As Kansas coach Bill Self will tell you — and indeed, as he told reporters Wednesday — a scrimmage “isn’t real ball, so it’s not worth really evaluating or spending much time on it.”
That may be, but for a few minutes at the end of Wednesday afternoon’s Bill Self Basketball Camps exhibition at Allen Fieldhouse, the KU veterans nevertheless ratcheted up the intensity.
Trailing 59-50 in a game set to be played to 60 points, the blue team — an experienced side featuring KJ Adams Jr., Hunter Dickinson, Dajuan Harris Jr., Nick Timberlake and walk-on Wilder Evers — scored 12 straight points, culminating in back-to-back Timberlake 3-pointers, to beat out an opportunistic red squad for the victory.
Dickinson and Timberlake had both been cold from the field as their opponents, a lineup consisting primarily of the Jayhawks’ three freshmen and returning guard Kevin McCullar Jr., stretched a lead to double digits at one point. But the pair of transfers became dominant late, as Dickinson started to finish with ease inside, ending up with 19 points to lead all scorers in the exhibition.
The climactic moment of the scrimmage came midway through the blue team’s late surge, as Adams went up high to block a potentially game-winning layup from freshman Elmarko Jackson, who slammed down hard to the ground. Jackson got up promptly, but it was a dicey moment.
“I got nervous a little bit,” McCullar said afterward. “We’re going to need both of them.”
Adams racked up 16 points and was potentially the scrimmage’s most impressive player, going hard into the paint with ease, finishing a coast-to-coast drive shortly before the halftime break and trying out the occasional jumper. His efforts to improve his jump shot have been a frequent topic of conversation during the offseason, and he went 1-for-2 on a pair of contested jumpers — one a fadeaway, one a stepback — on Wednesday.
Kansas forward K.J. Adams Jr. (24) delivers a dunk during a scrimmage before the Bill Self basketball campers on Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
“He already does so many great things,” McCullar said. “Knocking down the shot consistently is going to be great for him.”
Jackson, for his part, showed off supreme athleticism, particularly in the second half, as he scored 10 of his 12 points in what became a 17-5 run. Fellow freshmen Jamari McDowell (13 points) and the newly arrived Marcus Adams Jr. (12 more) were both deadly from long range.
Former manager Patrick Cassidy, who recently became a walk-on, hit three 3s of his own.
“He’s huge for us,” McCullar said. “Last year he helped us a lot. We were down bodies, whether that was the managers were out, somebody’s sick, anything — he would step in and play, and he got some game too, so he’s been helping us a lot.”
Kansas alumni Brandon Rush and Tyshawn Taylor also took to the court Wednesday, playing for the red and blue teams, respectively, but neither made as much of an impact as Ben McLemore did last week.
Walk-ons Justin Cross and Michael Jankovich were injured and Charlie McCarthy was recovering from injury, Self said. Arterio Morris was not in attendance.
More from Self
Self didn’t watch the scrimmage, but, fresh off seeing Christian Braun win the NBA Finals with the Denver Nuggets on Monday (“All he does is win”), spoke to media afterward on several topics.
Regarding the continuing adaptation of Dickinson to KU’s system, Self said the transition has been seamless so far, but that Dickinson still has work to do to match the Jayhawks’ pace of play.
“He’s not used to playing the way that we’ll play, so the activity level is probably going to be a little different than what he has been accustomed to,” he said, “because when you’re designed to be the center point of everything — ‘Let’s slow it down and make sure he gets a touch’ — we’re going to (instead) make sure he gets a touch as long as he can play at the pace we want him to play at.”
He added that Dickinson should be excited to play with Harris, who will “get him some easy baskets.”
The Jayhawks have added recent walk-ons like Cross and Chris Carter, but still have just 10 scholarship players on the roster out of a possible 13 (or 12 if Kansas decides to remove one-third of its self-penalized three-scholarship reduction over each of the next three years).
“I actually like where we’re at from a roster standpoint,” Self said. “We may add one, who knows, but I like where we’re at because I think everybody could be content, at least maybe not with the actual number of minutes, but at least the role they’ll play considering we have less guys on our team.”
Kansas head coach Bill Self laughs with Kansas forward Marcus Adams Jr. before a scrimmage before the Bill Self basketball campers on Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
Final stats
Red team: McDowell 13, M. Adams 12, Jackson 12, Cassidy 9, McCullar 7, Rush 4, Wilhite 2
Blue team: Dickinson 19, K. Adams 16, Timberlake 11, Evers 10, Harris 2, Taylor 2
