Colorado will host Kansas on Tuesday, January 20, at the CU Events Center in Boulder for their 167th meeting. The game is scheduled to start at 9:05 p.m. Mountain Time and will be broadcast on ESPN with Jon Sciambi and Fran Fraschilla providing commentary (https://buffs.me/460uzgJ). Fans can also listen to the radio broadcast on KOA 850 AM & 94.1 FM or online via Sirius XM 380 and the SXM App 970 (https://sxm.app.link/SXM970). Live statistics are available at http://statb.us/b/611128.
Colorado enters the matchup with a record of 12-6 overall and a conference mark of 2-3 in Big 12 play. The team returns home after two road losses, falling to Cincinnati (77-68) and West Virginia (72-61). This marks Colorado’s longest losing streak of the season at three games.
Despite recent setbacks, Colorado has already matched its win total from last season’s regular schedule, which ended at 12 wins over 31 games. With one more conference victory, they would equal last year’s total in league play.
Offensively, Colorado leads the Big 12 and ranks among the nation’s top teams in free throw shooting percentage at 77.8 percent. They are also within the top fifty nationally for free throws made per game, assist-to-turnover ratio, and field goal percentage.
The Buffaloes have seen balanced scoring this season. At least four players have scored in double figures in fourteen out of eighteen games so far; five players reached double digits in four contests. Last year, only four such games occurred across thirty-five contests.
Freshman Isaiah Johnson is leading Colorado with an average of 15.8 points per game and made his first career start against West Virginia with twelve points and two assists. He has led the team in scoring eight times this season and stands out nationally among freshmen scorers—third among Power Four Conference bench players—and is ranked seventeenth among all freshmen nationwide for points per game.
Johnson said notable performances include a twenty-one point outing against Texas Tech where he went thirteen-for-thirteen from the free throw line—the fourth-most free throws without a miss in program history since Spencer Dinwiddie achieved fourteen-for-fourteen against Arizona State on February 16, 2013.
Junior Barrington Hargress leads Colorado with eighty-four assists this season while ranking second on the team for steals and field goal percentage (.551). He posted fifteen points and five assists during their loss to West Virginia.
Sophomore Sebastian Rancik holds second place on the team for rebounds (5.4 per game) as well as free throws made (84) and attempted (96), while being third in both scoring average (13.2) and assists (36).
Junior forward Bangot Dak tops Colorado’s rebounding chart at an average of seven-point-three boards per game—good for thirteenth best in the Big Twelve—and averages eleven-point-four points while shooting nearly forty-eight percent from the field.
Freshman Alon Michaeli contributes nine-point-three points off the bench across sixteen appearances this season; he is ninth among Big Twelve freshmen scorers.
Colorado currently sits seventy-seventh in NET rankings through January seventeen; their highest position was thirty-ninth earlier this season.
Kansas comes into Boulder with a thirteen-and-five record overall, three-and-two within conference play, riding a two-game winning streak that includes victories over then No.2 Iowa State by twenty-one points and Baylor by eighteen points. The Jayhawks are averaging seventy-eight points per contest while holding opponents to sixty-seven-point-five—a figure supported by limiting opposing teams to just thirty-eight-point-two percent shooting from the floor, which leads all Big Twelve programs.
Kansas freshman guard Darryn Peterson leads his team with an average of twenty-two-point-two points but has played only nine games due to injury restrictions; he scored twenty-six points against Baylor despite limited minutes recently. Three other Jayhawks—Tre White (14.9), Flory Bidunga (14.2), Melvin Council Jr.(13.2)—are also averaging double-digit scoring numbers this year.
Bidunga anchors Kansas defensively as leader in blocks within both conference standings (2.6 blocks/game)and ranks eighth nationally; offensively he converts sixty-five-and-a-half percent of shot attempts—a rate that places him second-best among Big Twelve players so far this year.
This matchup represents one of college basketball’s most-played rivalries: it will be their one hundred sixty-seventh meeting dating back to January nineteen thirty-one.The series was held annually between nineteen forty-seven through two thousand eleven when both schools shared conference affiliation.Last year,Kansas swept both meetings including a seventy-one-sixty-four win at Boulder.Kansas leads all-time by one hundred twenty-six wins to forty,and holds a forty-one-twenty-seven advantage when playing away at Colorado.
