No. 23 Kansas is in jeopardy of seeing its 80-week streak of being ranked in the Associated Press poll come to an end after back-to-back road losses to Utah and BYU.
The Jayhawks will get a chance to right the ship Saturday afternoon against Oklahoma State in Lawrence, Kan.
Kansas (17-9, 8-7 Big 12) alternated losses and wins in its previous seven games entering the Utah game last Saturday. But with a chance to end that trend with a victory over the Utes, the Jayhawks followed that with a decisive 91-57 setback at BYU on Tuesday.
The situation is getting rough for Kansas coach Bill Self. And that was evident in his post-game press conference after the loss in Provo, Utah.
“We need to regroup, get away from each other,” he said. “A lot of times teams need to have something happen to pull everybody together that is ‘us against the outside.’ We’re going to have an opportunity to do that for sure.
“A lot of teams go through that. We just haven’t been through that much at all in a long time. All we have is each other, and we’re going to have to be strong for each other and be good teammates and good leaders. We need to look in the mirror — all of us — and say, ‘What can we do to change the momentum?'”
These are uncharted waters for Kansas under Self. The combined 20 losses the last two years are the most in any two-year period in Self’s 22 seasons at the helm. And there are still five games remaining in the regular season, including hosting No. 9 Texas Tech and No. 19 Arizona sandwiched around a trip to No. 5 Houston.
“I thought BYU could beat anybody tonight,” Self said. “They were great. And then we didn’t do anything to make them less than great. A lot of times with teams there needs to be something (to) happen to pull everybody together that is us against the outside. And we’re going to have an opportunity to do that for sure. We haven’t been through it much at all in a long time.”
The Jayhawks need to get things turned around against Self’s alma mater on Friday.
Oklahoma State (13-13, 5-10) has lost seven straight games to Kansas and has not won in Lawrence since 2018. The Cowboys are coming off a 104-95 victory over UCF on Wednesday night in Stillwater, Okla.
Bryce Thompson had a career-high 25 points for Oklahoma State, which posted its biggest point total of the season.
A lot of the credit for the high number of points goes to forcing UCF turnovers. The Cowboys outscored the Knights 20-0 in the first half in points off turnovers. The Cowboys had 82 possessions in the game, a high number even for the pace coach Steve Lutz prefers.
“(That’s) a lot of possessions,” Lutz said after the game. “I have a hard time thinking we can manage 82 possessions night-in and night-out, especially if we are going to play defense the way I would like our program to play defense.”
–Field Level Media
