Two former Kansas basketball players are having incredible seasons this year at other programs, and both could have been helpful to the current KU roster.
Two years ago, head coach Bill Self and his staff recruited elite guard Labaron Philon for the 2024-25 season. He looked like a player who might contribute soon and help the KU program recover from a down 2023-24 season. He ended up never playing for the Jayhawks.
The other player is David Coit, who Self added after Philon changed his mind and went to Alabama. Coit was small (generously listed at 5-foot-11) but was a prolific scorer at Northern Illinois. He played one season at KU.
Labaron Philon and David Coit are having tremendous seasons elsewhere other than Kansas
When Self added more established names in the transfer portal by bringing in Rylan Griffen and AJ Storr, Philon saw his opportunity for playing time slip away. According to Hunter De on SI.com, Philon decided to attend Alabama, where he would be closer to home and maybe have a clearer path to minutes.
It turned out to be a huge loss for Kansas. Griffen and Storr never figured out Self's system and struggled mightily at KU. The Jayhawks experience their second subpar season in a row. Philon, on the other hand, flourished. He averaged 10.6 points, 3.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists, and 1.4 steals in 24.7 minutes per game as a freshman.
If he had come to KU, there is a great chance he could have supplanted the two transfers, and maybe he would have improved an underachieving roster.
In his second season with the Crimson Tide, Philon has blossomed, producing 21.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 1.4 steals in 28.8 minutes a game. Ironically, Philon's numbers are not that far off those produced by the oft-injured and seldom available Darryn Peterson, albeit based on a much smaller sample size for the latter.
Coit was a big scorer at Northern Illinois, scoring 1,051 points in just two seasons there. At Kansas, he played less than half the minutes he played as a freshman and sophomore but still showed flashes, scoring 5.1 points per game in his limited opportunity.
After one season at KU, Coit transferred to Maryland, a Big Ten school. He's proving he is good enough to play in a Power Four conference, scoring 14.8 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 2.9 assists per game for the Terrapins. He's also hitting 91.9 percent of his free throws (34 of 37).
Both Philon and Coit are succeeding away from Kansas, so they obviously made the right decisions for themselves. That does, however, highlight some of the issues KU had over the two seasons before this one. Self had these players in the fold but couldn't keep them. Both are better than other players on the current roster
This is not a statement about the current KU team, which is the most fun to watch in several years. Self added better players this season than he had in recent seasons, but Philon and Coit should be lessons for him. The bigger-named transfers may not be a better fit than the players who've already committed.
There is no doubt now that Philon would have helped KU tremendously last season (and assuredly this one as well), and Coit could have had a place here too. This is sheer speculation because we'll never know, but there is evidence to support that.
The current Kansas basketball team, with or without Darryn Peterson, is better than the last two or three KU teams. There is little doubt about that. In the end, those players deciding that Kansas wasn't the place for them may have worked out for everyone.
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