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The Utah men’s basketball team hosts No. 17/20 Kansas this Saturday, Feb. 15, inside the Jon M. Huntsman Center.
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Kansas basketball vs Utah: Scouting report, prediction for Big 12 Conference matchup
LAWRENCE — Kansas basketball has another Big 12 Conference game Saturday on the road against Utah.
The No. 20 Jayhawks (17-7, 8-5 in Big 12) have the chance to earn a second-straight win in Big 12 play. The Utes (13-11, 5-8 in Big 12) are going to try to end a two-game losing streak in league play. Although neither side has played each other yet this season, there’s plenty of film for each coaching staff to use to scout the other.
Before the game, which is scheduled to tip off at 9 p.m. (CT), here are a few things to consider and a prediction:
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Kansas did not play in a midseason tournament this season. So, it didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy a lengthy trip away from home that could help the team bond more-so than a one-game departure. But with this game against Utah comes the start of a two-game road trip that will see the Jayhawks remain away from Lawrence for more than just one matchup — considering there’s a game Tuesday at BYU.
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Kansas basketball coach Bill Self told reporters this week it’s great that the schedule plays out as it does. He acknowledged the potential for this trip to have the same effect as one of those tournaments would have. Time will tell how much that comes to fruition.
Self went as far as to say Utah could be the tallest team Kansas will play this season. So, there’s an understanding that comes with that, that the Jayhawks are going to be undersized in certain defensive situations. But Kansas has overcome such problems in the past, just take the Colorado game as an example — given the Buffaloes had standing height that in Self’s mind didn’t translate to the game as much as it showed up on the roster.
Self highlighted that Utah has a home record in Big 12 play that isn’t far off of what the Jayhawks can boast. He thinks the Utes have adapted fine to their new league. Just as anyone would, he thinks Utah will come away from this season with some areas it’s identified to address ahead of next season to be better prepared.
One could wonder, given how much size Utah has, if Kansas is going to try to play center Hunter Dickinson and forward Flory Bidunga together more. Dickinson is listed at 7-foot-2, and Bidunga 6-9. But while Self acknowledged it’s possible, simply the idea of those two on the court together because of how tall they are isn’t where Self’s head was at.
Self pointed out what he was thinking about is not so much how to guard Utah, but how to score more easily. If the answer was solely about defense, he indicated forward KJ Adams — listed at 6-7 — would be on the court. Self’s considering how to give his team the spacing it will need on offense.
Winning on the road hasn’t always come easy for the Jayhawks during Big 12 play. However, Kansas is starting to identify finally what it will need to do to reclaim its spot as one of the better teams in the nation. This should be a game in which KU shows that realization, and wins 80-65.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
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Bill Self likes how this road trip is scheduled
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What is one thing Kansas will do to combat Utah’s size?
Kansas basketball vs Utah prediction
After rekindling a rivalry with an old conference foe in Tuesday’s victory over Colorado, the Kansas men’s basketball team is now in uncharted territory as it travels to Utah for a five-day continuous swing featuring games against Utah and BYU.
“I think this is great,” KU coach Bill Self said. “We didn’t get a Thanksgiving trip, we didn’t get a trip in November that’s a team bonding trip where you go to Maui or Bahamas or whatever. Well, instead of going to Nassau, we’re going to go to Salt Lake and Provo.”
First up on the docket are the Utes, a new addition to the Big 12 this season, who will welcome the Jayhawks for a late-night game in Salt Lake City at 9 p.m. Central Time on Saturday.
“This’ll be as big a road trip as we’ll have during the conference season, because you got a chance to win two, but you also got a chance to lose two,” Self said on postgame radio after KU beat CU. “But it’s set up for us that if we can play well, that we can hopefully get on a little bit of a run.”
KU is looking to win a second consecutive game for the first time since it took down TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, on Jan. 22, which is also its last road win.
“I’m excited,” forward KJ Adams added Tuesday. “This is my first time ever just staying at a place and going to another place. So that’s going to be fun. You got to stay locked in and these are the two games that really can change your season … Got to focus on that, keep that the main thing, go one at a time.”
It may be the Jayhawks’ first-ever trip to face the University of Utah specifically — KU beat Utah in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1995 and 2014 — but quite a few of them have a very vivid memory of an ill-fated visit to Salt Lake City 11 months ago, when they failed to make it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament with a second-round loss to Gonzaga at the Delta Center.
Saturday’s game will take place at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, where the Utes have earned all but one of their 13 victories this season; they are 1-8 away from home, including most recently a pair of losses at West Virginia last Saturday at Cincinnati on Tuesday.
Utah’s best win this year was a 73-72 overtime result against rival BYU on Jan. 18 in which forward Ezra Ausar scored a season-high 26 points and backup guard Hunter Erickson, who started his career with the Cougars, scored the Utes’ final six points of overtime on a 3-pointer and a series of go-ahead free throws.
The Utes’ shooting this season leaves a lot to be desired. Their overall field-goal percentage since the start of conference play of 42.9% puts them at the middle of the pack, but they are dead last in free-throw percentage and on 3-pointers they shoot just 29.5%, the second-worst mark in the league.
Utah is also forcing just nine opponent turnovers per game since league play began. If that were a season-long mark it would put the Utes among the worst teams in the country; as it is, their season-long 11.08 is a mere 265th nationwide.
They are solid on the boards, with four players averaging at least four rebounds per game even as none posts more than 5.2.
On the whole, they rotate rather heavily, as coach Craig Smith goes as many as 11 deep in most games. The most consistent contributor overall is fifth-year guard Gabe Madsen, who remains the team’s leading scorer even as he has slumped to shooting percentages of 31% overall and 25.6% from deep in league play. (For comparison, last year he made 105 3s on 38.6% shooting, including games with six and seven 3s in the NIT.) Madsen was limited to single digits in six of his first eight Big 12 games; he did score 28 on 26 shots on Tuesday against Cincinnati, a school he once played for.
The defining characteristic of Utah’s lineup is its height. The Utes feature some normal-sized guards coming off the bench, but Madsen is their smallest starter at 6-foot-6. They effectively have a 6-foot-9 point guard in Mike Sharavjamts, a former Dayton and San Francisco player from Mongolia, and play him with forwards Ausar (6-foot-8) and Jake Wahlin (6-foot-10) to go with 7-foot-1 center Lawson Lovering.
It’ll be quite an adjustment for KU, which against Colorado at one point used a lineup that included all of Dajuan Harris Jr. (6-foot-2), David Coit (5-foot-11) and Shakeel Moore (6-foot-1).
“It’ll be probably the tallest team we play this year,” Self said. “… No matter what, Zeke (Mayo) and Juan are going to be 6-1, 6-2, starting every game, so they’re going to have to guard somebody of significant height, without question.”
Generally, the Jayhawks are focused on themselves as they look to reattain the peak-level energy they’ve displayed in their best victories throughout the season. As Self put it, “The thing I would probably say to them as much as anything is, ‘You’ve teased us all. And we’ve all known what your ceiling is. Anything operating under that ceiling is not good enough.’”
“I think it’s about us,” Coit said. “If we come ready to play and come in with the energy and intensity that we have, I don’t really think anybody’s going to give us too much of a problem.”
Utah Utes (13-11, 5-8 Big 12) vs. No. 17 Kansas Jayhawks (16-7, 7-5 Big 12)
• Jon M. Huntsman Center, Salt Lake City, 9 p.m. Central Time
• Broadcast: ESPN
• Radio: Jayhawk Radio Network (in Lawrence, KLWN AM 1320 / K269GB FM 101.7 / KMXN FM 92.9)
Keep an eye out
Keep on shooting: Wing Rylan Griffen, a recent reinsertion into KU’s starting lineup, has not been able to reproduce the results from his breakout showing against Houston on Jan. 25 in which he scored 17 points and made five 3-pointers. In his last five games he’s 9-for-31 (29%) from the field and 4-for-21 (19%) from beyond the arc. As usual, his teammates are urging him to keep firing away all the same. Center Hunter Dickinson said his approach to a slumping teammate is “just get mad at him when he doesn’t shoot it,” adding, “if he were to have a slump I’d rather have it now than in four to five weeks.”
Full 40: As consistency has become a teamwide theme, it’s also come to the forefront for freshman center Flory Bidunga, who had a return to form in some areas against Colorado, but didn’t, as Self put it “stay relevant” all the way through. The Jayhawks need defensive production from Bidunga, the current league leader in blocks per game in conference play (despite getting just 19.9 minutes per game) who is “so athletic he can impact possessions regardless of whether he gets a dunk or gets a lob or shoots the ball.”
Quick hook: Freshman wing Rakease Passmore, who has returned from a brief absence due to a concussion and a case of the flu, is still looking for his first made field goal since Nov. 30 after missing a 3-pointer against Colorado. It was a whirlwind appearance for Passmore, who entered during the second half, took the shot 16 seconds later and then got subbed out for guard Shakeel Moore at the next dead ball 38 seconds after that. Self may continue to give him opportunities when he’s dissatisfied with the play of Griffen or AJ Storr, but those opportunities could continue to be fleeting.
Off-kilter observation
Since Caleb Lohner played against KU in two games for Baylor last season, he has transferred to Utah, caught four touchdowns as a tight end on the football team and then played spot minutes for the Utes’ basketball team after coming aboard in December.
Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off “California vibes,” whatever that means.
