As Kansas coach Nate Lie put it on Thursday, after his Jayhawks battled back twice to earn a hard-won 2-2 draw against BYU, “A tie is nothing to celebrate.”
Lie, in a press release, praised his team’s effort and resilience, particularly after it had struggled in a 3-0 home loss to Oklahoma State the previous weekend. As he noted, BYU is a talented team less than a year removed from a Final Four appearance.
But it’s true that at this point, KU has plenty more points it needs to pick up if it wants to reach the Big 12 Conference tournament, which begins Oct. 30 at the Kansas City Current’s brand-new CPKC Stadium.
Only the top 12 teams from the 16-team league will qualify, and with four matches to go — just one of which, Sunday against Utah, is at home — the Jayhawks sit in a precarious 12th place with seven points from conference play.
“We got to get there,” Lie said in a postgame video posted by KU. “And I’ve been trying to avoid standing-watching. I want to believe that we control our own destiny. We win enough games, we’ll get ourselves in. I couldn’t help it — the other coaches have a running standings list, I saw it before I came out to the field today. We have to get there and we have a lot of work to do before we get there.”
The Jayhawks are 2-4-1 in league play and 5-5-4 overall. They are within one point of ninth-place Baylor (2-3-2 in the Big 12) but also just one point up on 13th-place Iowa State (1-2-3) and two up on 14th-place UCF (1-3-2).
KU is lucky to be in that position right now, because the matchup between the Cyclones and Knights on Sept. 19 was declared a no contest due to lightning, meaning ISU and UCF have had one fewer opportunity to get points.
The Jayhawks have a tough road to the tournament now. Three of the four teams they must face are ahead of them in the standings, the lone exception being rival Kansas State, which has not yet won a conference game but hosts KU for a Sunflower Showdown on the final day of the season, Oct. 25. Last year the Jayhawks beat the Wildcats on the last matchday for, in that case, KU’s only conference win of the year.
In the meantime, the Jayhawks host Utah (3-2-2) and then make an Arizona road trip to play the Wildcats (4-2-1) and, in what may be particularly key for positioning, the Arizona State Sun Devils (2-4-1).
One positive note for KU is that it has actually been better on the road than at home this season. KU has a winning record in away games at 3-2-1, and that doesn’t include a game at Brown in which it led in the second half but ultimately suffered a no contest due to weather.
The Jayhawks continue to force mistakes with their high-pressure style (though they have also committed the most fouls in the Big 12 in the process). Junior forward Lexi Watts, who had zero goals and one assist in her first seven games of the year, has five goals and three assists in the last seven to edge out freshman Jillian Gregorski for the team lead in points. Saige Wimes also has four goals and she and Watts have created some potent interplay upfront. The back line just got defender Assa Kante back after she missed three games, and freshman goalkeeper Sophie Dawe has made a number of impressive saves in recent weeks.
They must all now make a push for postseason participation.
“I’ve said it to anyone I’ve spoken to: If we get to that tournament, I would not want to play us,” Lie said. “I think we’re going to be an incredibly tough out.”
Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off “California vibes,” whatever that means.
