KU Jayhawks are 1 game out of 1st place entering Saturday’s showdown at Iowa St.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kansas (No. 9) visits Iowa State with an eight-game win streak.
- KU sits one game behind Arizona and Houston with seven games left.
- Iowa State is 13-0 at Hilton as No. 9 Kansas heads to Ames.
The Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team, which has won eight consecutive games, finds itself in contention for the Big 12 regular-season title with seven to play.
The No. 9-ranked Jayhawks (19-5, 9-2), who currently reside alone in third place in the league standings — a game behind both Arizona (23-1, 10-1) and Houston (22-2, 10-1) — will travel to Ames, Iowa to take on the No. 5-ranked Iowa State Cyclones at noon Saturday inside Hilton Coliseum in Ames. The game will be shown live on ABC TV.
The Cyclones (21-3, 8-3) currently are tied for fourth in the league standings with Texas Tech (18-6, 8-3) with BYU, UCF and West Virginia all still alive at 6-5.
“I see us being in it without question, but I still think we’ve got to do some damage in order to put ourselves right in the middle of it, because I still think that with one loss Houston and Arizona, they’re still obviously the front runners,” KU coach Bill Self said Thursday.
“Does Arizona go to Houston? I believe they do. That would be interesting,” Self added, referring to a Feb. 21 match between the current league leaders on Feb. 21 in Houston.
“Arizona’s got some hard games but the majority of them are at home if I’m not mistaken,” Self said.
Arizona, which plays Texas Tech on Saturday in Tucson, followed by another home game versus BYU on Wednesday, will travel to Houston on Feb. 21.
KU, which defeated Arizona, 82-78, on Monday will play Houston at home on Feb. 23 and Arizona on Feb. 28 in Tucson.
Self is not counting out Iowa State. When asked if the Cyclones, who fell to KU 84-63 on Jan. 13 at Allen Fieldhouse, are Final Four contenders, the KU coach said: “Yes, absolutely they are. Could they make it? Absolutely. Could they not? Absolutely. There’s so many good teams out there.
“But in my opinion, the job that they’ve done and the players they have, when they’re playing well, they play as well as anybody.”
The Cyclones, who are 13-0 at Hilton Coliseum this season, have defeated the Jayhawks three straight years in the building. KU and ISU are 3-3 over the last six meetings.
“Yeah, well, if I’m not mistaken, they’ve been really good. And we’ve had to be pretty good in order to go 3-3 against them. So it’ll be a hotly competitive game,” Self said.
“It’s No. 5 versus 9 (in AP poll). It’ll be turned up in there. But are we doing different things to pump in noise and that kind of stuff? You know what, we probably could, and it may not be a bad idea. But I’ve never been a big believer in that, maybe as much as some football coaches do, because they do that all the time.”
ISU coach TJ Otzelberger believes Hilton will be rocking Saturday.
“I’m confident Hilton will give us an amazing environment,” he said. “That same fortune at home where our fans show up for us. They have tremendous energy, enthusiasm. There are stretches in every game where that crowd energy, that passion for our team ... (with) our fanbase that really helps push you forward. It helps build momentum.
“It helps you get momentum going when things aren’t going your way. We’re excited for Hilton to be a raucous environment for our fans to show up in an amazing way. Our guys will reflect that same energy of our fanbase with their intentionality and the spirit they play with.”
In the first meeting, then-unranked KU handed ISU, ranked No. 2 at the time, its first loss of the season after 16 victories.
Tre White scored 19 points, while Darryn Peterson scored 16, Melvin Council Jr. 15 points and Flory Bidunga 10 for the Jayhawks who won their eighth straight game versus ISU in the fieldhouse.
Joshua Jefferson had 12 points to lead the Cyclones, but he also had five of ISU’s 12 turnovers. Tamin Lipsey added 10 points on 4-of-15 shooting, while Milan Momcilovic had 11 points and Nate Heise had 10.
Well, there was a period of time where they were playing as well as anybody in the country, and then they had a bad week,” Self said.
ISU followed the loss to KU on Jan. 13 with a 79-70 loss to Cincinnati on Jan. 17 at Cincy.
“And after the bad week, they played as well as anybody in the country,” Self added.
ISU has won five of its last six, the one loss 62-55 to TCU on Tuesday night in Fort Worth, Texas.
“They had a bad game, but yes, they’re terrific,” Self said. “I think their bench has gotten better. Their freshmen Killyan Toure, Dominykas Pleta, Jamarion Batemon,) are good. And obviously, they’ve got three potential All-American type guys (Lipsey, Jefferson, Milan Momcilovic) starting. So they’re good, and we’ll get their best shot.
“We played so well against them the first time, and they didn’t. I’d like to think that we had something to do with that. So we know we’ll see a different team Saturday than what we saw the first time,” Self added.
KU hit 50.8% of its shots in the first meeting to ISU’s 36.9%. The Jayhawks, led by White’s five 3’s in seven tries, went 12-of-24 from 3 to ISU’s 9-of-27.
ISU had just 11 assists (five by Lipsey) on 24 baskets while KU, led by Jamari McDowell (six assists, eight points) had 17 assists on 31 baskets.
Iowa State coach Otzelberger says KU has been playing “at a very high level” in its eight-game win streak.
“Their confidence certainly has grown immensely,” Otzelberger said. “At that point in time (first meeting), they were still kind of trying to lock in on their identity. You can tell that they’re practicing with great spirit, because you could see it in the games. And they were locked in and focused.
“They’ve been able to carry that forward to not lose a game in that stretch. So their confidence is really high. They’ve obviously shown, even when Peterson isn’t out there, how well they can play, how great of a team that they are.
“Council drives everything that they do. He’s got such a great motor and his care factor and how he plays is terrific. You’re going against a program that, over time, has dominated this conference and a coach who is a Hall of Famer. All those things are true, but like they’re they’re playing at a very high level, and we expect them to come in here and be at their best.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 10:13 AM.
