In early January, before six games in an eight-game stretch against the four teams currently at the top of the Big 12 Conference standings, Kansas women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider said those were the teams the Jayhawks had to beat to have a chance to win the league.
KU lost all six of them, with the only wins in that time coming against sixth-place West Virginia and ninth-place Kansas State.
The Jayhawks (14-7 overall, 4-6 Big 12) were right there in three of those games, falling to No. 24 Texas by just three at home last weekend and to Baylor by four on the road three days earlier. KU also played No. 19 Oklahoma to a six-point game in Norman in mid-January, but lost the three other games to the conference’s top tier by an average of 13.3 points per loss.
Now, with Kansas in a seventh-place tie with Texas Tech in the Big 12 standings, and falling down the seed line into the dreaded 8-9 spot in the latest Bracketology projections, Schneider’s team finds itself entering another, albeit different, gotta-have-it stretch of games.
First up is TCU at 7 p.m. Wednesday night at Allen Fieldhouse.
The Horned Frogs enter that one at 6-16 overall and 0-11 in Big 12 play to date. TCU owns the Big 12’s worst offense, at 60.1 points per game, and the league’s fourth-worst defense, giving up 67.3 points per game. The Frogs are currently the only Big 12 team that has given up more points than it has scored this season.
Kansas, meanwhile, enters with the Big 12’s sixth-best offense (73.6 points per game) and fifth-best defense (62.5 points per game allowed).
TCU has played just two Big 12 opponents to within single digits, losing to Texas Tech by eight and at home to West Virginia by seven, and has taken beatings from the top of the conference by the scores of 64-42 at Baylor, 75-35 at home against Iowa State, 101-78 at Oklahoma and 93-66 at home against the Sooners.
Kansas swept the season series with TCU last season and has won three of the last four matchups between the two programs, which have met 24 times over the years. KU has won two in a row over TCU in Lawrence and the all-time series at Allen Fieldhouse is tied at 5 wins apiece.
Tipoff is slated for 7 p.m. on Big 12 Now via ESPN+.
Chance Parker
