The most exciting freshman in college basketball is hard to ignore, especially when he’s playing at a program with four national championships and for a head coach with over 800 career wins. Yet, in a lot of ways, Kansas has been overlooked this year, at least as a national title contender.
The Big 12 has changed. With the additions of Houston, Arizona, and even BYU, the conference tournament is no longer the ‘Bill Self Invitational.’ The league no longer runs through Lawrence and Phog Allen Fieldhouse, and it’s been quite a few years since the Jayhawks have run through the NCAA Tournament.
Since the 2022 National Championship, Self hasn’t led Kansas beyond the first weekend of the big dance. And even before that, the Jayhawks had some thin years, between the Final Four runs in 2018 and 2022. So, maybe for the first time since Self took over the program from Roy Williams in 2003, it has become easier to overlook Kansas. But overlooking this year’s team would be a terrible mistake.
With Darryn Peterson back healthy, Kansas is right back in the title discussion
Kansas currently sits at No. 12 in KenPom, ranked 32nd in offensive rating and eighth on defense. At 17-5 (7-2), they’re trailing only Arizona and Houston in the conference, and with Monday night’s heroic win over No. 13 Texas Tech, are currently riding a six-game win streak. Crucially, much of that has come with Darryn Peterson, you know, the most exciting freshman in college basketball, on the floor.
Peterson has dealt with a myriad of injuries this season, from cramping issues that left him glued to the bench in the second half of big games to ankle sprains that kept him sidelined altogether.
That time gave Kansas an opportunity to figure out who it is without Peterson on the floor, and that’s a serious void considering that, among Power Conference players, he has the highest usage rate in the country at 34.7 percent.
Melvin Council Jr. settled into a role as a pace-pushing point guard, and Tre White emerged as a do-it-all scoring wing, while Flory Bidunga and Bryson Tiller found their spacing as a four-court pair. It’s a group tailor-made to plug in a high-volume scorer, which obviously was Self’s design once he knew he landed Peterson for one year.
Without Peterson on the floor, it’s a team with a +14.8 net rating generated primarily by a dominant defense with a front court that produces a 99th percentile block rate and an offense that relies on rim pressure and remarkable efficiency on above-the-break threes.
With Peterson, the defense dips ever-so-slightly, but it’s a worthwhile trade-off that nets out with a +16.8 rating and an offense that skyrockets from a 68th percentile 53.1 effective field goal percentage to a 92nd percentile 56.7 percent eFG.
When Peterson is healthy, there’s not only a noticeable jump in terms of Kansas’s offensive efficiency in the paint and the mid-range, a testament to his shot-making ability, but Kansas’ field goal percentage on corner threes jumps from 25.4 percent on 5.0 attempts per 40 minutes to 42.6 percent on 5.7 attempts per 40. That’s a direct impact of Peterson’s gravity on a defense.
He’s impossible to stay in front of one-on-one, so defenses are forced to keep bodies in driving lanes and sag off shooters to help protect the rim. Peterson is a ball-dominant player, but he’ll hit those kickouts, or Tiller and Bidunga will off the short-roll, and it’s bombs away.
Darrryn Peterson isn’t just the best perimeter scorer in college basketball; he’s the best by a lot
Even with his tremendous usage rate, which can be a red flag for contenders, he’s remarkably efficient. Among the players with at least a 30 percent usage rate in Power Conferences, Peterson trails only Duke’s Cameron Boozer and Miami’s Malik Reneau in effective field goal percentage.
Among players, Peterson’s height, 6-foot-6, and shorter, the next closest by usage rate with a better effective field goal percentage, is Oklahoma State’s Anthony Roy, with a 25.1 percent usage rate, nine percent lower than Peterson’s. He’s not just the best high-volume scoring guard in the country; he’s the best one order of magnitude.
Kansas was built around a superstar, and it was built pretty well. If Peterson can stay healthy the rest of the way, the Jayhawks belong in the national title discussion because in a single-elimination tournament, there won’t be a game when they don’t have the best player on the court.
On Saturday, he proved how impactful that can be with 18 points in 20 minutes before missing most of the second half of his showdown with fellow star freshman AJ Dybantsa. Then, he did it again, taking over in crunch time against Texas Tech to knock down the game-tying and game-winning threes.
When Kansas has Darryn Peterson, it's incredibly difficult to beat, and at least for now, Kansas has Darryn Peterson.