“Baseball, that’s what I played,” Bragg said. “First base and pitcher. That was my dream. Then I got a little taller, started playing around, shooting, and I could shoot it from anywhere and it would go in.”

He has a killer mid-range jumper and can hit threes. The soft shooting touch that it sounds as if Bragg was blessed with from the time he picked up a basketball made the game easy for him. At the moment, it could be a factor in why he has found the game difficult in early season practices and exhibitions.

When you can make jumpers as if they are layups, moving closer to the hoop, where scoring often requires finishing through contact, can get delayed in a player’s development. Kansas coach Bill Self wants to get the most out of Bragg because his job is to win. Plus, the more complete player Bragg is when he leaves for the NBA, the higher he will be drafted, and in turn the easier it will be for Self to land other McDonald’s All-Americans.

Self appears to be pushing Bragg especially hard of late, noting that he has missed too many shots in close during practice and has “been in a funk.”

Bragg is not in his comfort zone and therefore might continue to get worse before he becomes a lot better. He didn’t look confident and didn’t play aggressively in the two exhibition games. But these are necessary growing pains for a player who has a big enough body, quick enough jump, and soft enough shooting touch to steal a bunch of points on put-backs, and to finish through contact more reliably and establish position on the block with more force.

Bragg also has the makings of a terrific defensive rebounder, but hasn’t shown it yet. He played 29 minutes in the two exhibition games and totaled eight points, six rebounds and six turnovers.

Not good.

Kansas needs much better out of him in tonight’s season-opener vs. Indiana, but if Bragg doesn’t deliver it, that doesn’t mean his star is fading. It means he’s getting worse before he gets better, a temporary condition experienced by many college basketball players.

Bragg doesn’t have a naturally nasty bone in his 6-foot-10, 240-pound body. His smile is his trademark, but it’s not a permanent roadblock toward developing a more rugged game. Self has a history of bringing out the nasty in laid-back players.

Remember when KU center Jeff Withey went scoreless at Missouri in a February 2012 game? He had a listless performance early in an ensuing practice. Self had Withey running steps in Allen Fieldhouse and didn’t let him back on the court for the rest of practice.

Withey responded by averaging 20.3 points, 12 rebounds and 6.3 blocks in the next three games and was a big factor in Kansas making it all the way to the national-title game.

Bragg will snap out of it, maybe as soon as Friday. The trigger could be something as simple as him scoring an old-fashioned three-point play near the hoop, or ripping a defensive rebound out of the hands of Indiana’s Thomas Bryant or beating the defense down court for a couple of early dunks in transition.

If he stays in a funk, that just means he’s still in the getting-worse phase that so often is a necessary step toward getting so much better.