Kansas Jayhawks at Baylor Bears Predictions
In a testament to how deep and interesting the Big 12 is this season, tonight is the first occasion for the Kansas Jayhawks to appear in the highlighted Big Monday time slot. Tonight, they travel to Waco to take on a Baylor Bears team that struggled out of the gate of conference play. However, they have recently turned it on and are once again a formidable opponent.
Can Kansas take advantage of an awful defense to get their offense back on track? Or is the struggling Jayhawk attack the perfect thing to rehabilitate the reputation of a struggling defense? Our crew gets together to give their thoughts.
Do you disagree with our assessment? Make sure you read them all and then hop over to the Discord or on Twitter to share your own thoughts.
Kyle Davis
Check out our Baylor Preview for Kyle's full breakdown and prediction.
Lucas Murphy
The Kansas Jayhawks have now lost back-to-back Big 12 games against a juggernaut of a conference and will now take on the Baylor Bears in a hostile environment in Waco, Texas. The Jayhawks have hit a snag in one of the roughest parts of their schedule, but how they respond and play after these two losses will tell you what kind of team they are. Jalen Wilson has been playing out of his mind, carrying the team the best he can and in back-to-back games Wilson has scored 30+ points. One player I am going to watch in this game is Grady Dick. Dick has struggled from the three-point line as of late and he isn’t driving the basketball getting to the line for free throws. Kansas is going to have to find a way to win this basketball game.
Kansas 84, Baylor 78.
Derek Noll
There’s a big part of me that thinks this trip to Baylor could be a third straight loss, but there’s a sizeable chunk of me that thinks KU will tough this one out and find a way to win. I’m torn. And while being voted the preseason pick to win the league, Baylor has beaten the teams they are supposed to beat, and had some trouble with the teams currently at the top of the conference. Sound familiar, KU fans? I guess I’ll take a rebound win, but just barely.
Kansas 72, TCU 67.
Brendan Dzwierzynski
A win on Monday night and we’re still probably feeling OK about this KU team as the hardest part of the schedule continues, but a third consecutive loss and we’ll probably be entering soul-searching time. I know Bill Self said after Saturday’s loss that the Jayhawks need to guard better, and that’s certainly true, but this team needs a consistent second scoring option in the absolute worst way. At this point, I trust that Jalen Wilson will put up decent numbers (at least), but he needs help. I’ll also trust, maybe blindly, that one of the other four starters will pull through and be that sidekick, because I’m certainly not looking toward the bench to have that impact.
Kansas 77, Baylor 76.
Andy Mitts
I wish I had the same sense of optimism as the rest of these guys. Kansas is in one of the worst slumps I've seen from them in a very long time. I've heard plenty of people saying that this is similar to the slump last season and that you shouldn't worry about this team yet, but the big difference between this loss and the Kentucky loss last year was athleticism. The Jayhawks were punched in the mouth by a team that was better than them, and they rebounded and learned from it in time to make a huge run.
The problems that Kansas has right now are not related to a single player who has a habit of not hitting his potential until late in the season (sorry McCormack). Instead, it's a team that has come back to the pack a bit and doesn't have a reliable second option after Jalen Wilson. As Jayhawk Talk put it in their reaction podcast to the TCU loss, this feels like a team that is at odds with itself: are they the rhythm team that relies on Dajuan Harris to set up shots and create offense for the rest of the team, or are they the Jalen Wilson show, where he creates for himself and tries to leave enough for other guys to get theirs as well. Until they figure out what is going to work for them, it's hard to think they can keep up with Baylor offensively.
Baylor 82, Kansas 74.
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