Fayetteville, Ark. — The central concept of this year’s Kansas men’s basketball team was that it would bear no resemblance to the depleted and ineffective squad the Jayhawks trotted out at the end of last season.
By stocking up on 3-point shooting, added athleticism and most of all considerable depth, KU would shield itself from ever fielding that sort of group again, and producing the unfavorable results that came with it.
But albeit in a meaningless, exhibition setting, KU posted a similar performance in a 16-point exhibition loss at Arkansas Friday night — with three key players, highlighted by center Hunter Dickinson, out. The result prompted head coach Bill Self to say postgame, “That’s what our team looked like at the end of last year, and that was no fun.”
He doesn’t expect it to continue looking that way going forward.
“I’m not going to leave out of here happy by any stretch,” Self said, “but I won’t leave out of here discouraged because I know that’s not who we are and that’s not what our team is.”
Self went on to say that KU’s newcomers looked “slow and lost,” in part taking responsibility himself because the Jayhawks didn’t run much of a scheme on offense in the preseason setting, and also adding, “The way that we have practiced playing for a long time, it did not resemble that without Hunter out there.”
Transfers Zeke Mayo and AJ Storr, who started, combined for 15 points on 6-for-17 shooting, numbers that had looked much more grim prior to some late-game buckets. David Coit came off the bench and went scoreless in 24 minutes of play.
Freshman Flory Bidunga also got a starting nod at center with Dickinson out and tallied six points and seven rebounds, but was prone to fouls and looked overmatched at times on defense in his first collegiate action.
Responding to a postgame question about whether Zach Clemence, not a newcomer but returning off a redshirt, would get a rotational spot, Self said generally, “I didn’t think our guys really did much to probably show me that they deserve a lot of stuff.”
The bright spot, to hear Self tell it, was another freshman, Rakease Passmore.
“For what his role is, he was the best player in the game for us,” Self said.
Passmore began the game as one of the Jayhawks’ last players off the bench, but scored a capable 11 points on 4-for-7 shooting off the bench and grabbed six rebounds in 19 minutes — which ended up being more action than Storr got. Generally, the freshman from Palatka, Florida, blended in on both sides of the ball, avoiding the sorts of evident mistakes or ill-advised shot selections that befell his teammates.
He didn’t put up the eye-popping numbers of point guard Dajuan Harris Jr., who managed a (non-counting) career night on offense, but Harris couldn’t do much at the other end to limit Arkansas’ Boogie Fland or D.J. Wagner. As Self put it, “Juan’s measure as a player for us will be is his defense better than the other team’s best guard’s offense, and it wasn’t tonight.”
“I scored 26 points, but the stuff that (Passmore) did off the ball, rebounding, trying to play defense, that’s what he does, and what Coach wants from a guy like him,” Harris said. “So he had a pretty good game.”
Passmore’s performance provided one concrete takeaway in a game from which Self couldn’t draw much else — positive, negative or neutral — given the state of his roster.
Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics
