Kansas basketball: Bill Self hints Kevin McCullar Jr.'s injury is season-ending

The Kansas Jayhawks basketball team dropped its seventh game of the season on Tuesday, losing to BYU 76-68. This is the fifth game the team has played without star Kevin McCullar Jr. after he suffered a knee injury in a loss to Kansas State. The Jayhawks also lost to Texas Tech during this stretch, and head coach Bill Self is now talking about a season — and March Madness tournament — without McCullar.

“We're preparing like he won't [return],” Self said, per ESPN, after the BYU loss. “This is who we are. When we're good, we're pretty good, and when we're not, we're not. We played pitifully tonight. … It would help if we had [McCullar] back. But we've been dealing with this for about five weeks where he hasn't been himself from a health standpoint. Even when he played, he wasn't himself. We're not counting on [his return]. We hope it can happen, but we're certainly not banking on it.”

McCullar is a 6-foot-7 fifth-year senior guard who brings a wealth of experience to the Kansas basketball team as well as enough talent that he should be a first-round pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.

This season, before the injury, he was averaging a team-leading 19.0 points, as well as 6.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.5 steals per game.

If the Kevin McCullar Jr. injury is indeed season-ending as Bill Self suggests, that will put a lot more pressure on former Michigan center, senior Hunter Dickinson, and junior forward KJ Adams Jr. heading into March Madness. Those two are the only active Kansas basketball players averaging double-figure points this season.

The Kansas squad will next try to stop their skid on Saturday when they take on the 15th-ranked Baylor basketball team. These two teams last faced off on Feb. 10, with the Jayhawks pulling out a narrow three-point win at Allen Fieldhouse.