The Kansas basketball team suffered a stunning loss in the Big 12 tournament against Cincinnati on Wednesday. The depleted Jayhawks team, who were without Kevin McCullar Jr. and Hunter Dickinson, got blown out by 20 in the first round of the tournament.
Now, they wait to see where they will land on Selection Sunday, and a team that has lost four of its last five games is on the wrong side of momentum heading into the NCAA Tournament. Even though the Kansas basketball team has also sorts of injuries, they got some encouraging news on key reserve Parker Bruan, per Jordan Guskey of The Topeka Capital-Journal.
“It’s getting better day-by-day. So, that’s just kind of all we can really focus on at this point — is day-by-day, and try to take it one day at a time and get one percent better.”
Braun’s stats don’t jump off the page — just 2.2 PPG with 1.6 rebounds in an average of 7.6 minutes per game. However, the Santa Clara transfer is the fill-in for Dickinson when the Jayhawks big man is getting rest, so Braun’s health is key.
As Bruan said, he will be ready to do whatever it takes in his final stretch of college games:
“Whoever needs to step up has to step up, and we obviously can’t take any more losses. Hopefully we can just win six straight, and all of our goals are still ahead of us. So, we’re just going to try to take it one at a time, and when guys get healthy they’re going to be healthy and hopefully we can be at full strength when we need to be.”
Kansas has a concerning seed ahead of them
The Kansas basketball program began the year 13-1 but finished the regular season with a 22-10 record and some bad losses down the stretch. Again, there were plenty of injury concerns for Bill Self’s team, but that’s no excuse.
After being pegged as a potential 1-seed early on in the season, Kansas’ best case might be somewhere around a 4-seed, which is where they were at in the latest ClutchPoints bracketology. For a program with championship aspirations and the winners of the 2022 national title, this could be a rough March Madness run for their fans.
More must-reads: