Kansas basketball: Iowa State, winless in conference play, comes to Lawrence as the Jayhawks look to rebound following a road loss.

Kansas basketball will look to rebound from a tough loss earlier this week as they take on the Cyclones who are 0-5 in Big 12 play.

Kansas basketball is back in the friendly confines of Allen Fieldhouse (even though it doesn’t pack the same punch without 16,300) to take on a Steve Prohm coached team who is just 2-7 overall on the season.

Iowa State is looking to end a 3-game losing skid, coming off a blowout 91-64 loss to Texas Tech. Despite being winless in the Big 12, they have already faced four of the top five teams in TTU, Baylor, Texas and West Virginia.

ISU brings key players Solomon Young and Rasir Bolton to town. Young is averaging 12 points and 5.2 rebounds per game, but will have his hands full with David McCormack, especially if McCormack can continue playing at the level he has been. Bolton is their leading scorer, averaging 14.8 points and 4.9 rebounds and assists per game.

Let’s take a look at the key areas of the game for KU below:

Perimeter defense:
KU’s three-point defense will be a spot to watch, as they haven’t defended well from outside the past few games. Looking at our last three games, Oklahoma State and Texas hit 42% and 46% from outside, respectively.

Neither of these teams are particularly stellar three-point shooting teams with their season averages hovering around 33% and 35%.

Similarly, Iowa State has averaged 33% outside shooting. KU must find a way to keep teams off the three-point line and keep sub-par outside shooting teams from exceeding their averages.

Bill Self has recently emphasized the importance of defense, so it will be crucial for the guys to figure out ways to get back to their roots and focus on making the other team play bad.

Starting with and maintaining energy
In their previous game, the Jayhawks came out flat and didn’t really show a lot of fight until their mid-second half run. Falling behind early versus OSU and UT created an insurmountable deficit that proved to be too much to handle.

The way that KU comes out of the locker room will be very telling: are they ready to bounce back from a tough loss or will their struggles continue? Coming out and playing with energy from tipoff will be incredibly important in starting off well and building confidence throughout the game.

Getting Jalen Wilson out of his ‘slump’
Over the past couple games, rotation guard Jalen Wilson has been in a noticeable funk. He had just 4 points (2/7 FG, 0/3 3pt FG) against OSU and an uncharacteristic 7 turnovers against OU (despite his late-game heroics).

It will be crucial to find Wilson for open threes – especially early in the game. It should do wonders for his mental confidence to see a couple early longballs go in and help his team build a solid start.

While ISU doesn’t taut a stellar record, they have managed to find ways to stay competitive in their conference games, hanging tight with both WVU and Texas in 5 and 6 point losses.

Kansas will try to clean up some of their defensive woes and look to play efficient offense as they try to earn another bounce back win.