Here’s what Bill Self learned from Kansas basketball’s exhibition loss against Arkansas

Posted by Admin October 26, 2024 Basketball

Kansas basketball took a road trip to face Arkansas for an exhibition game, and the Jayhawks returned home Friday night with an 85-69 loss.

It was clear head coach Bill Self’s squad missed having graduate center Hunter Dickinson, junior guard Rylan Griffen and graduate guard Shakeel Moore, with all three out due to injury. Kansas led for less than 30 seconds of the 40-minute exhibition, which was played across four quarters. In fact, the Jayhawks never out-scored the Razorbacks in a quarter.

Here are a few takeaways from the game:

Kansas basketball vs Arkansas recap: Razorbacks defeat Jayhawks in exhibition matchup

This is what stood out to Bill Self

Self reiterated to reporters postgame that this isn’t the Kansas team that people will see in the regular season.

He also noted Arkansas’ three lead guards were much better than Kansas’, just as the Razorbacks’ bigs were much better than the Jayhawks’. He described Arkansas’ trio of guards as the best Kansas will face this season, and added the Razorbacks have rim protection behind them.

Self isn’t going to leave happy, but he also isn’t going to leave discouraged. As challenging as the evening was, he felt his side missed a number of open looks and made some unforced turnovers. And when there’s a free-throw disparity like there was Friday, with Arkansas shooting 23-for-28 to KU’s 4-for-10, odds are there’s going to be a difference in the final score like there was.

Even with Griffen out, Kansas still had some high-profile newcomers available, like junior guard AJ Storr and senior guard Zeke Mayo. Neither had great nights. Of the newcomers, Self only really praised freshman guard Rakease Passmore.

This is why Rakease Passmore earned praise

Graduate guard Dajuan Harris Jr. led Kansas and all scorers with 26 points, on 11-for-17 shooting from the field and 4-for-5 shooting from behind the arc. But from Self’s perspective, the measure for success with Harris for the Jayhawks is if his defense is better than the opposing guard’s offense. Friday, that didn’t happen.

Passmore, who finished with 11 points and six rebounds, was Kansas’ best player on the night in Self’s mind because of how Passmore handled his role. The Jayhawks’ other newcomers, Self outlined, looked slow and lost. However, Self put a lot of that on himself because they weren’t running things they would have in a regular season game and Dickinson wasn’t out there in order to allow them to play how they have in practice.

This was Dajuan Harris Jr.’s takeaway

Harris wants to take advantage of his last year in college, and go out with a bang. Of course, he wanted to start off well with this exhibition against Arkansas. However, he wasn’t panicking about the state of Kansas’ season after the loss.

Harris said the Jayhawks needed to be humbled like this, and that they’ll learn from it as they continue to practice. He also mentioned they need to get their injured guys back. In the long run, this will benefit them.

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.