Kansas men’s basketball head coach Bill Self recently picked up his 509th career win, the most in Kansas history. He’s had the job since 2003 with two national championships and 16 Big 12 titles to show for it. 

Self and the Jayhawks already picked up a statement win Friday night against No. 9 North Carolina, blowing a 20-point lead but prevailing with a 92-89 win in a crazed home atmosphere.

In the small sample size, Kansas has averaged 89.5 points per game this season, 16.5 more than its opponents, while shooting just over 53% from the field and 14-for-43 from three. 

Senior guard Zeke Mayo and graduate center Hunter Dickinson have averaged 20 and 18 points per game, respectively. Mayo has shot 17 of Kansas’s 43 three-pointers and and Dickinson leads the team in foul shots. 

Mayo, the Lawrence, Kansas native, played a crucial role in the nail-biter against UNC, the team MSU lost to in the NCAA Tournament last March. Mayo finished with 21 points and assisted on Dickinson’s go-ahead layup with one minute left. Dickinson later made a free throw to bring the lead to three. 

Dickinson, the 7-foot-2 center, is the Jayhawks' main big man. He's already shown how useful he can be on the boards, averaging eight rebounds a game. Flory Bidinga, a 6-foot-9 freshman forward from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is also averaging eight rebounds in around 14 minutes per game. 

MSU has been able to get to the line 19 more times than Kansas so far. Fueled by Mayo, the Jayhawks have a slight shooting edge at 40% from deep to MSU's 36%. 

MSU is averaging 10 more rebounds per game than Kansas (47-37). Junior forward Jaxon Kohler has led the Spartans in both offensive and defensive rebounds, grabbing 13 against Niagara in a career-defining double-double performance last Thursday.

Using Kohler and other big men effectively will be crucial for MSU: grabbing offensive boards, playing in the paint and defending Dickinson. The Spartans scored 48 points in the paint against Monmouth and 52 against Niagara — over half of their points in both contests. Offensively, MSU will need to play fast, especially in transition, and be more comfortable shooting threes.

MSU's deep bench has shown through so far, scoring 33 points against Monmouth and 56 against Niagara. With more unique MSU rotations likely to occur Tuesday, the MSU-Kansas matchup will be a solid measure of where the Spartans stand against the nation's best. 

MSU will play Kansas at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 12 in Atlanta. ESPN will air the game.