Kansas Basketball: 2023-24 season preview and outlook for the Jayhawks

Kansas Basketball schedule outlook

The Big 12 was the best conference in the country last year, and that looks to still be the case. In conference, Kansas will have to face a veritable gauntlet, with home-and-homes versus Kansas State, Houston, Baylor, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, plus home games against Texas, Cincinnati, and BYU, and road dates at West Virginia, Iowa State, and Texas Tech.

Despite playing in the rough and tumble Big 12, Kansas still finds ways to play one of the nation’s most difficult non-conference schedules.

The Jayhawks will be tested right out of the gate, as they’ll face Kentucky in the Champions Classic at the United Center in Chicago on November 14th. They’ll then have to navigate an absolutely loaded Maui Invitational field that includes Gonzaga, Purdue, UCLA, Marquette, Tennessee, and Syracuse. It’s hard to imagine the Elite Eight this year being much more stacked than that.

Less than a week after returning from their Hawaiian business trip, the Jayhawks will host defending national champion UConn at Allen Fieldhouse in the Big East-Big 12 Battle, which on paper is one of the top non-conference games of the season.

Kansas will also welcome Missouri to town in the latest edition of the Border War on December 9th, before traveling to Indiana’s Assembly Hall a week later for a battle of the blue bloods. The Jayhawks won decisively at the Phog against the Hoosiers last year, but hitting the road to play in another of college basketball’s most fabled gyms will be a different kind of test.

The fun doesn’t end there, as Kansas will also take on Ivy League power Yale at home on December 22nd before battling Wichita State for Sunflower State bragging rights eight days later in Kansas City.