Tonight at 7pm Jayhawk Time, Kansas basketball hosts the Baylor Bears in an unusual Friday night league game. This means KU hoops won’t conflict with any playoff football so I’m good with it. The game is on Fox and Kansas is a 7.5 point favorite.
Baylor has fallen off a bit since winning their national title in 2021. KenPom ranks them 40th while Torvik puts them 48th nationally (Kansas is 13th and 17th). Baylor is actually having an excellent season offensively, but their defense has been KU football-level
bad. They give up a ton of offensive boards, they force very few turnovers (still more than Kansas does, sadly), and their two point defense has been pretty good but nothing special.
Interestingly, given how bad they are on the defensive boards, they crash the offensive glass HARD. They rank 4th nationally in offensive rebounding rate, suggesting Flory Bidunga needs to step up and play bigger tonight than he has been in recent games. They’re also a top 50 three point shooting team, though they don’t typically shoot a ton from behind the arc. They hit a solid 55% of their twos and do a solid job of avoiding turnovers. Given KU’s struggles turning teams over and Baylor’s offensive rebounding, forcing difficult shots will be a big key for the Jayhawks on the defensive end.
Baylor doesn’t have a lot of top-end height, but they have a lot of overall team length. Much-maligned former NBA draft pick James Nnaji obviously gives them real size as a 7-footer, but he’s yet to make much impact for Baylor when he’s been on the court. He’s also yet to play more than 17 minutes in a game.
I feel a little uneasy about this matchup given the way opposing bigs have been eating Bidunga’s lunch lately and how well Baylor steals extra possessions on the offensive glass. At the same time, Allen Fieldhouse will no doubt be rocking with a rare Friday night prime time sports broadcast, and Kansas may have started to figure some things out in their blowout win over Iowa State this week.
Rock Chalk!
