Kansas basketball: ESPN experts unanimously pick KU to reach Final Four

Although we are only a week into the 2023-24 college basketball season, some have already set their sights on March Madness and how this year’s NCAA Tournament may shake out.

In a recent ESPN article, four college hoops experts (John Gasaway, Jeff Borzello, Myron Medcalf, and Joe Lunardi) provided various predictions for how they believe this season will turn out. The predictions included their picks for which teams will reach the Final Four and win the national championship.

All four of the experts picked the current Associated Press (AP) No. 1-ranked Kansas Jayhawks to reach the Final Four, and all but one picked KU to cut down the nets in April. Tennessee, Purdue, and Michigan State were the other schools who received multiple selections.

That’s pretty significant praise from some of the top college basketball media members in the country, and it shows just how highly this KU team is thought of in national circles.

Three of the four experts also picked Kansas center Hunter Dickinson to their All-American Team. Lunardi, ESPN’s Bracketology expert, picked him as the Wooden Award winner as well – an award given annually to the country’s top player.

If the latter prediction comes true, Dickinson would become the first player to win the Wooden Award since point guard Frank Mason III in 2017. He would also become just the third Kansas player of all time to win the award behind Mason and the great Danny Manning.

It’s clear there are a lot of expectations for this year’s KU team – and rightfully so.

The Jayhawks appear to have all the talent and experience needed to make a deep run in March and give head coach Bill Self a nearly unprecedented third national championship. If that happens, Self would join an elite, rare group of six coaches who have won more than two national titles.

We’ll get a better sense of how good this Kansas team can be on Tuesday night when the top-ranked Jayhawks face off against the No. 17-ranked Kentucky Wildcats in Chicago. Tipoff is at 8:30 CT on ESPN.