LAWRENCE — There would already be enough of a challenge, preparing to face Texas Tech on Monday, with the full compliment of one’s roster available.

The No. 23 Red Raiders (17-6, 6-4 in Big 12) are one of the more dangerous teams in the Big 12 Conference this season. They’re coming off of a home win against UCF, improving their record at home to 12-1. If they were supposed to struggle in the first year of coach Grant McCasland’s tenure leading the program, they didn’t receive that message.

But No. 4 Kansas basketball (19-5, 7-4 in Big 12) is also in the position where it has one star who’s just missed a game due to injury, and another that missed time in Saturday’s 64-61 win against No. 13 Baylor due to injury. The first reference is to graduate senior guard Kevin McCullar Jr., and the second to redshirt senior guard Dajuan Harris Jr.

And Jayhawks coach Bill Self didn’t sound optimistic postgame they’d have both available against Texas Tech.

“I don’t know anything about (Harris), but I can’t imagine Kevin being a lot better on Monday if he can’t hardly move on Saturday,” Self said. “But we’ll see. So — but I don’t know about (Harris). They said he got it pretty good, but he’s a pretty tough kid so we’ll see if he can come back.”

The gameplan for Baylor, Self explained, was to try to play seven guys and turn to a couple of walk-on guards — graduate senior Michael Jankovich and redshirt freshman Wilder Evers — if needed. With McCullar and freshman guard Jamari McDowell out, Kansas had seven scholarship players available agains the Bears. Fortunately for the Jayhawks, they weren’t in a position where they had to turn to Jankovich or Evers in moments of consequence.

Self wanted the game against Baylor to be slow, and it was. He wanted the game to be ugly and muddy, as he described it, and it was. Odds are, if Kansas has the same amount of scholarship players available against Texas Tech, he is going to be looking for something similar.

When Self started to talk about what he thought about Texas Tech, he mentioned it’s a very similar team to Baylor. He added that could be good from a scouting report standpoint, because that means they might not have to change a lot in the short amount of time they have. And the team will have a recent game where the players had to fill in for McCullar, too.

“Obviously we’re missing a lot, with Kevin being one of the best players in college basketball, but we all felt pretty confident in one another to step up and make big plays,” KU senior center Hunter Dickinson said. “I think we did that there, today. We’re at Kansas for a reason. Everybody’s talented enough to play at Kansas. And so, it’s not a surprise that guys stepped up. That’s kind of what we expected.”

Kansas turned to graduate senior guard Nicolas Timberlake to start for McCullar against Baylor. Whether he is one of the Jayhawks’ five starters against Texas Tech, will be determined in time. Dickinson spoke positively about Timberlake’s aggressiveness and play-making, but Self’s answer when asked about Timberlake didn’t last very long.

Timberlake finished the game with eight points and a couple of rebounds. For just the fourth time this season, he made multiple 3s in a game. But on a night when Self wasn’t thrilled by the way Kansas won against Baylor, his response wasn’t glowing when asked about Timberlake either.

“We won,” Self said. “So, I’ll just leave it at that.”

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Will Kevin McCullar Jr., Dajuan Harris Jr. play for Kansas basketball?