The prevailing narrative out of Darryn Peterson’s freshman season, which came to an end with a 67-65 second-round loss to St. John’s on Sunday night in San Diego, will inevitably be his availability. However, Peterson’s injuries and cramping issues that kept him out of games throughout the year shouldn’t be the dominant storyline, not for Kansas, and not for the NBA.
The No. 1 talking point for the potential No. 1 pick should be his infuriating evolution and how it turned him into a player unequipped to handle the pressure that Rick Pitino’s Johnnies threw at him and the Jayhawks in the Round of 32.
Kansas needed more from Peterson as a shot-creator
At his best, Darryn Peterson is a dynamic athlete. And not just a great athlete, a 99th percentile elite NBA athlete. His midseason ankle injury visibly zapped a measure of that explosiveness, and the infuriating thing about Peterson’s season is not that he pulled himself out of games; it’s that he was content to become a spot-up shooter.
Despite his obvious athletic advantage, only 23.8 percent of Peterson’s 20.1 points per game came in the paint this season, and only 16.1 percent of his attempts came at the rim (per CBBanalytics.com). Far too often, the nation’s No. 1 recruit was content to run off screens for threes like Klay Thompson, and while he’s a high-level shooter at 38.1 percent from beyond the arc, he has an Anthony Edwards skillset, and at times he’s even drawn Kobe Bryant comparisons.
His 33.6 percent usage rate is Kobe-esque, but his 46 percent three-point attempt rate certainly isn’t. Though he does have an alarmingly high rate of difficult mid-range twos mixed into his shot diet that the late-great Bryant would undoubtedly approve of.
Last year, John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks were the only double-digit seed to advance to the Sweet 16, and they did so by upsetting St. John’s in the second round. While this year’s Red Storm have a different roster, Pitino’s high-pressure, physical defense is the same.
One of the reasons Coach Cal was able to beat his fellow former Kentucky coach in March last year was the simplicity of his offense. St. John’s has often given UConn issues, beating the Huskies for back-to-back Big East titles because they turn the game into a fist-fight and gunk up the finely tuned cogs of Dan Hurley’s complex motion offense. Arkansas didn’t run any complex sets. Instead, Calipari, as he always does, put the ball in the hands of his best players and trusted them to make plays.
The Arkansas athletes proved to be too much for the Johnnies, who, notably, went ice-cold from three. This year, however, Kansas looked helpless at times, racking up 16 turnovers, struggling to inbound the ball, and on many of its half-court possessions, giving the ball to Peterson and asking him to make a play.
Was Peterson’s lack of rim pressure a product of injuries or something worse
Heading into the year, there may not have been another player or recruit you would have taken over Peterson to create shots off the bounce and get downhill to collapse a defense. By tournament time, it was hard to feel that way about Peterson, who disappeared down the stretch on Friday night as Cal Baptist stormed back in a 68-60 win that should have never been that close.
Peterson finished the game with 21 points. Eight of those came from the free throw line, and he shot 5-15. Peterson found his rhythm late and catalyzed a second-half push by aggressively attacking off the dribble, but he turned back into that player just a little too late.