When Kansas basketball brings in transfers from other schools, it is challenging to predict the results. Last season, KU added a player from an Alabama Final Four team, another from Wisconsin, and yet another from South Dakota State.
The first two, from programs with a better pedigree, fizzled. The third, from a much smaller program, outperformed expectations. The point is - you never know.
One of the players head coach Bill Self has brought in from another program is Melvin Council Jr. The senior has spent the last two seasons at smaller schools like Wagner in 2023-24 and St. Bonaventure in 2024-25.
Melvin Council Jr. will bring a dawg attitude to Kansas basketball
Stats don’t always paint the whole picture when evaluating a player. Council’s indicates that he is a shooter, if not necessarily a great one. In the past two seasons, he’s hoisted up 936 shots. By comparison, that is 20 more shots than former Jayhawk Hunter Dickinson put up over his last two years in Lawrence.
He’s only connected on 28.3 percent of his three-point attempts and 44.8 percent from inside the arc, though that number was much higher last year at 49.2.
If you look a little deeper into his statline, you’ll notice other trends. Over the past two seasons, he’s played in 67 games, 61 as a starter. He’s averaged 36.4 minutes a game. That’s more than Dajuan Harris averaged in any season at Kansas.
Though listed at just 6’4, Council has averaged 5.5 rebounds a game over two seasons. That’s a decent number, but even more impressive is the 72 steaks he accumulated last season, leading his conference with 2.1 a game. That indicates he is willing to play defense, which might be the reason Self recruited him. He is more than just a shooter. He has a little dawg in him.
If you need further proof, Andrew Lind, the sports director at WIBW, posted a little video on X of Council talking about freshman star Darryn Peterson. The veteran player is saying that he is going to work hard in practice to get the most out of Peterson, that he isn’t going to take it easy on the vaunted freshman.
“I’m going to make sure I get the best out of him.” THAT is a dawg attitude. Council understands that Peterson is the top recruit and probably the star, but Council also understands the freshman will need to be pushed at all times so Peterson can reach his full potential.
That is being a leader. That is showing an understanding of what he can do to make a teammate better. That is a dawg attitude. It is this kind of thinking that the Jayhawks may have been missing in recent seasons, outside of maybe KJ Adams. It also gives some insight into what Self and his staff saw in Council that led them to recruit him.
Only time will tell what kind of player Council will be in his time at Kansas, but this video shows that he gets it. He gets what it means to be a dawg.