Who’s Staying and Who’s Leaving Kansas? Roster Decisions Loom for Jayhawks

With the Kansas basketball season officially coming to a close, it is time to look ahead to the offseason for the Jayhawks. If head coach Bill Self does return, he will have to do a much better job piecing together a roster this year after his past few teams have bowed out of the NCAA Tournament in the first weekend.

KU was a senior-heavy group in 2025-26, with Melvin Council Jr., Tre White, Jayden Dawson, and Nginyu Ngala all exhausting their eligibility following the loss to St. John's. However, there are still a number of key players who have big decisions to make in the coming weeks.

Which Jayhawks are staying in Lawrence and which are going to explore the transfer portal or NBA Draft waters? Here are our predictions going into the offseason.

Most Likely Departures: Darryn Peterson, Flory Bidunga

From the moment Darryn Peterson committed to Kansas out of high school, it was well known that he would be a one-and-done at the university. His freshman year, albeit a tumultuous one, will be the only time he spends in Lawrence before making the jump to the NBA.

Flory Bidunga's situation is not as easy to predict. The sophomore center has been brought up in some mock drafts as early as the late first round, but obviously doesn't possess the same next-level potential as Peterson.

There have even been conversations of Bidunga searching for other options in the transfer portal that could offer him a higher NIL dollar figure if the NBA does not work out — he already showed he wasn't afraid to test the portal waters last offseason when he entered it briefly before returning. His decision is not a foregone conclusion like Peterson's, but KU would be wise to assume he is headed elsewhere for the 2026-27 season until proven otherwise.

50/50 Transfer Candidates: Kohl Rosario, Paul Mbiya, Samis Calderon

What do all three of these players have in common? They are freshmen who barely got a chance to showcase themselves this season.

Although Rosario and Mbiya played sparingly in the regular season, especially after nonconference play, both players stepped up in a big way during the team's short-lived March Madness stint. Rosario single-handedly kept the Jayhawks in the game down the stretch against St. John's, making several essential plays to spearhead the comeback attempt that was eventually ended by the walk-off layup.

Seeing both players outperform some of the typical rotation pieces was certainly concerning, as they had essentially been forgotten about in the lineup for several months. It shows that the bench players were not the entire problem, but more so that Self wasn't able to develop them with several months to do so.

Mbiya could be behind 4-star recruit Davion Adkins next year, while Rosario will have to compete for playing time on the wing with signees Trent Perry and Luke Barnett. We couldn't blame either of them for transferring if they wanted to explore opportunities where they could play more, including Calderon, who was called upon rarely with a total of 66 minutes played this year.

Likely Staying Put: Bryson Tiller, Elmarko Jackson, Jamari McDowell

While none of these decisions are 100% set, these are the three players who fans can most likely expect back next season. If more than one of these players departed in the offseason, it would come as quite a big surprise.

Jackson and McDowell have already passed on the transfer portal the past two seasons, as the former took a medical redshirt last year to recover from a torn patellar tendon, while the latter simply sat out the previous campaign to prepare for the one that just ended.

The final month or so of Tiller's season was abysmal, capped off by a goose egg in the points column against St. John's, but the redshirt freshman showed a lot of potential this year, making 31 starts and averaging 7.9 points and 6.1 rebounds. The big man has the skill set of a future NBA player and certainly doesn't seem like someone the program will want to lose just because of a rough stretch in his freshman year.