Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Predictions: Texas Longhorns

It's the final week of the season, and the Kansas Jayhawks are in Austin tonight to take on the Texas Longhorns. A win here would go a long way towards ensuring a top 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. Can they pull it off? Our crew gets together to tell you what to expect.

Disagree with anything you see here? Leave your own prediction in the comments below!

David: Texas is a quality team, but looking at their profile, a couple of things jumped out at me. They’ve lost their last five games against KenPom’s top 40. They haven’t had a good win since a two point victory over West Virginia back on January 9th. And in the process of blowing a huge lead on Saturday, they had a fight between players on the sideline. I’m not a huge believer in just looking at a team’s recent play to form an opinion, but there are some signs that this team might be falling apart a bit. I’m worried about how we’ll score points on them, but I think we’re capable of winning this game, as long as Texas doesn’t catch fire from three. Kansas 68, Texas 65

Kyle_Davis21: To David’s point, Texas is struggling both internally and against opponents recently, which means Kansas might be catching the Longhorns at a good time. The other consideration is that Big 12 teams rarely beat Bill Self twice in the regular season, and Self is especially great at finding what went wrong in the first matchup and make changes the second time around (there are tons of great examples but look no further than against Baylor last year). Given that the Jayhawks seem confident and locked in on defense, and that they will likely be motivated to avenge that blowout in AFH, I’ll take KU in a close one. Kansas 72, Texas 70

Fizzle406: We are on a roll baby! We are never losing again! Kansas 77, Texas 70

Mike.Plank: I tell ya, I did not expect to come into this thread and see a lot of optimism, but, here we are. Yes, Texas won the first matchup by 25 points, but as fetch noted in his preview, if both teams shoot their season average, that’s a four-point game. Maybe Texas is a bad matchup due to their length or whatnot, but, let’s give Kansas the benefit of the doubt plus, the Jayhawks have the #Motivation of revenge. Kansas 75, Texas 70.

dnoll5: I’ve been wrong recently, so let’s not break the trend. Reverse jinx is in the house. Kansas isn’t that good despite winning games and Texas dominated KU last time. I’ll go with another UT win. Texas 80, Kansas 68.

Brendan: This is obviously a much different KU group than the first, embarrassing meeting between these two earlier this season. I’m going to be optimistic and contort the stats to fit my narrative. Texas shot lights out earlier this year while KU shot it well below expectation. I’m expecting a reversal of fortunes this time and a narrow Jayhawks win. Kansas 78, Texas 76.

Andy Mitts: To Brendan’s point, Kansas shot abysmally in that game, while Texas had arguably one of the best shooting performances of the season in all of college basketball. I don’t expect that to continue, and it’s not like Kansas played terrible defense last time. This is a much tougher Kansas team, so the only result I would be surprised by is another Texas blowout victory. Ultimately, I think Kansas is on the upswing while Texas is fading like they usually have under Shaka. Kansas 75, Texas 72.