It’s no secret that the Kansas women’s basketball team fervently hopes to return to the NCAA Tournament.
“I mean, that’s always the main goal,” junior forward Regan Williams said.
If the Jayhawks are to make it back into March Madness after a two-year absence, it will certainly have a lot to do with their performance during the recently unveiled Big 12 Conference slate. But the way their nonconference schedule is constructed will also provide plenty of opportunities for KU to build a strong resume before the calendar even flips to 2027.
After a few early buy games, the Jayhawks face Nebraska in the MarketBeat Invitational in South Dakota, travel to battle Minnesota at The Barn and meet South Dakota State at the T-Mobile Center. All three of those teams reached the tournament last spring, and Minnesota even hosted as a top-four seed (KU actually beat the Golden Gophers at Allen Fieldhouse last season, even without Jaliya Davis.)
Later on are automatic qualifiers Miami (Ohio) and Missouri State, the fourth and fifth tournament participants out of the 13 nonleague foes. North Dakota State, which is still helmed by former KU assistant Jory Collins, also makes a trip to Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 10.; the Bison won the Summit League in the regular season before falling to SDSU in the conference tournament final.
As KU coach Brandon Schneider points out, his team may well have the sort of composition to make it well suited for what he called a “really, really good” schedule.
“I think you always schedule relative to your roster,” he said. “And I think that with us being able to return six players, that’s not common anymore.”
Sophomore forward Jaliya Davis and senior guard S’Mya Nichols are the headliners among a group of returning players that also includes forwards Tatyonna Brown and Regan Williams and wings Libby Fandel and Brittany Harshaw.
The last time KU reached the tournament, at the conclusion of the 2023-24 season (Nichols’ freshman year), it had a brutal nonconference schedule that included matchups with two top-10 teams in the Cayman Islands Classic.
This one may not quite be on that level, but Schneider believes it can be quite beneficial to his team’s long-term prospects: “I think it sets us up, if we have a good nonconference, to hopefully have the kind of NET that we want going into league play,” Schneider said.
The NET, of course, is the rating system that the women’s basketball committee uses to help make its postseason selections. After its run to the WBIT semifinals, KU finished last year No. 50 in the NET.
THANKSGIVING PLANS
In a climate of widespread expense reduction across many college athletic departments — KU’s included — many high-level college basketball teams are eschewing trips to exotic destinations. In men’s college basketball, for example, the national profile of tournaments like the Maui Invitational and Battle 4 Atlantis has dwindled as more programs seek options like the Players Era (which is closer and cheaper, and also provides NIL opportunities to its participants).
The KU women’s team, though, still has an international trip on its schedule this season. The Jayhawks will face Washington State (Nov. 26) and Miami (Ohio) (Nov. 27) as part of the Cancun Challenge at the Hard Rock Hotel in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
Schneider said one incentive to continue to take part in these sorts of events is the high level of competition they still tend to attract.
“And it is harder now, I think, for administrations to really get behind your international trips because of the expense,” Schneider said, “so we’re going to continue to try to do at least the Thanksgiving tournaments, where we can get good competition and give our players an educational experience, an opportunity to bond and establish maybe some travel habits that will carry over into Big 12 play.”
Offseason foreign tours, by the way, are now allowed every year rather than once every four years. The KU women’s basketball team last embarked on one in 2023.
