If No. 12 Kansas (14-4; 5-2) hopes to hand No. 7 Houston (15-3; 7-0) its first Big 12 loss of the season on Saturday night, Bill Self said his squad will need to excel in a number of areas.

When the Cougars, coached by Kelvin Sampson, take the court on Saturday night, they’ll do so riding an 11-game winning streak and coming off a 34-point (70-36) home victory over Utah on Wednesday night.

Self, when asked by JayhawkSlant.com, if there is one thing that his team must do in order to be successful against Houston on Saturday night, he quickly responded.

“I’d say rebound the ball,” said Bill Self during his weekly press conference on Friday. “You know, defensive rebound the ball. They're plus seven, I think, for the year, but those three big guys can really rebound the ball. And then they got other guys that go as well. So, that would be the case, but there's not just one. You're going to have to be able to attack and play behind their pressure, but they'll mix how they do it.

“They guarded us much different down in Houston last year than they did here,” he added. “So, they'll make some adjustments. But we got to be patient enough and aggressive enough to understand that we're going to have to create some situations that force them into long closeouts or mistakes and then play behind that as opposed to just trying to come down and go one-on-one and score. So yeah, we got to be good at a lot of different areas, but one area, yeah, let's rebound the ball.”

Houston, so far this season, has made life in the Big 12 look relatively easy when it comes to taking care of business on the hardwood.

The Cougars will take the court against No. 12 Kansas on Saturday night owning victories over Oklahoma State (road; 60-47), BYU (86-55), TCU (65-46), Kansas State (road; 87-57), West Virginia (70-54), UCF (road; 69-68), and at home against Utah, 70-36.

In completely dominating the Utes from start to finish, Milos Uzan (14), L.J. Cryer (13), J’Wan Roberts (11), and Terrance Arceneaux (10) paced Houston on the offensive end of the court.

Utah won the battle on the glass, 36-33, but shot just 13-of-43 (30.2%) from the field, 5-of-17 (29.4%) from behind the arc, and 5-of-12 (41.7%) from the free throw line.

Houston converted 26-of-60 (43.3%) of its field goals, 5-of-18 (27.8%) of its shots from behind the arc, and 13-of-19 (68.4%) of its free throws.

However, Utah turned the ball over 26 times, which led to 29 points for Houston.

Houston went 6-of-20 from behind the arc against Oklahoma State, 16-of-34 against BYU, 8-of-19 against TCU, 6-of-14 against Kansas State, 11-of-26 against West Virginia, 3-of-16 against UCF, and 5-of-18 against Utah.

According to Self, L.J. Cryer and Emanuel Sharp love to shoot from behind the arc.

“He (Emanuel Sharp) and (L.J.) Cryer are both — those guys collectively shoot 13 threes a game,” said Self. Milos (Uzan), I think, is shooting like three and a half, and the rest of the team is only shooting about a total of three a game. So those are the three guys that are going to shoot the majority of the threes.

"And to me, Sharp and Cryer, if you can keep the ball away from them at the end of the shot clock, I think that would probably be good for you because I think they're great at creating shots for themselves under seven or eight seconds on the shot clock," he added.