Isn’t this fun? This is the Big 12 Tournament. There’s fans wearing merchandise of every school everywhere you walk in Kansas City. And tonight, the Bearcats get to face a blue blood in Kansas in the Jayhawks backyard. With that, here are my Players to Watch, Keys to the Game and other notes ahead of tonight’s matchup against the 16th-ranked Jayhawks. The game will tip off tonight at approximately 9:30 E.T./8:30 C.T..
What’s Happened with Kansas since January 22nd: Here’s what’s crazy: since beating Cincinnati back in mid-January, the Bearcats are just 6-6. That’s only one game better than the Bearcats in that span. They also have lost three of their last four games. Here’s something even crazier: this is only the second time since the first Big 12 Tournament in 1997 that Kansas will open their Tournament run before the Quarterfinals. Their eight losses are the most in conference play since 1989, Roy Williams’s first season as head coach at Kansas and the year a pop star named Taylor Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania (how many of you knew that’s where she was born?) 🙂 Kansas has stars on their team, but they don’t have a lot of depth. And tonight, they will be without their top two scorers in Kevin McCullar Jr. and Hunter Dickinson. Fans and media sense this is the time for Cincinnati to make a run to potentially get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Tonight will tell us a lot about the direction the Bearcats will take to the postseason.
Players to Watch
1. #24 KJ Adams Jr., 6’7″, 235 lbs., Jr., F, Austin, Texas
12.1 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 59.9 FG%, 0-3 3-PT FG, 61.8 FT%, 96 ast.-53 TO, 18 blk, 38 stl, 33.3 mpg
January 22nd vs. Cincinnati: 11 pts, 3 rebs, 5-8 FG, 1-2 FT, 2 ast., 3 TO, stl, 35 mins
With McCullar Jr. and Dickinson out Wednesday night, Adams will be the leading scorer on the floor for the Jayhawks. He’s an accurate shooter, even though he rarely takes three-point shots. In addition, he is also a solid distributor ranking third on the team with 96 assists, 35 of those in the 12 games the Jayhawks have played since battling the Bearcats in mid-January. Adams Jr. is also third on the team with 38 steals and third on the team averaging 33.3 minutes per game.
