Preview: KU will need to regroup in time for UCF rematch

By Henry Greenstein     Jan 27, 2025

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Kansas head coach Bill Self pulls his players together late in regulation against Houston on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Home losses are rare enough at Kansas that prior to Saturday, the Jayhawks hadn’t experienced more than one in a single season since the 2017-18 campaign.

Every other home loss in the six and a half years since has been followed by a road trip. This time, though, the Jayhawks will have an immediate opportunity to redeem themselves in front of the Allen Fieldhouse crowd — which accepted KU coach Bill Self’s challenge to the student section by delivering a raucous environment on Saturday, only for the eventual outcome, a double-overtime loss to Houston, to go against the Jayhawks following an incomprehensible series of late-game miscues.

“We got a hungry UCF team coming in here on Tuesday that is going to try to take advantage of us being down,” center Hunter Dickinson said. “It’s in the past. Can’t focus too much on it because you can’t get it back.”

UCF, as it happens, was also on the receiving end of an angry KU team on Jan. 5 after the Jayhawks had taken another last-second defeat at Allen Fieldhouse at the hands of West Virginia. It didn’t turn out well then for the Knights, who suffered the worst home loss by margin for any team in Big 12 history as the Jayhawks trounced them 99-48.

Now they have to make their first-ever trip to Lawrence and take on KU at 7 p.m. The Knights, of all teams, are the first opponent the Jayhawks play twice this season; they will later rematch Iowa State, Kansas State and Houston and face Colorado two times in two weeks.

The Jayhawks aren’t the only team this month to give away a victory against Houston in the final seconds at home. Albeit in much less inexplicable fashion, UCF did the same, as Keyshawn Hall put the Knights ahead with nine seconds left only for J’Wan Roberts to score a game-winning layup.

As going toe to toe with the Cougars would indicate, UCF has played a bit better since getting demolished by KU at the start of January. Most notably, the Knights beat Arizona State on the road and then recently routed TCU 85-58 on Saturday with Hall racking up 26 points.

The wing from Cleveland, who shot 4-for-17 in UCF’s first matchup against KU, has been one of the Big 12’s top scorers since conference play began. He has averaged 19.9 points per game, which is second in the league behind Iowa State’s Curtis Jones, as his teammates and fellow high-scoring guards Jordan Ivy-Curry and Darius Johnson have seen their scoring decline somewhat.

The Knights’ defense, meanwhile, has been quite deficient and is giving up 83.5 points per game in conference play, which is more than five points worse than the next closest team (Colorado). KU’s 99-point effort plays a role in that, but it’s part of an eight-game sample at this point that also includes 88 given up to Arizona, 89 to Arizona State and 108 to ISU.

On the other hand, 58 points, a 35.9% shooting effort and 1-for-20 performance beyond the arc by TCU suggest the Knights might be trending in the right direction on that side of the ball.

No. 11 Kansas Jayhawks (14-5, 5-3 Big 12) vs. UCF Knights (13-6, 4-4 Big 12)

• Allen Fieldhouse, Lawrence, 7 p.m.

Broadcast: ESPN+

Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network (in Lawrence, KLWN AM 1320 / K269GB FM 101.7 / KMXN FM 92.9)

Keep an eye out

Hard guard: Defensive matchups will be worth watching on Tuesday, as KU’s approach has inevitably shifted somewhat in the past three weeks. For one thing, the Jayhawks put KJ Adams on Hall in the first game, something that will not be possible this time as he continues to deal with a separated shoulder. In addition, KU’s game with UCF on Jan. 5 was the first start of the season for guard Shakeel Moore, who held Johnson to three points, in turn freeing up point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. to limit Ivy-Curry to five. But Moore fell out of favor quite a bit down the stretch on Saturday. Self subbed him out with just under 15 minutes left in the second half following a turnover. He only played five seconds for the remainder of the double-overtime game, in part because Rylan Griffen ended up hitting five 3-pointers, scoring 17 points in total and grabbing seven rebounds in arguably his best game as a Jayhawk. Given that Self places such a premium on who finishes out games, Moore’s role could be smaller on Tuesday — or it could return to its prior size because of how well he did the first time around against the Knights.

Growth curve: The last time Flory Bidunga faced UCF, he blocked six shots. In the three weeks since, he has grown up incredibly fast. If KU hadn’t surrendered two commanding leads on Saturday, one of the stories of the night would have been Bidunga’s season-best 19-point performance, in which he somehow presented himself as the biggest offensive threat to a veteran Houston front line. He did receive a lot of assistance from Dickinson, whose interplay with Bidunga has recently become one of the Jayhawks’ best offensive qualities, to the point that Self said after the loss, “When Flo or Hunt came out of the game, we had no offense. The ball just stops.”

Wing woes: One of the most perplexing aspects of the ongoing campaign has been the inability of transfer wings Griffen and AJ Storr to play well in the same game. Granted, to some extent one’s minutes comes at the expense of the other. But consider that in Storr’s breakout performance on Wednesday at TCU, Griffen went 1-for-6, and in Griffen’s clutch-shooting clinic on Saturday Storr went 0-for-6 from the field and 0-for-4 from the free-throw line. The inconsistency has been particularly unwelcome in Adams’ absence. With both players averaging just under seven points per game, Griffen and Storr have only both scored in double digits in two games this season: versus Oakland (on Nov. 16) and, most recently, at UCF.

Off-kilter observation

Jaylin Sellers’ return to action was a big storyline when KU went to Orlando, Florida, for the first matchup. Last year’s leading scorer for UCF had been working his way into action following an early-season injury, and the KU game was his first start of the season. Well, he scored four points in 21 minutes and hasn’t played again since. Head coach Johnny Dawkins called him “day to day” earlier in the month and he didn’t warm up prior to the TCU game.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off "California vibes," whatever that means.