Kansas basketball: Pivotal Big 12 matchups in line for Saturday slate

Kansas basketball

There is nothing better than going to sleep late on Friday and waking up to a loaded slate of Saturday college basketball. As the regular season approaches an end, the Jayhawks have exactly seven days from now until they have reached the plateau of game 31.

The Big 12 race has officially come down to the Texas Longhorns and Kansas Jayhawks. Kansas State did KU a favor on Tuesday by defeating Baylor, meaning they are now 2 games behind the top two seeded schools in the conference. That almost effectively eliminates them from the top spot.

Kansas squares off against West Virginia at 3:00 PM, but there will be other matchups to look out for as well. Texas has its hands full with a road game versus No. 9 Baylor this afternoon, a game that is surely going down to the wire.

Other important games are also taking place, with Oklahoma State hosting the Wildcats and Texas Tech trying to make a last-second tournament push against TCU. But ultimately, winning the final three games is the premiere goal for the Jayhawks, regardless of how Texas finishes its season.

Assuming that Kansas could at least share the Big 12 regular season title with Texas, they will have done so for the 17th time in the past 19 seasons. The program lost its legendary streak of 14 consecutive Big 12 titles in 2018-19, but a new streak could emerge depending on how the remaining games play out.

KU is destined to play either Oklahoma, West Virginia or Texas Tech in the second round of the Big 12 tournament if they capture the No. 1 spot. Depending on how far they go in the tournament, the Jayhawks will be one of the top considerations for a No. 1 seed. Selection Sunday is just 15 days away, and this is when the most exciting basketball of the year starts to take place.