Brown @ Kansas preview
Allen Fieldhouse
Slumps are defined differently at Kansas.
The No. 8 Jayhawks return to Allen Fieldhouse Sunday afternoon to take on Brown, likely with a goal of emerging from a rare funk.
Kansas (8-2) lost back-to-back road games -- 76-63 at Creighton and 76-67 at Missouri -- both of which resulted in the home crowd storming the court, before posting a sluggish 75-60 home victory over North Carolina State last Saturday. The Jayhawks raced out to a 15-0 lead in that game but never extended their advantage beyond 17 points.
Kansas fans may not have witnessed the dominant win they expected, but they were treated to stellar efforts from Zeke Mayo and Hunter Dickinson. Mayo had a season-high 26 points and Dickinson had a double-double with 21 points and 14 rebounds. For their efforts, Dickinson was named the Big 12 Player of the Week, while Mayo was the co-Big 12 Newcomer of the Week.
After a week off for finals, the Jayhawks appear ready to resume their dominance against Brown. Kansas's largest margin of victory in school history was a 115-45 victory over the Bears in 1989.
"It's nice to go into Christmas with people feeling good about everything," Kansas head coach Bill Self said Thursday. "There's no guarantee that's going to happen for us. We still have to perform on Sunday against a good Brown team.
"We used to try to play every game before Christmas on the road, because that was the only way you could pay for the kids' trip home. The return trip could be used to send them home. The rules are so different with NIL and the different things the schools are allowed to do that are more student-athlete friendly."
But Self is not "checking out" early.
"They've won six in a row, and they beat Rhode Island, who is off to a great start," he said. "Coach (Mike Martin) has been there, not as long as I've been here, but for a long time. So they have a good system in place. I don't know where they were predicted in the conference preseason poll, but they'll be a team that competes for a championship."
The Bears' current six-game win streak has propelled them to 7-3. They defeated Rhode Island 84-80 in double overtime in their last game Dec. 10. Brown held Rhode Island to 26 second-half points and 15 points in the two overtimes combined.
Kino Lilly Jr. supplied 23 points and 10 rebounds in the win, while Aaron Cooley scored 19 points. Lilly is the Bears' top scorer (20.2 ppg) and has scored 23 points in three straight games.
But now the focus is on Kansas. For Martin, what matters most is how his team plays, rather than the opponent.
"This team is certainly talented enough to win any game," he said on the Brown Bears Podcast Dec. 13, "But we're not talented enough to just show up and win.
"We want to be the hardest-playing team in the building, the toughest and most resilient team in the building, the most connected team in the building every night. Not to say we're never going to lose again, but we're doing all we can to play the way we want to play.
"It will be daunting to go into Allen (Fieldhouse). But it will be a great opportunity when you think about the history of that program and that building. When you have the team full of competitors that we have, they'll be ready for it."
--Field Level Media