Game time: 3pm, ESPN
Today, Texas tries to do what no team has ever done before: win four games in a row, in conference, against Bill Self's Kansas Jayhawks. No team had ever won three in a row against them until Texas did it by sweeping them last season and winning the first game of this year's series at home, 79-76.
Kansas is ranked sixth in the country right now, a two-seed in the national tournament according to both Joe Lunardi and Evan Miyakawa (evanmiya.com). Led on offense by two dynamic scoring guards in Ochai Abgaji (probable Big 12 player of the year) and Christian Braun (probable all Big-12), Kansas has a high-flying offense that averages nearly 79 points per game, 25th in the country in overall scoring and 21st in the nation in offensive efficiency.
Here's Kansas' starting lineup.
Here's Texas' starting lineup.
What Texas needs to do to win today:
• Get to the free-throw line, and convert.
Last matchup, Texas shot 3/20 from the three-point line, but converted 20 of 23 from the stripe, getting to the line at will and making those attempts count. They went 13/15 in the first half, in part thanks to Tre Mitchell's 8/8. They don't have Mitchell today or going forward, so they're going to need to find a new way to get into the paint and get the Kansas bigs in foul trouble, as Lightfoot was simply unable to guard Mitchell in game one.
• Play Agbaji like they did last time.
In Texas' 79-76 victory on February 8th, Ochai Agbaji was held to 11 points on just 4/7 from the field, guarded by Courtney Ramey, who face-guarded him and denied him the ball throughout the game, including on the last possession, where Kansas trailed by one point with a chance to win. If they have any chance of repeating that performance on the road, they're going to have to shut down Abgaji again.
• Score off of turnovers.
Texas scored 24 points off of live-ball turnovers in their last game against Kansas, getting into transition and outscoring Kansas by 15 in this metric. Texas' bench also outscored Kansas, 32-10. They outran the Jayhawks despite Kansas' proclivity for playing high-paced basketball. Whether they can do this again remains to be seen, but if they want a shot at this sweep, they're going to have to.
Prediction:
Kansas 74, Texas 66.
ML: Kansas -285
Spread: Kansas -6.5
O/U: over 137
