It was one thing for Bill Self and his coaching staff to compare Rakease Passmore to Ochai Agbaji during the recruiting process, as Passmore said in June that they had.
It was another for Self to reiterate that assessment after having Passmore on campus for three months.
“He’s kind of an Ochai Agbaji-type kid,” Self said in a recent interview with Seth Davis for Bleacher Report. “He will develop into a terrific player.”
That’s going to be a high bar for Passmore to reach, as he himself has stated.
“I got to put in a lot of work to catch him, though,” he said. “It’s not just really easy.”
The comparison ties the freshman from Palatka, Florida, with a consensus first-team All-American who put up one of the best offensive seasons in KU history for a team that won a national title. Even three years earlier, when Agbaji had burned his redshirt midway through his own freshman season, he was ready to start 16 games and average 8.5 points and 4.6 rebounds.
Several similarities between the two players are obvious. Agbaji came into KU at 6-foot-5 and around 195 pounds; Passmore is the same height but slightly lighter. Even just watching samples of their high school film, it’s apparent that Passmore and the young Agbaji both entered KU as high-flying aggressive finishers willing to play through contact to score at the rim. As Passmore put it, it’s “the dog part” of their game, Agbaji’s ability to “do what he got to do” that he sees reflected in himself.
Of note, on the offensive end Agbaji was perceived as a slasher coming into college. Certainly he always wielded the pure athleticism that made him a strong defensive piece, but when KU was considering pulling his redshirt in January of 2019, it was the ability to play with pace and run the floor that caught his teammates’ attention. David McCormack, asked at the time if he was a good 3-point shooter, said, “We haven’t seen him shoot too much.”
By the time he and McCormack had led KU to a title, of course, Agbaji had made it to fourth in KU history in 3-pointers attempted and made, at one point sinking at least one in a record 53 consecutive games. He worked on his form year after year and went from 30.7% from deep as a freshmen to 40.7% as a senior.
Passmore doesn’t necessarily see himself as a shooter either, even if that’s the skill that made his showing in KU’s lone camp scrimmage so impressive.
“No, I’m more of a power athlete, most people say,” he said. “I’m just getting developed to shoot the 3-ball and stretch the floor.”
One key difference between the two, at least in terms of their starting point, is that Passmore enters the KU program after a much higher-profile recruitment than Agbaji’s.
Agbaji, remember, was a diamond in the rough. He was unranked by Rivals throughout his senior year of high school basketball at Oak Park in Kansas City, Missouri. He did not have a power-conference offer until Texas A&M’s on Jan. 26, 2018; he got the KU offer nine days later and committed to the Jayhawks after four more.
Even his final ranking on Rivals was in the 140s, while his freshman class of 2018 included three McDonald’s All-Americans in Devon Dotson, Quentin Grimes and McCormack. With Marcus Garrett and Lagerald Vick already in the fold, it made sense to redshirt Agbaji — at least until Udoka Azubuike’s season-ending wrist injury forced KU to play four-guard lineups.
Passmore, Rivals’ No. 42 recruit in his own class, while something of a late arrival to the sport of basketball after he grew up wanting to play football, has been a high-major recruit since the summer after his sophomore year of high school, when he drew in a slew of SEC offers. He got KU’s offer soon after and eventually committed following Late Night in the Phog last October, with many months to spare ahead of his arrival.
Passmore’s mentality all along has been that he will thrive in a competitive environment, and he’ll certainly be competing with plenty of players — after KU brought in a bunch of other off-ball guard transfers in the offseason — as he works to earn some minutes in the early stages of his college career. For what it’s worth, Self called him “one of the sleepers of the group” in that Seth Davis interview.
Agbaji acquitted himself quite well when he made his debut in 2019, even after Self had been concerned about throwing him into a high-pressure environment given his limited experience with such things in high school: “The games that he played in high school, even though he was a really good high school player, (weren’t) state championship games,” he said at the time.
Passmore, at least, by virtue of his high standing as a recruit and his transfer to Combine Academy midway through high school, has gotten some opportunities of the sort already. His school, though not part of a state athletic association, won the Phenom Hoop State Championship during his junior year, and Combine players also played in the high-profile Overtime Elite league as the Blue Checks, a competition in which Passmore got some playoff experience.
Passmore has said his experience living on campus at Combine, away from his native Florida, helped him prepare for the off-court transition to college. He at least has the look of a ready-made college player, even if it’s tough to see how he fits into Self’s projected nine-man rotation with players like Rylan Griffen, Zeke Mayo and AJ Storr in the fold.
With all of this in mind, it’s important to remember that Self had a comparison for Agbaji, too, when he arrived in Lawrence.
“I see him as a Travis Releford type,” Self said at the time.
Agbaji, in many ways, grew beyond that comparison, particularly after he came back from the NBA Draft process and made himself the Jayhawks’ go-to scorer on that 2021-22 team.
Years down the line, Passmore could have the opportunity to carve out his own place in KU lore. He just has to play some games first.
Oak Park High guard Ochai Agbaji drives to the rim during a high school game against Liberty North in the William Jewell Tourney. The 6-foot-5, 195-pound wing became one of the hottest unsigned prospects in the country after picking up offers from Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas A&M and Wisconsin. On Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, Agbaji committed to KU during a ceremony at his high school.
Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics
Darryl Woods/810 Varsity