{"id":225604,"date":"2026-03-18T18:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225604\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T18:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T18:19:08","slug":"jayhawks-depart-topeka-for-ncaa-basketball-tournament-in-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225604\/","title":{"rendered":"Jayhawks depart Topeka for NCAA basketball tournament in San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) &#8211; It\u2019s NCAA tournament time again, and for the 36th consecutive season, the Kansas Jayhawks are going dancing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">13 NEWS has a crew at Topeka Regional Airport, where the Jayhawks are scheduled to take off around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday as they head to San Diego for their first-round game on Friday night against the California Baptist University Lancers, who are making their first appearance in the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tipoff for that contest is set for 8:45 p.m. Friday at the Viejas Arena in San Diego, with the game airing on CBS, including WIBW-TV, Channel 13.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Melvin  Council and the Kansas Jayhawks take off from Topeka on Wednesday afternoon as they...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773857948_656_RRJOFXD235DXXPHHADS5DMRYZI.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/>Melvin  Council and the Kansas Jayhawks take off from Topeka on Wednesday afternoon as they head to San Diego for their first-round game in the 2026 NCAA men&#8217;s basketball tournament against California Baptist University. (Denny Medley\\Big 12 Conference)(Denny Medley\\Big 12 Conference | Denny Medley\\Big 12 Conference)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">WIBW-TV Sports Director Andrew Lind is in San Diego for reports on the Jayhawks\u2019 NCAA appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 36 consecutive NCAA basketball tournaments is the longest streak in NCAA history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Kansas enters this year\u2019s tournament as the four-seed in the NCAA East bracket, while California Baptist is the 13-seed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 25-8 Lancers, out of Riverside, California, are the Western Athletic Conference champions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">They came back from seven points down with just over two minutes to play to defeat Utah Valley University 63-61 in the WAC tournament title game on Saturday in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Should the Jayhawks win Friday night\u2019s contest, they will square off against the winner of the St. John\u2019s-Northern Iowa game, which will be played at 6:10 p.m. Friday at the Viejas Arena, on the San Diego State University campus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">If Kansas and St. John\u2019s both win their first-round games as the higher seeds, they would square off Sunday in a contest matching two Hall of Fame coaches in Bill Self at Kansas and Rick Pitino at St. John\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WIBW. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) &#8211; It\u2019s NCAA tournament time again, and for the 36th consecutive season, the Kansas Jayhawks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[102784,2454,101247,101403,17819,102783,101777,8634,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-225604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-36-consecutive-appearances","tag-basketball","tag-california-baptist-university","tag-jayhawks","tag-kansas","tag-ku","tag-ncaa-basketball-tournament","tag-riverside","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225604","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=225604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}