{"id":221474,"date":"2026-03-16T01:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T01:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221474\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T01:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T01:57:16","slug":"who-is-cal-baptist-what-to-know-about-kus-ncaa-tournament-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221474\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Cal Baptist? What to know about KU\u2019s NCAA Tournament opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LAWRENCE, Kan. (KCTV) &#8211; The Kansas Jayhawks were awarded a 4 seed by the NCAA selection committee and matched up with the Western Athletic Conference champion California Baptist Lancers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Here\u2019s what you need to know about the Lancers ahead of Friday\u2019s matchup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Where and what is California Baptist University?<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Located in Riverside, California, California Baptist University was founded as California Baptist College in September 1950.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">It began operations with 42 students that fall. Now, the university has an undergraduate enrollment of 8,417 and an 85% acceptance rate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Lancers athletic program has only been a Division I basketball program for eight seasons. As recently as 2009, CBU was playing NAIA basketball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Friday\u2019s appearance in the NCAA Tournament against Kansas will be CBU\u2019s first game in the tournament.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"California Baptist guard Devon Malcolm (12) points to the sideline after a made basket during...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2ECRKXAIDZA2TO5GGYJRYMQ6YQ.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/>California Baptist guard Devon Malcolm (12) points to the sideline after a made basket during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Brigham Young, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo\/Tyler Tate)(Tyler Tate | AP)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">About the Lancers<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">This year, the Lancers are 25-8. They defeated Utah Valley in a thrilling WAC championship game, 63-61, thanks to some late-game heroics from senior guard Dominique Daniels Jr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">This season, their 25 wins have set a CBU school record for most wins during their time in Division I. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dancing Dom<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dominique Daniels Jr., the 2025-26 WAC Player of the Year, averaged 23.2 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game this season en route to the award.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Daniels Jr., at 5-foot-10, began his college career in junior college but has since spent his last three years at CBU. In those three years, he\u2019s been an All-WAC selection every season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Results against high majors<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">This year, CBU has played three games against high-major opponents, all Big 12 teams, and they went 0-3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">CBU lost 91-60 to BYU, 78-70 to Colorado and 91-85 to Utah. All three of those games were played in the first week of December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAWRENCE, Kan. (KCTV) &#8211; The Kansas Jayhawks were awarded a 4 seed by the NCAA selection committee and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,38963,101247,9,8,101246,13599,20730],"class_list":["post-221474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-baptist-lancers","tag-california-baptist-university","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cbu","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-march-madness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}