On Saturday the Kansas Jayhawks will host the Iowa State Cyclones at Allen Fieldhouse and they'll be doing so without some of their firepower. Freshman Josh Selby and sophomore Thomas Robinson both have injuries and aren't expected to play.
Selby is not expected to play, head coach Bill Self announced on Friday night, because of a stress reaction suffered nearly two weeks ago. He's been absent the last two games -- both big KU victories -- and it doesn't appear they've missed him much. I'm not saying Kansas doesn't want/need Selby -- they do -- but it's pretty clear that this is a deep, deep team and one player missing doesn't mess with their mojo much.
Robinson also will not play, Self announced. His injury is expected to keep him out of 4-5 games or about two weeks. There's a small sample size for a Robinson-less KU team and the results aren't great. He didn't play against UMKC on January 5 -- KU smoked them by 47 points so his absence wasn't a factor. But he also only played eight minutes against Texas on January 22, and didn't play the following week against Colorado (because of his mother's sudden death). KU lost the Texas game and beat Colorado by just four points. I'm not saying that means they'll lose on Saturday against Iowa State, or any of the 4-5 games he's projected to miss, but it is an interesting note. (Editor's note: Also worth mentioning is that Kansas, as a team, may have been affected by the death of Robinson's mother, so it wasn't necessarily just a basketball issue with those games).
Those are two significant pieces of the pie but KU has shown they're not a one-dimensional team. They can play with, and beat you at any type of game you want to play. It will be a good test, though, to see how they respond. Ultimately I don't think missing these players is going to have a drastic effect. It's not ideal but this team is simply too good to be hurt with one or two missing players.