Jeff Hawkins doesn’t have a Christmas wish list this year.
“I really don’t want any presents,” the Kansas University red-shirt freshman guard said. “I just want to be with my family and relax at the house.”
When he wasn’t relaxing or interacting with his family, Hawkins planned to spend his spare time watching television — not bowl games, not movies and not tapes of KU games.
Hawkins has been watching and will continue to check out tape from his days as an all-state basketball player at Kansas City Sumner Academy.
“Sometimes I doubt myself,” Hawkins said. “But when I watched some of those old games I know I can still do some of the same stuff. It’s all about having confidence.”
Thus the problem.
“Comparing myself to my senior year of high school, I had a lot of confidence,” said Hawkins, who averaged 19.6 points, 4.5 assists and 2.6 steals a game as a Sumner Academy senior. “This year I have to get my confidence level up, and that’s what I’m trying to work on.”
Hawkins, aptly nicknamed J-Hawk, had a bright beginning to his college career after sitting out last season because of a red shirt. He scored 16 points in just 18 minutes in KU’s exhibition wins over EA Sports and Washburn.
Hawkins connected on six of nine field goals and looked like he had helped answer the question about the Jayhawks’ depth. Then Hawkins came up empty in the season opener against Holy Cross. Next, he made three of four free throws in nine minutes against UNC Greensboro.
Then he hit a sinking spell.
Hawkins logged one minute in both of KU’s losses against North Carolina and Florida at the Preseason NIT in New York City. Back in Lawrence, he played a career-high 15 minutes versus Division II Central Missouri State, but missed all five of his shots. Against Oregon, he mopped up, and he didn’t play at all at Tulsa.
“It’s been tough,” Hawkins said. “But it’s just like my freshman year of high school, from playing in the eighth grade and starting. You have to work your way up. It’s just a tough process, but it all works out in the long run.”
Or at least in the last two games.
Hawkins scored a career-high six points in 15 minutes in the Jayhawks’ rout of Emporia State on Dec. 14. And he needed only three minutes of court time to tally four points — which happened to be the only points off the KU bench — against UCLA on Saturday.
“Jeff has gotten better,” KU coach Roy Williams said. “He’s working every day in practice.”
Williams is using Hawkins at both point guard and shooting guard and, the KU coach said, “I think with time he’s going to feel more comfortable with that.”
Hawkins, who was a National Merit Scholar semifinalist in high school, is smart enough to know his days of scoring 42 points in a game — as he once did at Sumner Academy — are over. Still, he also knows Williams is counting on him to contribute off the bench.
“I feel my season is going pretty good, but I need to really focus on the things that coach wants me to do,” Hawkins said. “I understand the game a little more than I did last year, but I feel that I’m worried about making too many mistakes, and sometimes that leads me into making another mistake.”
