Des Moines, Iowa — With his next 3-point make, Kansas guard Gradey Dick will climb into first place on KU’s all-time freshman 3-point shooting list, moving ahead of Jeff Boschee into the top spot.
You remember Boschee, the bald-headed shot-maker from the small town in North Dakota, who came to KU with no conscience and left as one of the greatest 3-pointer shooters in Kansas basketball history.
Boschee played a lot of point guard during his freshman season and, as such, had the ball in his hands a lot more than Dick has throughout his first season with the Jayhawks.
Still, the 6-foot-8 guard from Wichita has hit 79 of 198 3-point attempts, knocking in 40% of his long distance shots against the nation’s toughest schedule and in a conference that featured teams that often made it a focal point to stop him.
“This dude is having an unbelievable freshman year,” Kansas coach Bill Self said during one of his Hawk Talk radio shows midway through the season. “It makes it more special that he’s a freshman.”
It’s also a far cry from what Dick’s mother, Carmen, remembers about her son’s introduction to basketball 15 or 16 years ago at the family’s home in Wichita.
That came indoors, on a plastic, Playskool little tikes basketball hoop.
“I can still see the kid going crazy on this goal,” Carmen recently told the Journal-World. “We couldn’t keep it upright. I think we had to put rocks it so it would stop tipping over when he dunked on it over and over.”
Kansas guard Gradey Dick (4) soars in for a dunk against Kansas State during the first half on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 at Bramlage Coliseum.
Dick still has the flare and fever for dunking the ball. Some of his biggest and best highlight-reel moments from this season came from transition dunks that fired up his team and the Allen Fieldhouse fans, complete with Dick’s explosive celebrations that added to the hysteria.
But there’s not a soul alive who would argue the claim that Dick’s best skill is his jump shot. And it was that 3-point stroke that actually got the Kansas kid noticed by Self and his coaching staff in the first place.
Carmen still remembers the sequence that led up to her son getting a scholarship offer from his dream school. They were at an AAU tournament and Dick was shooting the ball particularly well that day.
“He was killing it,” Carmen remembered, before recalling the one moment that she thinks sealed the deal.
After a series of makes, both off the catch and off the dribble, Dick moved into heat-check territory and drilled a step-back 3-pointer right in front of Self, who was watching courtside.
Carmen said sher and her husband, Bart, looked at each other after the ball fell through the net and almost simultaneously said, “Oh my God.” They were used to seeing their son’s shots fall. However, doing it with a Hall of Fame basketball coach like Self sitting a few feet away was new territory.
The Kansas coaches called with the offer that same night, and no other program really ever stood a chance of landing Dick.
The thing Self likes most about Dick’s game is the same thing that Boschee had going for him in his day.
“When it comes to shooting, this dude has no memory. I mean none,” Self said of Dick at Big 12 media day before the season began. “His confidence level shooting the ball is like Marcus Garrett’s was defensively. He can’t remember the bad stuff. He may miss 10 in a row, but he thinks he’s going to make the next 10.”
Boschee played with that mentality, too. And that approach is a big part of the reason both players will go down on the short list of best KU shooters of all time.
Here’s an interesting nugget about Boschee’s postseason success at Kansas, which included two second-round exits, one Sweet 16 loss and a trip to the Final Four: He averaged 3.1 3-point makes per game in 12 NCAA Tournament appearances.
That included six makes in a second-round loss to Kentucky in 1999, two games of five 3-pointers during the 2002 Final Four run and two more games with four 3-point makes.
Dick has yet to attempt a single 3-pointer in an NCAA Tournament game. But there’s plenty of reason for the Jayhawks to believe he will be ready to get hot when the top-seeded Kansas opens play in this year’s tournament at 1 p.m. Thursday against No. 16 seed Howard.
“He’s the best freshman shooter I’ve ever had. Hands down,” Self said after Dick drained four 3-point shots in a road win over Oklahoma State in February.
Self didn’t coach Boschee, but consider some of the other names he did coach, all of whom made fewer than 79 3-pointers during their freshman seasons with Kansas.
J.R. Giddens hit 74 in 2003-04. Brandon Rush made 50 in 2005-06. Ben McLemore made 73 in 2012-13. Andrew Wiggins made 43 in 2013-14.
Even Devonte’ Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk, best friends who went on to become great shooters and finished their careers ranked second and fourth, respectively, on KU’s all-time 3-point list, made just 17 and 15 3-pointers their freshman seasons. Granted, opportunity and playing time played a role in that, but their production during those years underscores how impressive Dick has been this year.
Kansas guard Gradey Dick (4) pulls up for a three against Iowa State during the second half on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023 at Allen Fieldhouse.
Recently named one of five finalists for the Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year Award, Dick may have the one thing going for him that none of the previous Jayhawks did at this time of the season during their freshman seasons — he’s starting on a top-seeded team and has been looking forward to this moment from the time he first dunked on that Little Tikes hoop all those years ago.
“(One) thing about these tournaments at the end of the season, it’s fun times because you play one game and you really don’t have any time to think about what just happened,” Dick said recently. “You got to move on to the next one, and it kind of feels like an AAU vibe. I played in that last year, so I love it.”
Regardless of what happens in the next week or two, Dick is going to have a decision to make this offseason, whenever it arrives. He’s been a projected NBA lottery pick for much of the year, but has kept his mind focused on helping the Jayhawks get to where they want to go.
Carmen said recently that the Dick family is asked every day by someone what her son is going to do next season — turn pro or return to Kansas — and her answer is always the same.
“We’re taking one day at a time,” she said.
The reason for that is simple. Her son is having fun and tearing it up in the process. To do that at the school he was born to love has made the whole experience all that much better for Dick’s entire family.
“First of all, I love how much he loves being a Jayhawk and being on this team,” Carmen said. “From Day 1, when they first set foot on campus, he was the happiest child I had ever seen. Every time I talked to him on the phone, I could hear in his voice how much he loved it. That makes a mom really happy.”
