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Sometimes you want to make a quick pit stop, empty the bladder, grab a bag of salty snacks and limber up the limbs before hitting the open road again. For the fast-minded who enjoy simple $2 scratchers hoping to uncover the jackpot-winning image, here are quick thoughts and the lean on Houston vs. Kansas.
No. 7 Houston (15-3, 7-0) at No. 12 Kansas (14-4, 5-2)
Date: Saturday, January 25
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
TV: ESPN
Monkey bars. After school. Three o’clock sharp.
The Houston Cougars are the bullies of college basketball. They’re every Johnny Lawrence, Scut Farkus and Regina George rolled into one.
Through a constant battering of the boards, tenacious on-ball defense and steady 3-point barrages, Kelvin Sampson’s pugnacious group ruthlessly terrorizes opponents from tip to final buzzer. In the Cougars’ dastardly wake, they’re 15-3 overall and the clear favorite to take the Big 12 regular-season title (-145 at BetMGM). Unsurprisingly, they’re currently a consensus projected high single-digit seed, according to the 73 prognosticators tracked on the Bracket Matrix.
At first glance, H-Town’s resume may seem impressive, but a deeper dive reveals the browbeater owns a glaring weakness — ZERO Quadrant 1 wins.
Saturday’s venture to one of the crown jewels of college basketball, Allen Fieldhouse, presents a golden opportunity. A victory against Kansas will only increase Houston’s power. But with a loss, the intimidator cowers. Suffice it to say, much is at stake in Lawrence.
The pick — SGP: Houston +2.5, Game UNDER 135.5 (+100, Caesars)
The formula under Sampson is unchanged: D, 3s and rebounding. The areas are required for the well-drilled Cougars to win game in and game out. As a result, in contests played this month, Houston is No. 59 nationally in effective field-goal percentage defense, No. 7 in offensive rebounding percentage (42.0%) and No. 52 in 3-point percentage offense (38.6%). Over the same stretch, it also ranks No. 1 overall, according to BartTorvik.
However, LJ Cryer and company — who are unblemished in true road games this season at 3-0 — face their stiffest challenge to date.
Without question, the 2024-25 Jayhawks aren’t Bill Self’s finest masterwork. Yes, they’re inarguably the staunchest defense in the country, slotting at No. 1 in effective field-goal percentage D this month, and on the season, they’ve surrendered only 0.895 points per possession. Highly effective around the tin on the opposite end thanks to Hunter Dickinson — 61.1% of the team’s points come from 2s — KU typically bludgeons foes with ceaseless inside-the-arc body blows.
Still, inconsistencies at the guard position have raised serious doubts about Kansas’ true long-term potential. Over its last six games, Rock Chalk ranks a paltry No. 156 in effective field-goal percentage offense, netting only 30.2% from distance. South Dakota State transfer Zeke Mayo has proven most reliable, but scoring contributions from Dajuan Harris Jr., AJ Storr, Shakeel Moore and Rylan Griffen are anything but.
Final buzzer: As witnessed in their 62-61 loss to West Virginia on New Year’s Eve, the Jayhawks are far from invincible at home. They may own a somewhat sparkling resume, but their current brand is largely mediocre. If the turnovers mount for Harris — he tallied five in last Wednesday's 74-61 win at TCU — that belief will only intensify against hungry Houston.
In what will resemble a sumo match between two Big 12 defensive titans, expect a low-scoring battle likely to come down to the final possession.
Sweep the leg on the SGP above.
Season record: 17-12, +4.77 units