KU sophomore Dajuan Harris no longer headed to Spain for summer exhibition tour

By Matt Tait     Jul 28, 2021

Gregg Ellman
Kansas freshman Dajuan Harris Jr. talks with head coach Bill Self during a game against TCU Tuesday night at Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas on January 5, 2021. (Photo/Gregg Ellman)

Kansas point guard Dajuan Harris’ August exhibition trip to Spain has been called off after the U.S. State Department added the country to its “Do Not Travel” list over concerns about COVID-19.

According to an email from Luke MacDougall, assistant director of operations and media services for USA East Coast Basketball, the organization decided to cancel the trip after making a call to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC told the basketball club that “the spiking rate of infection going on in Spain is primarily ages 10-23.”

“After speaking with the coaches, we have chosen to put everyone’s health and safety first,” MacDougall said in the email.

Harris and the rest of the Red team roster were supposed to report to training camp at Manhattan College in New York City on Saturday.

The USA East Coast all-star team (formerly known as the East Coast All Stars) was also planning to send a White team and a Blue team to Spain. Hall of Famer and former KU head coach, Larry Brown, originally was slated to coach Harris and the Red team.

But earlier this week it was announced that Brown, 80, would not make the trip because of a contact tracing situation.

Now, no one else is going either.

Harris, the KU sophomore who played in all 30 games for the Jayhawks last season, was to be joined on the Red team are brothers Buddy and Jimmy Boeheim, of Syracuse, Western Connecticut State’s Matthew Turner, Paul Mulcahy (Rutgers), Matthew Kelly (Assumption), Alyn Breed (Providence), Joey Baker (Duke), Evan Battey (Colorado) and Patrick McCaffery (Iowa).

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.