UMKC and KU talk - Across the KC Pyramid

For those who do not know, UMKC men went to the tournament the last two seasons.

They made it to the Sweet 16 in 2024.

Last year, they were good enough to host their home game and win against Lindenwood, but then they ended up going against Stanford.

And preseason, they were ranked 25th in the nation coming into the 2026 college year.

They've had one game so far that counted because for those who don't know, college will have some exhibition games that they don't usually give results from.

I know that they played pretty well on at least one of them.

But they had their first official game this last week on the 20th against SIUE.

It was also a celebration game for the former coach of UMKC, Rick Benben, because he was alumni of SIUE.

I keep making sure I put all those letters in the right order.

And so it was a good thing for them to celebrate in the previous team that had done well.

All that worked.

But SIUE got kind of destroyed by UMKC 5-0.

I don't know.

Did you get to see any of the highlights or any of this stuff?

No, I didn't.

I did.

I've been so impressed, though, as I've been seeing, you know, what this team is about and the growth that they've had over the last couple of years.

Your interview with with Coach Poore was phenomenal.

And I'm excited to see as we get into the meat end of the season.

We've got opponents like SMU and San Diego coming to town.

These are really big opponents.

And it looks like those are going to be great games.

I'm excited to see once they get... away from these preseason sort of opponents that, you know, you're getting into the swing of things.

You're making sure that we've got the right starting 11, that we've got the right subs coming on, those sorts of things.

It's still ironing out the details, but, you know, some of these games are coming up pretty quick.