributors will have exhausted their eligibility after the season and as a sophomore in 2024-25, she may have the keys to the KU offense.
New Kansas head coach Nate Lie is shown during his tenure at Xavier.
How will Nate Lie shape the KU soccer program?
It wasn’t too long ago that the Jayhawks had one of their best-ever seasons in 2019, winning the Big 12 Conference tournament and making it all the way to the third round of the NCAA Tournament. But then, as longtime coach Mark Francis put it last summer, the squad was hampered by the pandemic in 2020, its youth in 2021 and injuries in 2022. Then in 2023, with plenty of returning talent, the Jayhawks went 12 games without a victory at one point and didn’t claim a conference win until the final day of the season. Francis retired the next day and was replaced by former Xavier coach Nate Lie.
Much like Francis at KU, Lie led the Musketeers to most of their best years in program history, including four straight NCAA Tournament appearances and a 28-game unbeaten streak in conference play. He will be tasked with transferring that success from the Big East Conference to the Big 12, and from Ohio — where he has spent so much time during his career that athletic director Travis Goff called him “Mr. Ohio” during the hiring process — to the Kansas City area and beyond.
Lie will now have to retain current young talent on the team — players like sophomore forward Lexi Watts and a large freshman class from last year that contributed early and often — while making up for the expected losses of players like Shira Elinav and Moira Kelley who went through senior night festivities. KU signed a five-player freshman class initially under Francis before Lie made three more signings and picked up an Ohio State transfer early enrollee in Brooke Otto.
One benefit for Lie: Unlike at Xavier, where he met his team for the first time on the first day of preseason in August, this time he gets a whole spring and exhibition schedule to mold the Jayhawks.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark addresses the media during the NCAA college Big 12 women’s basketball media day Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo.
How well does Big 12 Mexico go over?
KU is a guinea pig in one of Commissioner Brett Yormark’s experiments, a foray into Mexico that will see the Jayhawks’ men’s and women’s basketball teams face off against Houston in Mexico City in December 2024. It’ll be one of many wrinkles in a 2024-25 schedule that for both teams features a vastly expanded Big 12 slate and, for the men, a Champions Classic matchup against Michigan State, a home game against North Carolina and more.
Despite featuring two conference foes, the KU-Houston game will not count toward league standings.
At the time of the announcement, Goff said he felt it presented a “student recruitment opportunity for KU, noting that “We think in particular the sport of basketball resonates at a really high level. There are millions upon millions of basketball fans in that country and in Mexico City proper.”
This is just the start of Yormark’s plans as the Big 12 is looking to get soccer, baseball and, eventually, football (via a bowl game) involved in Mexico as well, but it all begins in 2024.
Kansas’s Lance Leipold and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy meet with each other before an NCAA college football game in Stillwater, Okla., Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023.
Where does KU fit more broadly in the new Big 12?
Generally speaking, with a pair of elite programs Texas and Oklahoma departing the conference at the end of the school year and Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah joining, KU has a chance to establish itself near the top of the hierarchy early on in a variety of sports.
Football coach Lance Leipold, for example, has repeatedly asserted that his team has a chance to be mentioned near the top of the league next season. Volleyball certainly benefits from having Texas out of the picture. And women’s basketball has a chance to fashion itself into a conference contender for the first time in a while, even after losing talent following this year.
Of course, the new schools coming in are anything but pushovers. For example, Arizona and Utah in particular will immediately threaten in football, and who knows what Deion Sanders might be able to pull off with a bit more time at Colorado.
There’s also a chance of yet more expansion to come, although even if the fate of the Pac-12 Conference remains uncertain with just two schools among its membership, conference realignment has settled down somewhat after the frenzy of speculation and eventually activity that dominated the summer.
KU assistant coaches Jim Panagos, left, and Jordan Peterson share a laugh during the Jayhawks’ practice on Friday, Aug. 12, 2022.
Rapid fire
— Can KU football keep its staff together? Andy Kotelnicki was the first significant departure for Leipold’s staff after it had preserved all of its position coaches (highly abnormally) between 2022 and 2023. Leipold himself seems secure in Lawrence despite repeatedly getting mentioned for jobs throughout the Midwest, but what about highly touted assistants like Jordan Peterson? He received a recent promotion to co-defensive coordinator, but his on-field (coaching two of the best corners in the conference) and off-field (recruiting a staggering number of players in wide-ranging areas for the 2024 class) contributions have to have put him in conversations at other schools.
Janson Reeder is pictured May 24, 2023 in first round action against Texas in the Big 12 tournament.
— What do the diamond sports do next? Both Dan Fitzgerald and Jennifer McFalls’ squads had memorable conference tournament victories. Baseball beat Texas and softball beat Oklahoma State. With plenty of new talent coming in, what can these teams do as an encore?
— What does it actually look like for Bill Self to “go for the throat” in recruiting? He acknowledged, after saying that was his plan, that it’s hard to say KU didn’t go for the throat when it ended up winning a national championship. But with the Independent Accountability Resolution Process in the rear-view mirror, to what extent can the Jayhawks actually snag the top players in the nation, and how different will it look from before?
— Can KU volleyball host again? Ray Bechard pointed out after his team’s heartbreaking loss to Penn State in the second round that 11 years earlier, the Jayhawks had met a similar fate, but they came back in 2013, hosted again and made it to the Sweet 16. Next year’s volleyball team should have enough returning talent to do so, as most of its prominent players in 2023 were juniors (or in some cases younger).
Kansas’ Raegan Burns (3) digs a low ball at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, against Baylor.
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Kansas Athletics
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