Kansas basketball: Ranking the five most crucial non-conference games of 2020

3. Kansas vs. Kentucky, November 10

To open up the 2020-21 season, the Kansas Jayhawks will take on the Kentucky Wildcats at the United Center in Chicago. Kentucky will be a really good team next year, and they’re currently ranked No. 15 in ESPN‘s way-too-early top 25 for next season.

While this will be a really fun way to start off the season, the game itself won’t be massively important by the time Selection Sunday rolls around, even though it’ll be between two top 15 teams.

Since it’s both squad’s first game of the season it’ll probably be pretty sloppy and not a very accurate representation of how a team will look later on. If you need any evidence of that, just look at when the Jayhawks played Duke to begin last year’s season.

Kansas got beat by the Blue Devils 66-68 and the Jayhawks totaled a whopping 28 turnovers. Obviously, the game wasn’t an accurate representation of the team by the end of the month, let alone March.

Still, the game against Kentucky is important. It will have some weight at the end of the year, just not as much as the rankings would indicate. Plus, who doesn’t love beating a fellow blue blood program?