Kansas head coach Bill Self listens during a heartfelt senior speech from Kansas senior forward KJ Adams Jr. following the Jayhawks’ 83-76 win over Arizona on Saturday, March 8, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
Eight of the Kansas men’s basketball team’s projected 13 nonconference games are now public knowledge, after Doug Gottlieb revealed KU will open its season against his Green Bay team on Nov. 3.
That means a projected five are still unknown to the world at large, with the Big 12 returning to 18 conference games next year after an abortive attempt to squeeze 20 into the schedule.
Trying to predict when and what the remaining games could possibly be would absolutely be a fool’s errand. To say nothing of the fact that they could line up on any number of days, there are hundreds of college basketball teams and numerous potential permutations of who could play the Jayhawks when in which locations.
And yet … as someone obsessed with and immersed in the minutiae of college sports, especially the logistics involved, I feel like I have gotten a pretty good handle on what a Kansas men’s basketball schedule looks like. If I’m not going to replicate exactly what head coach Bill Self, sport administrator Sean Lester, athletic director Travis Goff and anyone else involved in setting up games ultimately produce when the 2025-26 nonconference schedule comes out in the next month or two, I’m at least going to be able to construct something interesting.
That is what I will now do, beginning before the season actually starts.
The preseason
Each of the last two years, KU has gone on the road to face a power-conference opponent in exhibition action before the season begins. I feel certain this road exhibition will become a fixture of the schedule going forward.
For one thing it’s useful from an on-court perspective for KU’s players to get exposed to a packed, hostile environment — which an opposing venue will almost always be when the Jayhawks come to town — but at this point that pales in comparison to the game’s off-court utility.
Self frequently stated before and after the Jayhawks went to Arkansas last year that his willingness to continue to schedule these sorts of exhibitions would depend on whether they could be used to raise money for what was previously known broadly as NIL and will soon be more commonly referred to as revenue sharing (even though NIL will still exist as a concept). Well, in January the NCAA changed its rules for exhibitions so that teams can now play two, potentially both against Division I teams, without having to undergo a waiver process for approval and without necessarily having to donate the proceeds to charity.
I still foresee KU maintaining its second exhibition, a home tuneup against a Division II team, both for the revenue of another home contest at Allen Fieldhouse and for a balance in competition levels before the Jayhawks begin their schedule in earnest. But I definitely think the Jayhawks will take advantage of the possibility of a marquee exhibition matchup for revenue-sharing purposes.
If the last two years, at Illinois and at Arkansas, are any indication, KU will likely choose a regional opponent in a power conference, potentially one that has a head coach with whom Self has a longstanding relationship (as he does with Brad Underwood and John Calipari). It’s a little farther afield, but for the sake of this exercise let’s go with Ole Miss. Self and Chris Beard have known each other for decades and Ole Miss’ program has generally been pretty advanced in the NIL and fundraising fields in recent years. (The prospect of an AJ Storr revenge game would also be entertaining.)
As for the date, that is a bit more difficult to predict. Last year KU decided to take on Arkansas the night before the football team played its Sunflower Showdown in Manhattan. This year, though, the KU volleyball team is playing against Kansas State in Allen Fieldhouse for the first time in a dozen years on Oct. 24, the night before football faces the Wildcats at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
With that in mind, let’s go for something a bit closer to the 2023-24 season: KU traveling to Ole Miss for an exhibition on a Sunday, in this case Oct. 25, and then playing its home MIAA exhibition that next Wednesday, Oct. 28, with plenty of time to spare before its season opener on Monday, Nov. 3.
It’s not hard to figure out whom the Jayhawks might be facing out of the MIAA. Beginning with the 2020-21 season, KU has rotated between four in-state schools, one per year. That rotation went through Washburn, Emporia State, Pitt State, Fort Hays State and most recently Washburn again. The Hornets of Emporia State are a likely choice for our Oct. 28 date.
Now we move on to the regular season.
The lay of the land in November
As we get there, let’s first note that KU has a total of 13 nonconference games on tap for this year now that the Big 12 is back to playing 18 league games following an ill-fated attempt to fit 20 into its schedule last year. We already know eight of these games: Nov. 3 vs. Green Bay, Nov. 14 at North Carolina, Nov. 18 vs. Duke at Madison Square Garden, three games in the Players Era tournament during Thanksgiving week, an early December date with Missouri at the T-Mobile Center and Dec. 13 at N.C. State (per Jon Rothstein).
Our primary goal in this exercise is to fill out the remaining five games. Our secondary goal, reserved for a second part of this column, is to make some guesses about Players Era opponents and a Missouri date.
As you may have noticed, the Champions Classic is unusually late. It was KU’s second game of the year each of the first seven seasons the Jayhawks participated, then their first the next two years, then their third in the COVID-affected season. It was back to the first in 2021-22, before taking its place as the third game of the year each of the last three seasons.
This year, the Champions Classic is not until Tuesday, Nov. 18. That means the Jayhawks will have the opportunity to cram in four games before facing the Blue Devils. We already have Nov. 3 and Nov. 14 reserved.
The men’s basketball brass did not necessarily have any qualms about placing home basketball games on the same nights as road football games (Nov. 16 and 30 last year), so the fact that Lance Leipold’s bunch plays in Arizona on Nov. 8 might not have much impact. But for the sake of courtesy let’s place one game on Friday, Nov. 7 and the next on Tuesday, Nov. 11, simply because KU doesn’t play a lot on Mondays outside of its season opener.
It’s pretty clear these both need to be home games because KU does not have any known home games on the schedule outside of Green Bay.
The question is whether these both should be buy games at Allen Fieldhouse, like Green Bay, or if one of them should feature a yet-unannounced marquee opponent.
UConn or UConn’t?
UConn head coach Dan Hurley previously said in December that he was in talks with KU on a home-and-home series. But there was no UConn deal in a Kansas Open Records Act request for 2025-26 game contracts fulfilled shortly after the end of last season. And considering the Jayhawks last played the Huskies in Allen Fieldhouse in December 2023 as part of the now-defunct Big East-Big 12 Battle, it would make more sense for the first installment of any new series to be at Gampel Pavilion. That’s why I think if this series does come to fruition, it wouldn’t be until the 2026-27 campaign.
Still, KU needs to have some kind of marquee home game on the slate to provide sufficient value to its season-ticket holders. They can’t all be buy games. Last year it was UNC, the year before that it was UConn in the now-defunct Big East-Big 12 Battle, the year before that it was Indiana.
If the Jayhawks are looking for a program with some historical weight, how about UCLA? Like Indiana, the Bruins aren’t necessarily in peak shape right now, though they did return to the tournament in March and reached the second round. KU and UCLA haven’t played at each other’s home venues since 2009 and 2010 and at all since the 2015 Maui Invitational. In addition, at a time when experience-based multi-team events (like Maui) are falling by the wayside for some of the nation’s top programs, Los Angeles could be a pleasant destination for the 2026-27 season.
As for the remaining buy game, I expect KU will want to continue the McLendon Classic, in which it honors coaching trailblazer and KU alumnus John McLendon, even if it is no longer doing so for the season opener. Let’s say our Nov. 11 game will fill that role, since the previous ones were on weeknights, and UCLA will be Nov. 7.
KU has previously faced North Carolina Central and Howard, both historically Black universities, in McLendon Classic matchups. Those schools play in the MEAC. But what if KU picked another HBCU that McLendon actually coached at, like he did at North Carolina Central, even if it wasn’t in the same conference? Considering Tennessee State has already played in Lawrence a couple times in the Self era, let’s go with another school with McLendon ties, Hampton University. The Pirates went 17-16 overall and 8-10 in the CAA last year.
After UNC on Nov. 14, there is a weeklong gap between the Champions Classic on Nov. 18 and the expected start of the Players Era on Nov. 25. With just three games left to add and the entire month of December still ahead, we won’t deploy one here.
Our speculative schedule so far:
Sunday, Oct. 25: KU at Ole Miss (exh.)
Wednesday, Oct. 28: KU vs. Emporia State (exh.)
Monday, Nov. 3: KU vs. Green Bay
Friday, Nov. 7: KU vs. UCLA
Tuesday, Nov. 11: KU vs. Hampton
Friday, Nov. 14: KU at North Carolina
Tuesday, Nov. 18: KU vs. Duke at Madison Square Garden
This task will resume in the second part of this article as we attempt to project what the second half of the nonconference slate would look like, beginning with the Players Era during Thanksgiving week.
PREV POST
KU run-ruled by TCU in unceremonious end to Big 12 tournament run
NEXT POST
An informed but ultimately speculative attempt to guess the KU men’s basketball schedule: Part 1
Written By Henry Greenstein
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
