Kansas head coach Bill Self huddles up his players during a break in action against Baylor during the first half on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
After a turbulent conclusion to its season, the Kansas men’s basketball team has learned its opponent for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
KU, which earned a No. 4 seed, will face No. 13 Samford at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center on Thursday at 8:55 p.m. Central Time. The game will be televised on TBS.
“Everybody’s going to say they have a hard draw, I think we got a hard draw,” KU coach Bill Self said Sunday after the announcement. “When you think of Samford — what have we labored with the most this year? It’s teams that shoot a ton of 3s and then we have a hard time making up the difference.”
If KU wins, it will face the winner of No. 5 Gonzaga’s matchup against No. 12 McNeese two days later.
The Jayhawks are in the Midwest Region, meaning that if they advance past those first two games they will play Sweet 16 and potentially Elite Eight games in Detroit.
Self said he thinks the team has the capacity to go on a run.
“I think a chance to reset and get focused and a chance to get more healthy, I think, will go a long ways for how we play moving forward,” he added. “Certainly we didn’t put ourselves in the best position but there’s a lot of teams out there that would love to be in the position we’re in.”
KU previously played in Salt Lake City in 2018-19, when it breezed past Northeastern in its opening game but lost to Auburn as the Tigers went all the way to the Final Four. Self said he remembered the “fantastic arena” and didn’t recall the Utah altitude being a factor.
The Jayhawks lost their first game in the Big 12 Conference tournament to Cincinnati on Wednesday as their record dropped to 22-10 on the season. They will be a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in the Self era and the first since that 2018-19 run; the others were much earlier in his tenure.
Samford, which won both its conference’s regular-season and tournament crowns, is 29-5 on the year. The Bulldogs are back playing in March Madness for the third time in their history after 1999 and 2000.
KU is hoping to get the injured Kevin McCullar Jr. (knee bruise) and Hunter Dickinson (dislocated shoulder) back at full strength to begin its tournament run. On Sunday, Self said Dickinson had been practicing in a “no-contact” fashion — “We’ve done a lot of dry stuff so that way he can be out there, and then he’ll go contact (Monday)” — and that he hadn’t seen McCullar do anything yet but the goal was to get him back Monday, and if not then, Tuesday.
“I’ve never had two All-Americans both be out at the same time, but I know that we should be much better this week than what we have been,” Self said.
Women’s team to face Wolverines
KU women’s basketball rode a late-season surge to a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will face No. 9 Michigan in Los Angeles in the first round of the tournament.
“I think our nonconference strength of schedule was 19, our overall strength of schedule, I believe, was nine,” head coach Brandon Schneider said. “(We) won 11 big 12 games prior to the conference tournament. We all felt like we had challenged ourselves enough and won enough to be included.”
The Jayhawks are part of the Portland 3 region, but their first two rounds will be hosted by No. 1 USC at the Galen Center. If KU is able to defeat Michigan, it would face the winner of USC’s game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the second round.
Michigan went 20-13 on the season, 9-9 in Big Ten Conference play, and beat Minnesota and upset Indiana in the Big Ten tournament before losing 95-68 to Caitlin Clark’s Iowa.
The Wolverines are in their sixth straight year making the NCAA Tournament.
“I know they’re an exceptional program that has been (a) very, very consistent tournament participant,” Schneider said Sunday shortly after hearing the news, “but haven’t had the opportunity to obviously dive into them yet.”
KU missed the NCAA Tournament last season but won the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.
“Last year was devastating because I think all indications were that we were going to get in,” Schneider said of the 2023 edition of Selection Sunday, “so it was really shocking and tough to be snubbed. Thought we handled it the right way, though, and obviously this year, I think we were much more comfortable and it was more just an anticipation of who might our opponent be and where might we be going to play the game.”
In 2022, KU made the tournament as a No. 8 seed, beat Georgia Tech in the first round but lost to top-seeded Stanford. Schneider noted that his team retains three starters from that roster whose experience will be “really beneficial.”
Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-WorldKansas guard S’Mya Nichols celebrates with center Taiyanna Jackson after a timeout was called against Kansas State Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024, in Allen Fieldhouse.
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KU men will face Samford in Salt Lake City to open NCAA Tournament; women to take on Michigan
Written By Henry Greenstein
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