No. 23 Kansas is in jeopardy of seeing its 80-week streak of being ranked within the Related Press ballot come to an finish after back-to-back highway losses to Utah and BYU.
The Jayhawks will get an opportunity to proper the ship Saturday afternoon towards Oklahoma State in Lawrence, Kan.
Kansas (17-9, 8-7 Massive 12) alternated losses and wins in its earlier seven video games coming into the Utah sport final Saturday. However with an opportunity to finish that pattern with a victory over the Utes, the Jayhawks adopted that with a decisive 91-57 setback at BYU on Tuesday.
The state of affairs is getting tough for Kansas coach Invoice Self. And that was evident in his post-game press convention after the loss in Provo, Utah.
“We have to regroup, get away from one another,” he mentioned. “Plenty of occasions groups have to have one thing occur to drag all people collectively that’s ‘us towards the skin.’ We’ll have a chance to try this for certain.
“Plenty of groups undergo that. We simply have not been by way of that a lot in any respect in a very long time. All we have now is one another, and we’ll should be robust for one another and be good teammates and good leaders. We have to look within the mirror — all of us — and say, ‘What can we do to alter the momentum?'”
These are uncharted waters for Kansas below Self. The mixed 20 losses the final two years are essentially the most in any two-year interval in Self’s 22 seasons on the helm. And there are nonetheless 5 video games remaining within the common season, together with internet hosting No. 9 Texas Tech and No. 19 Arizona sandwiched round a visit to No. 5 Houston.
“I assumed BYU may beat anyone tonight,” Self mentioned. “They have been nice. After which we did not do something to make them lower than nice. Plenty of occasions with groups there must be one thing (to) occur to drag all people collectively that’s us towards the skin. And we’ll have a chance to try this for certain. We have not been by way of it a lot in any respect in a very long time.”
The Jayhawks have to get issues circled towards Self’s alma mater on Friday.
Oklahoma State (13-13, 5-10) has misplaced seven straight video games to Kansas and has not gained in Lawrence since 2018. The Cowboys are coming off a 104-95 victory over UCF on Wednesday evening in Stillwater, Okla.
Bryce Thompson had a career-high 25 factors for Oklahoma State, which posted its largest level whole of the season.
Plenty of the credit score for the excessive variety of factors goes to forcing UCF turnovers. The Cowboys outscored the Knights 20-0 within the first half in factors off turnovers. The Cowboys had 82 possessions within the sport, a excessive quantity even for the tempo coach Steve Lutz prefers.
“(That is) a number of possessions,” Lutz mentioned after the sport. “I’ve a tough time pondering we will handle 82 possessions night-in and night-out, particularly if we’re going to play protection the way in which I would really like our program to play protection.”
–Area Degree Media
