Three things we learned from the Kansas Jayhawks versus the Pittsburgh State Gorillas
The Kansas Jayhawks officially kicked off the season on the court last night as they played an exhibition game against the Pittsburgh State Gorillas. Going into this game there were a lot of questions, specifically who fills the holes left by Ochai Agbaji, Christian Braun, and David McCormack. Another question was what the rotations would look like throughout the game. Finally, how would the freshman play in their first game in a Jayhawks uniform?
Jalen Wilson and Gradey Dick early favorites for "go-to" status
Granted, this was just an exhibition game, and even though the team has gone through scrimmages, there is nothing like a game inside the mecca Allen Fieldhouse in front of the Jayhawk faithful. Kansas' starting five was Dajuan Harris Jr, Jalen Wilson, Kevin McCullar Jr, Ernest Udeh Jr, and KJ Adams Jr. For roughly the first four minutes of the game, the Jayhawks looked out of sync. The Gorillas went up 12-0 and ultimately would lead by 14 points with 13:23 to go in the first half.
Head coach Bill Self said this on the slow start, "If you had said the score is going to be 12-0, you would hope the home team would have an advantage, but we didn’t tonight. We were so bad early. Then, of course, they made everything they took early, but still, a lot of that was our mistakes. I actually thought we played a little selfish. The ball stuck early".
Again, even though this was just an exhibition game, we witnessed redshirt junior Jalen Wilson step up and lead the team with 23 points in 24 minutes played. And freshman Gradey Dick lived up to the preseason hype, stepping up big with 20 points in 23 minutes. More importantly, we saw Dick score offensively in many different ways. From the floor, he was 7-9 and shot 3-of-5 from behind the arc. His ability to not only shoot but also drive the basketball was on full display.
We will continue to see the maturity of this team as the season goes on, and we will be able to distinguish who truly fills the shoes of some memorable players.
Still lots of work to find the right rotations
The starting five wasn't a huge surprise (expect for maybe Adams), but I would assume that will change once the official season kicks on Monday, November 7th. 13 different Jayhawks played in the exhibition game, and multiple players were used in varying lineups and roles. Given his performance in this game, Dick is expected to crack the starting lineup as early as Monday.
One thing I want to emphasize is we did not get to see freshman MJ Rice or super senior Cam Martin due to injury. As the game progressed on were able to see different players have an impact on the game. One player that stood out coming off the bench was sophomore Bobby Pettiford Jr. Bobby played for a little over 15 minutes scoring two points, but he recorded five assists.
Asked about Pettiford after the game, Bill Self said "I thought that off the bench other than Gradey, Bobby was the best player we had off the bench tonight, without question".
Freshman performance
One of the biggest attractions to the game was to see the new players specifically the freshman. We talked about Grady Dick's performance, but there were many others. Udeh received the starting nod but only logged nine minutes of play. He scored four points going 2-of-3 from the floor, and was consistently able to get up and down the court
Another freshman that played well was Zuby Ejiofor. Ejiofor stands at 6'9" weighing 240 lbs. capitalized on his ten minutes of playing time. He was 4-of-5 from the floor scoring eight points and hauling in four rebounds.
This is just the beginning of the men's basketball season, and as it progresses we will learn a lot more about this team.
