The Kansan’s staff picks logo.
The Kansan’s staff picks logo.
Kansas gets one of its most marquee matchups of conference play on Saturday, as the No. 7 Houston Cougars come rolling into Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas won the home leg of the matchup 78-65 last year, but can lightning strike twice in the Phog? Let’s see what the Kansan’s experts have to say.
Trenton Kraxner: This game is where Kansas will sorely miss forward KJ Adams Jr. His energy and hustle in a game like this looms large, as Houston gets after it.
With the team win and balanced attack from the Wednesday win over TCU, I think Kansas is setting itself up nicely ahead of the big time matchup on Saturday.
Kansas is starting to get more from AJ Storr, who just had his best game as a Jayhawk. He needs to keep being locked in on both sides for Kansas to reach its ceiling. Fellow guard Rylan Griffen has also been playing better as of late, although the box score doesn’t show it, he played well against TCU. The Kansas frontcourt really needs to stay out of foul trouble on Saturday against a tough Houston team.
As for the Houston Cougars, they come in the only remaining unbeaten in the conference. They snuck by UCF, before crushing bottom feeder Utah on Wednesday. This is a team that defends and rebounds really well. The Jayhawks have to match that intensity on defensive and not allow the Cougars to grab a ton of offensive boards. This is a balanced, physical Houston team that won’t be an easy win for Kansas.
I think this is a seesaw battle for 40 minutes. At the same time, with how good both of these teams are defensively, I think this is also a low scoring affair. If Kansas’s frontcourt stays out of foul trouble, it will take this one. Allen Fieldhouse, plus a slightly more talented team makes me give round one of these two teams meeting to Kansas by a score of 60-55.
Eli Fitzgerald: Saturday’s game against Houston is going to have serious implications for the Big 12 title and the remainder of Kansas Season. Houston comes into this game winners of its last 11 match-ups landing the Cougars atop the Big 12 standings at 7-0. This game has a similar storyline to when these two juggernauts met in Allen Fieldhouse on Feb. 3, 2024. Kansas struggling to find identity, and Houston surging. With that said, we all know how that meeting ended for Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars; a 78-65 victory for the Jayhawks.
Houston’s only losses this season are at the hands of Auburn and Alabama, both top 5 teams in last week’s AP Top 25, and an upset against San Diego State. Houston has an incredible resume up to this point and have cruised in Big 12 play.
Kansas on the other hand has run into a few hiccups thus far in Big 12 play. A loss at home to West Virginia and a disappointing road trip to Ames Iowa, makes this game even more important. This game will be big for the Jayhawks to determine what their identity will be.
During the first half of the TCU game on Wednesday night, it appeared that Kansas was going to drop another Big 12 road matchup. That is until Flory Bidguna and AJ Storr showed a glimpse of the players that Coach Self recruited and praised so highly. Bidunga recorded his first double-double and AJ Storr had 12 points and three key steals helping Kansas dig itself out of a 14-point deficit. Storr and Bidunga are going to come into this game against Houston with confidence and poise. With senior leader KJ Adams Jr. out with a shoulder injury, Bidunga is going to step up and keep Houston off the glass. His long-awaited breakout game is happening this weekend.
To win this game, Kansas will need to rebound and shut down Houston senior guard L.J. Cryer. Houston plays are exceptionally hard and all five players crash the boards and take pride in their defense. Kansas is also going to shoot well and get buckets in transition. The Cougars defense when set just doesn’t up easy buckets and they are disruptive on both ends of the floor.
Houston has everything going for it right now. This team is physical on the boards and shuts down opposing offensive weapons. In its most recent game, Houston held Utah to only 36 points! So, with Kansas having a few issues with identity combined with Houston’s fantastic defense, the No. 7 Cougars should waltz into Allen Fieldhouse on Saturday and take Kansas apart, right?
Wrong. Kansas has already lost a game in the mecca of College Basketball this season and I don’t foresee it happening again. The Jayhawks haven’t lost more than one game in Allen Fieldhouse since the 2017-2018 campaign. With the students back in full force and Bill Self’s offense starting to gel, I think Kansas will pick up a huge win at home and hand Houston its first conference loss.
Houston, we have a problem! Kansas 65, Houston 61.
James Madden: Although a newfound rivalry between two historic programs, all eyes turn to either Allen Fieldhouse or the Fertitta Center when these two teams meet. Both head coaches pride their teams on defensive versatility and toughness and I expect to see much of that on Saturday. After some early season doubt amongst numerous Kansas fans, the Jayhawks have won five of their last six, with their lone loss coming against the No. 3 Iowa State Cyclones.
It feels misleading to label Houston as underrated, since it does enter Saturday’s matchup at 15-3 and 7-0 in the Big 12 but not enough people around college basketball are talking about how good head coach Kelvin Sampson’s squad is. With Kansas’s offense suffering from inconsistency for the majority of its first 18 games matched up with one of America’s most lethal defenses, the Jayhawks will need their best defensive performance of the season to take care of the Cougars.
Without one of its best rebounders and energy guys in KJ Adams Jr, the big men in Hunter Dickinson and Flory Bidunga will have their hands full with a Houston team that averages 38 rebounds per game.
With talent up and down both rosters, one matchup sticks out to me like a sore thumb: Hunter Dickinson and J’Wan Roberts. Roberts has scored 20+ points in two of his last three games, including 22 points against West Virginia, who won at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 31, 2024. J’Wan Roberts will be the best big man Kansas has faced since facing Ryan Kalkbrenner in the Dec. 4 loss at Creighton
Kansas’s guards, outside of Zeke Mayo, have been very inconsistent throughout the first two months of the season, while Houston’s guards have been the exact opposite. LJ Cryer, Emanuel Sharp and Milos Uzan have formed a formidable backcourt that may be the best in the conference. Going up against a talented, but very streaky backcourt at Kansas, it could turn into a long night for the Jayhawks very quickly.
With all the major storylines, including the Cougars searching for their first win at Allen Fieldhouse since 1967, I think Houston’s toughness in the paint and stellar guard play led by LJ Cryer and Emanuel Sharp will be too much for the Jayhawks.
This game will come down to the last few possessions but Houston will leave Lawrence with its first win here since 1967.
Houston wins 63-59.
Jacob Webb: If Kansas wants to win at least a share of the Big 12 regular season title, then Saturday’s clash with Houston is in all likelihood a must-win game.
The Jayhawks were getting production from all over the place during Wednesday’s comeback win at TCU. Five players finished in double figures on the night for the Jayhawks, and Flory Bidunga and AJ Storr were especially impressive. Saturday’s game against Houston is one that KJ Adams Jr. would thrive in. With Adams still out due to a shoulder injury, I think AJ Storr is the guy to fill his role. If Storr can repeat his performance from Wednesday, I really like Kansas’s chances to leave with a win.
An interesting matchup to watch on Saturday will be the battle of the two veteran point guards. Kansas’s Dajuan Harris and Houston’s LJ Cryer are each in their fifth and final seasons, all of which have been spent in the Big 12. Houston pretty much made Harris a nonfactor in both of their meetings last year, while Cryer had 24 points in last year’s visit to Allen Fieldhouse and leads the Cougars in scoring this year.
Houston sits atop the Big 12 and outside of a scare last week at UCF, has cruised to a 7-0 start in conference play. The last time they lost a Big 12 regular season game? Feb. 3 of last year when they paid a visit to Allen Fieldhouse. The Cougars very well may be the best defensive team in the country and appear to be playing their best basketball ahead of Saturday’s showdown.
If you go based upon the eye test, Houston wins the game. If you go based upon the metrics, Houston wins the game. With that being said, I’m still not picking against Kansas in a game that’s being played at Allen Fieldhouse.
Kansas wins 66-63.
Avery Hamel: While I don’t think this team is on any sort of path, currently, toward a Big 12 regular-season championship, if the Jayhawks want to keep this dream even remotely within reach, Saturday’s heavyweight bout with No. 7 Houston is a must-win game. The Cougars currently sit atop the conference standings with a 7-0 record and a 15-3 record overall. With two of its losses coming against top-5 teams in Auburn and Alabama, this Houston team has proven that they can hang with the best of the best on a game-by-game basis.
On the other hand, Kansas has not posited such a convincing case. It started the year with two impressive wins after slow starts over Michigan State and then No. 11 Duke, but since then have fallen completely flat in big matchups. A 13-point loss to Creighton on the road, an embarrassment of a contest on the road against border rival Missouri, and a nearly 20-point loss against No. 2 Iowa State on the road. The only good thing about all of these losses is that they’ve come on the road, and, as we saw with this team last year, road trips are something that Kansas really can’t handle even against its average opponents.
But still, it’s hard to overlook the disaster of a one-point loss to an impressive West Virginia team at home on New Years Eve, when Kansas came back but fell apart in the last minutes of a winnable game. And even harder to overlook is Houston’s absolute dominance on the defensive end. Even Bill Self said in media availability on Friday that he thinks Kansas’s defense is worse than what the metrics show it to be. Still, the Jayhawks have posted a good collective defensive performance across the season, but even as the second-best defensive team in the conference, they will face a big challenge to overcome when they meet this strong Houston defense.
AJ Storr’s performance on the road against TCU after a collective rough start was as impressive as we’ve seen from the transfer this year, and Dajuan Harris Jr. and Zeke Mayo showed their potential in great games against Kansas State last weekend. But these performances weren’t against the best defense in the country. Especially with KJ Adams Jr.’s absence as both a disrupter and coverage man on defense, I don’t think anything besides out-defending the Cougars is enough to win this game for Kansas, even in front of a, hopefully, rowdy Allen Fieldhouse crowd. The two teams’ points averages are close enough (76.3 versus Houston’s 75.8) for Kansas to grab an advantage with an efficient scoring game, but the Cougars’ points allowed per game is almost 10 points better than Jayhawks’ mark, which is a discrepancy they cannot easily make up against one of the best teams in the country.
Houston wins 67-60.
120 Years of Kansas Basketball
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It’s the coliseum that is home to Kansas basketball’s 13-straight titles, Coach, Player and Freshman of the Year. Video by Brandon Cotter/KANSAN
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