Kansas fans will have to wait a while for the loudest nights at Allen Fieldhouse.
The Jayhawks’ 2024-25 schedule is loaded with recognizable opponents - Kentucky, UConn, Villanova, Missouri and Ohio State in nonconference play, plus Big 12 heavyweights like Houston, Arizona, Iowa State and Baylor - but most of those showdowns won’t come in the Phog. The two most appealing home dates are actually exhibitions, with Louisville coming to Lawrence on Oct. 25 and Duke following on Nov. 2.
That leaves a schedule that looks strong on paper, but not especially generous to KU’s home crowd. Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio State are all set for neutral sites. The UConn game is still undetermined, though the source of that matchup suggests it will land somewhere the Huskies can claim a home advantage, especially after they played in Allen Fieldhouse last year.
Kansas will also spend part of its season in the Players Era Classic in Las Vegas, where the Jayhawks are guaranteed a game against UNLV. From there, they’ll face either West Virginia or Auburn, then another opponent determined by the bracket: Florida, Houston, Notre Dame or Rutgers.
At home, the conference slate does include West Virginia, Colorado, UCF, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Arizona State. Kansas also has home-and-home series with Kansas State, Iowa State and Baylor. Still, for all the quality packed into the Big 12, the Jayhawks do not get many of the league’s biggest names at Allen Fieldhouse.
The road schedule brings plenty of problems of its own. KU will visit Utah, BYU, Houston and Arizona, all of which figure to be difficult trips. The Jayhawks also go to Cincinnati, which beat them at the Phog last year, and to TCU, where Kansas has not often played well.
One scheduling quirk stands out: Kansas has only two Big Monday games this season, at Houston and at home against Iowa State. That used to be a bigger part of the calendar, with the Jayhawks often landing at least three such games and sometimes four.
With the conference expanded, those slots have been spread around more evenly. Houston and Arizona each have two Big Monday appearances too, and no school has three.
The nonconference home schedule beyond the exhibitions is lighter than the name-brand portion of the calendar might suggest. Fordham, Middle Tennessee, Denver, Northern Iowa, Indiana State and New Orleans all come to the Phog, and while none of those teams should be taken lightly, Kansas is expected to handle all of them at home.
A lot of the flashier nonconference games are built for television and for the money that comes with them. Some schools manage home-and-home arrangements, like KU’s set with UConn and, in recent years, North Carolina. Outside of Villanova, Kansas does not have another such deal on this schedule.
In Other News...
Kansas Suddenly Needs Tate Nagy More Than Ever
Kansas has stumbled out to a 1-2 start, and the early-season hit list has already made depth and playmaking feel like urgent issues. In that kind of stretch, Tate Nagy has become a particularly useful development for the Jayhawks. The sophomore wide receiver and returner has taken a clear step forward, giving the offense and special teams a jolt at a time when the team has needed almost every positive it can find.
Lance Leipold has noticed the difference, pointing to Nagys competitiveness and the way he has shown up even as the rest of the roster has dealt with injuries and uneven results. For a program looking to steady itself quickly, that kind of growth matters beyond the box score. Kansas does not have the luxury of waiting long for more emergence, and Nagy has started to look like one of the few players capable of swinging a game when the Jayhawks need it most. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Kentucky Clash Already Carries More Than Early-Season Hype
Kansas and Kentucky are back on the same stage in Chicago this fall, and the matchup already feels like more than a standard early-season showcase. The Jayhawks will take on the Wildcats at the United Center as part of the 16th annual Champions Classic, with Duke and Michigan State opening the doubleheader earlier in the night. It is the kind of November event that tends to draw attention on name alone, but this one carries an added layer because of how often these programs have been tied together in the national conversation.
For Kansas fans, the setting is familiar but the context is not. This will be the first Champions Classic in history without Bill Self opposite John Calipari, a coaching rivalry that helped define the event for years and gave the matchup an extra edge beyond the rankings and the venue. Calipari is now at Arkansas, leaving a different feel to a meeting that still arrives with plenty of stakes and enough intrigue to make the opener in Chicago worth watching closely. [Read more 🡒]
Kansas Faces A Brutal Big 12 Road Test This Season
Kansas Big 12 road slate is already looking like one of the sharper measuring sticks on the 2025-26 schedule, with a trip-by-trip ranking that leans heavily on current roster outlooks, coaching stability and how each league opponent has looked lately. Utah and TCU sit near the more manageable end of the list, while Kansas State, Cincinnati, Baylor, BYU, Iowa State and Arizona all bring a different kind of problem depending on what kind of form they carry into winter.
The real issue for Kansas is how little margin there figures to be once the games start tilting toward the tougher end of that road chart. Some stops come with established coaches and systems, others with talent that can overwhelm if the Jayhawks are not sharp from the jump, and a couple of those venues have already earned reputations for being hard places to survive. It leaves Kansas with a schedule that may not decide the Big 12 race by itself, but could shape how high the Jayhawks are still flying when March comes into view. [Read more 🡒]