LAWRENCE, Kansas — When last year’s NCAA Tournament bracket was announced, the first thing Kansas head coach Bill Self did, after seeing his Jayhawks earned a No. 1 seed, was look for where UConn was.
Self, a two-time national champion and a Basketball Hall of Famer, told reporters in Lawrence on Thursday that he “thought it was UConn and everybody else last year.”
Self was hospitalized hours before the first game of the Big 12 Tournament with a heart issue and missed all of the Jayhawks’ postseason games as he recovered, including their loss to Arkansas in the Round of 32. If they’d won that game, the Jayhawks would’ve met UConn in the Sweet 16 in Las Vegas.
“It never came to that, but that, to me, would’ve put us in the hardest draw in the bracket being a one-seed having to go against them because I thought they were red hot,” he said. “And they were.”
UConn, of course, routed Arkansas 88-65 and went on to win the program’s fifth national championship. Now, the last two national champions, Kansas winning it all in 2022, meet Friday at the historic Phog Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.
“At this point, right now, in this moment, playing the defending national champions that is on a roll right now in early December is as big a game as I can ever remember, in early December,” Self said, asserting that Friday’s matchup probably won’t be the biggest matchup either team plays this season. “But I think both teams would probably agree it’s about as big as it could be on December 1.”
Kansas, 6-1 and ranked No. 5 in the country, lost to now-No. 3 Marquette in the loaded Maui Invitational but rebounded with a win over No. 9 Tennessee and snuck away with a 71-63 win on a rough shooting night against Eastern Illinois on Monday.
UConn, which had its own shooting woes to start the week, is 7-0 and set the NCAA record for the most consecutive double-digit wins over nonconference opponents with its 24th straight coming in an 84-64 win over New Hampshire.
Head coach Dan Hurley said the Huskies had ice cream brought into the Werth Champions Center from UConn’s Dairy Bar after practice on Wednesday to celebrate.
“They’ve got all the pieces,” Self said. “They’re a complete team. They could win it again this year. Danny’s got a good enough bunch that they could do that and of course they run great stuff; (they’re) well-drilled and everything else. So I don’t see a lot of glaring-type deficiencies. I see a team that will continue to get better and better, and they’re playing without one of their very best players (Stephon Castle).”
Hurley said he doesn’t “see any chance” for Castle, the highly touted freshman guard, to play Friday as he recovers from a knee injury that’s kept him out the last five games.
Hurley and Self, each vying to be “the premiere program in college basketball,” Hurley said, met back when Self recruited some of Hurley’s high school players when he coached at Saint Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey.
Recently, especially in the last year, the coaches have competed for some of the nation’s top recruits.
In the transfer portal over the summer, Kansas landed veteran Towson guard Nick Timberlake, who was heavily pursued by the Huskies. Less than two months later, UConn got Rutgers’ guard Cam Spencer, who is now leading the Huskies in scoring with 16.3 points per game and shooting a team-high 47.8% from 3.
“I don’t really think about (coaching against Self) a whole lot,” Hurley said. “But obviously, out of timeouts you’ve got to be prepared for things, trends that you see. He’s an excellent coach, one of the best coaches in his generation of college basketball, so it’s a great challenge just to try to beat his team. Great coaches like that, they make it hard for you to beat their team.”
Depth a question for Kansas
With one of the best positional matchups of the year occurring between Donovan Clingan and Hunter Dickinson down low, the better team effort will likely be the deciding factor in Friday’s game.
Kansas has had an issue with scoring depth to start the season – the Jayhawks have three players (Dickinson, Kevin McCullar Jr. and K.J. Adams) who make up for 62% of their scoring per game and don’t have any players averaging 15 minutes or more per game off the bench.
“I think we’re both similar in a way, we lost some incredible players. They lost a lottery pick in (Jalen) Wilson, who was one of the best players in the country last year, we obviously lost a lot too,” Hurley said. “We’ve got some pretty high-level, kind of a ‘Big Four’ that we have with some older guys with a lot of experience and production at this level and then we’re relying on some freshmen to give us quality minutes. I think you can see both of us kind of struggling to bring those freshmen along at times, so I think that both teams will be a lot better in February, March or April than we are right now.”
McCullar and Dickinson, No. 1 and 2 on the team in scoring with 21.7 and 18.1 points per game, respectively, have each taken 91 shots on the year – almost twice as many as Adams, who is third on the team with 49 and averages 10.9 points on 73.5% shooting from the field.
Potential Clingan-Johnson tandem
Hurley has mentioned the possibility of playing Clingan and 6-10 backup Samson Johnson on the court together, as Johnson provides unique ability as a movement center and an extremely athletic rim-runner and shot blocker. Friday’s game, with Dickinson and Adams looming in the Kansas frontcourt, could be one where the tandem could find some time together.
“We need the mature guys on the court, we need the men on Friday,” Hurley said. “So whatever freshmen are ready to go out there and help us that way in terms of physicality, in terms of maturity, we’re gonna play those guys, but this looks like more of a game where Sam could be in there with Donovan based on their size.”
Johnson, a junior who’s waited his turn, is averaging 7.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 19.1 minutes per game. He broke out in the Empire Classic finale against then-No. 15 Texas, playing himself to a career-high 27 minutes and finishing with 15 points, eight rebounds and a pair of blocks.
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