To say the Kansas basketball team is struggling right now is an understatement, but this team could end up one of the worst teams during the Bill Self era.
After two humiliating losses this week, including a 34-point thrashing at the hands of BYU, everyone - coaches, players, and fans - is flabbergasted by the fact that the preseason number-one team’s season has so completely fallen apart.
The Jayhawks are 17-9 overall and only 8-7 in the Big 12. They’ve already lost two conference games at home and look like a discombobulated mess on the road.
What has happened since the 2022 National Championship for the Kansas basketball team?
The 2022-23 season was rolling along until the end of the season. They were 23-5, then finished 3-3 and lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Self had a health issue arise during the Big 12 Tournament and KU seemed to be thrown off-kilter by this.
Then things seem to go sideways. Even though Self nabbed the top transfer portal recruit in Hunter Dickinson, star Gradey Dick went to the NBA, and fellow freshmen Ernest Udeh, MJ Rice, Zuby Ejiofor, and Kyle Cuffe all left the program. So did upperclassmen Joseph Yesufu, Bobby Pettiford, and Zach Clemence, though the latter returned and redshirted.
Still, that was a lot of roster depth that needed to be replaced. Self tried by bringing in freshmen Elmarko Jackson, Jamari McDowell, and Johnny Furphy. He added to two veteran transfers as well in Parker Braun and Nicolas Timberlake. Jackson and McDowell struggled to make an impact and Timberlake never found his 3-point shooting stroke.
Injuries and underperforms caused the 2023-24 team to finish 23-11, the fewest wins in the Self era outside of the shorter 2020-21 season. The season ended with another second-round tournament loss.
This season, Self had three core veterans in Dickinson, Dejuan Harris, and KJ Adams. Flory Bidunga, Rakease Passmore, and Labaron Philon. When KU recruited him, Philon left for Alabama, where he now averages double-digit points.
Self brought in a bevy of veteran transfers. Zeke Mayo, AJ Storr, Rylan Griffen, David Coit, and Shakeel Moore bulked up a thin backcourt with a lot of different skill sets.
It just hasn’t worked. Only Mayo has shown much consistency, and he isn’t near as good on the road as he is at home. The others have shown flashes here and there, but they’ve just not acclimated to Self’s system. Adams and Harris have struggled at times, and Dickinson fills the stat sheet but misses a lot of easy shots and gets pushed around inside on a regular basis.
On paper, KU was the preseason No. 1 team. In reality, it has been a trainwreck.
Where things seem to have gone wrong is the mass exodus after the 2022-23 season. Udeh and Ejiofor both looked players who would develop in the system and be good players. Both are playing well elsewhere. Even though Self won the Dickinson sweepstakes, it hasn’t helped the program overall.
The recent transfers haven’t helped much. In fact, outside of Remy Martin’s 2022 tournament run, Dickinson’s ability to accrue stats, and Mayo’s solid performance this season, none of the the other transfers have worked out very well so far.
After this season, Kansas basketball will lose a good chunk of its roster. Dickinson, Harris, Adams, Moore, and Mayo are out of eligibility. You can see a place for Coit next year, and if Griffen and Storr can figure things out quickly, their experience could be a boon. It will interesting to see what happens.
KU still has Jackson (out with a knee injury), McDowell (redshirt), and transfer Noah Shelby (transfer redshirt), as well as top recruit Darryn Peterson, Samis Calderon, and Bryson Tiller, who is already on campus.
Self needs to go back to developing and retaining as many of his younger players as possible. He will still have to fill in some holes with transfers, but he cannot afford to miss on too many more. He needs to get players to appreciate the name on the front of their jerseys again. In this era of NIL, that may not be as easy as it once was.
This season seems like it will not end very well for the Kansa basketball team unless a miraculous light bulb clicks on for the whole team. The talent is there, but they seem lost within the system. A late-season turnaround could make this season one of Self’s best coaching jobs instead of his worst. Nothing would be more pleasing.
However, one thing is for certain - 2022 seems like a long time ago!