The chants that rained down from the Allen Fieldhouse bleachers on Feb. 3 had a bit of a hallucinatory quality — what with the early stage of the game at which they began, their borderline adversarial nature toward the Kansas players currently on the court, the unlikeliness that the rotational player for whom they were cheering had become such a fan favorite so early in his career.
But there they were, three minutes into KU’s home battle with then-No. 8 Iowa State: “Flo-ry! Flo-ry!” and soon enough “We want Flory! We want Flory!”
“That’s love,” teammate AJ Storr said after the game, which 37 minutes of game time later turned into one of the Jayhawks’ best wins of the season. “That’s definitely love.”
How did the love get so intense? How did the KU fan base get to a point where it was cheering for its freshman to take the floor — at the expense of a longtime crowd-pleaser in senior KJ Adams, who had battled through emotional adversity and grown up for four years in Lawrence, and who just two days prior to the chants said in a radio interview he felt he had passed the torch of fan-favorite status to Bidunga?
It had a lot to do with some of the inconceivable losses KU suffered in conference play. In fact, the team would sink far lower in the weeks following that Feb. 3 victory, lower even than after the double-overtime home loss to Houston and 21-point blown lead on the road at Baylor that had helped inspire the chants for Bidunga.
But it had a lot more to do with Bidunga himself, his electrifying shot-blocking and lob-catching ability, and particularly the immense growth he had shone when playing alongside fifth-year senior center Hunter Dickinson, the man he was expected to back up all season.
The season has been defined by peaks and plateaus — precious few valleys — for the 6-foot-9 Congolese freshman with a 7-foot-2 wingspan, and a protracted series of undistinguished performances late in conference play took some of the luster off his campaign. He’s looked overmatched in the post against big veteran forwards at times, not even necessarily the most talented ones, and especially overwhelmed when he has to put the ball on the floor instead of finishing a lob or throwing in a quick turnaround hook shot. But he has rarely if ever looked out of place on a team composed primarily of fourth- and fifth-year seniors.
West center Flory Bidunga (40) dunks past East forward Cooper Flagg (32) during the first quarter of the McDonald’s All-American boys basketball game Tuesday, April 2, 2024, in Houston.
How it began
Long before KU coach Bill Self was applying superlative after well-deserved superlative to next year’s freshman guard Darryn Peterson, a recently projected top pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, Self had used some only slightly more measured praise to describe Bidunga. In a preseason interview with the Field of 68, he called Bidunga “the best prospect we’ve had here without question since Josh (Jackson)” in the class of 2016.
Bidunga grew up playing soccer in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, before moving to, of all places, Kokomo, Indiana, to play basketball, where he quickly rose to become a consensus top player at his position and a McDonald’s All-American.
“Flory is an elite athlete,” Self said in a press release when he signed. “He can play above the rim. He changes ends as well as anybody. He’s getting stronger and developing more offensive skill. He is probably as good a prospect that we’ve had inside in quite some time.”
The elephant in the room for KU was the continued presence of the second-team All-American center Dickinson. It never looked likely Dickinson would depart after his first season in Lawrence, but the prospect of him teaming up with Bidunga wasn’t set in stone until he officially announced his return to the Jayhawks on April 26, saying about a month later of Bidunga that he planned to “try to teach him everything I know, try to help him out in any way I can, and try to make sure he maximizes his potential.”
Figuring out how to pair the two left Self with a bit of a quandary, as he outlined at an offseason event in Topeka in June.
“We got to figure out who he is and how he impacts us and what he can do to help,” Self said of Bidunga. “Because he’s really not tall — 6-7, 6-7 and a half — but he’s a terrific, freakish type (of) athlete that can change directions, that can jump, that can put pressure on the rim. He can do a lot of things. But can he play with Hunter, or how does it work?”
Michigan State forward Coen Carr (55) has his shot blocked by Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024, in Atlanta.
Rise of the two-big lineup
The early conclusion — somewhat surprisingly in retrospect — was that he could not, at least not often. Self said prior to KU’s exhibition game against Washburn that the most likely occasion for the two to play together would be in a zone defense, which of course is quite rare for the Jayhawks. (KU briefly threw out a zone in Manhattan on Feb. 8 this year and that was about it.)
“Let’s get good at being who we are and then maybe branch off after that,” Self said, “as opposed to trying to figure out ways to kind of tinker right now.”
The time to tinker arrived a bit earlier than perhaps anyone including Self expected. Bidunga showed promise from the beginning with six points and three boards in his very first shift on the court as a Jayhawk and ended the season opener against Howard with 13 points on a perfect 6-for-6 shooting, but KU unlocked something new with its freshman eight days later in the Champions Classic against Michigan State. With Adams nursing an ankle injury and the Spartans throwing out two big men, Self made the choice to go to Bidunga and Dickinson at the same time, a lineup KU had only practiced “for 20 minutes one day.”
Dickinson, who demolished the Spartans for 28 points and 12 rebounds, liked it.
“Playing with him makes it really easy, because If I’m able to set a screen and roll and the guy doesn’t step up, I can get a free run to the lane,” he said. “Or if they step up, I just got to throw it anywhere near the backboard, he’s going to go get it.”
A week later against UNC Wilmington, a game in which Bidunga hurt his ankle, Self said of the two-big lineup, “I think we need to play that way.”
“I think it just keeps our best players in the game, and Flory’s an athlete that can block and alter,” Self added. “He probably needs to play closer to 20 minutes than he does 12 or 15.”
Finding the right number for Bidunga’s minutes became an ongoing challenge throughout the year, particularly as Adams continued to provide incalculable value to the Jayhawks because of his ability to switch on the defensive end, but also didn’t do much as a rebounder until the very end of the year.
In any case, another week later in the fast-paced nonconference slate, Bidunga got an opportunity to prove his mettle in a solo setting for the first time, on a big stage. Dickinson got ejected midway through the second half of a Las Vegas showdown against Duke over Thanksgiving.
“Everybody was jacked after Hunt got out,” Bidunga said. “You have to do it for Kansas because that’s not like something personal, that’s Duke against Kansas. And then I think we put a show on when Hunt got out. You know, we played our ass off. They played their ass off too, but it ended up that we (won) the game.”
Adams was the star of the night as he curtailed the production of future No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg, but Bidunga scored six points and grabbed eight rebounds, combining with Adams to force a game-defining stop on Kon Knueppel in the final minute. As Self put it, “The best thing about Hunter not being in the game was that Flory was.”
Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) pulls in an offensive rebound against Houston during the first half on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
Plateauing and rising above it
Self did not necessarily hold true to his vow to play Bidunga more, largely because the freshman center started to struggle. Not coincidentally, the team struggled with him. In games against Creighton, Missouri and N.C. State, the first two of which KU lost, he scored three cumulative points and added only 11 rebounds; his seven minutes in each of the last two games were his lowest totals of the season.
However, another loss, this time a stunner at home against West Virginia, ended up being the springboard for Bidunga’s continued improvement.
Of course, he made a rookie mistake, leaping in the air on a shot fake, committing the foul that led directly to Javon Small’s game-winning free throw. But one of the main reasons KU even made it all the way back from a double-digit deficit was Bidunga’s unexpected ability to do just what he was trying to do against Small: defend a guard on the perimeter. Throughout the second half, he managed to move laterally quite smoothly against WVU’s guards, demonstrating some of the same switchability that had been Adams’ hallmark; he’s been called upon to do it at times in the months since, albeit less often.
“It’s not often you see a 6-9 guy pick up a point guard 94 feet,” teammate Zeke Mayo said. “That’s just incredible. His athleticism, it really was on display tonight, and then (he) obviously came up huge with some offensive rebounds, some great looks from the guys when he’s posting up and sealing inside, and he just played an overall fantastic game.”
The athleticism was even more visible five days later in a six-block showing at UCF, when at one point he slapped away a jump shot by Benny Williams, snagged the ball and took it all the way for a fast-break slam as part of what Self called “as athletic a play as anybody’s made for us so far this year.”
Midway through the month, Adams suffered a dislocated shoulder when he collided with Iowa State’s Demarion Watson at Hilton Coliseum on Jan. 15. The senior made a rapid recovery, missing just three games, but the injury provided an opportunity for Bidunga to earn the first five starts of his career.
At the time, as Self explained when he gave Bidunga his first start against Kansas State, the combination of Bidunga and Dickinson was the best analytical pairing KU had “when you talk about points per possession offensively and points given up defensively.”
Bidunga struggled with foul trouble that first game, but responded days later at TCU with his first-ever double-double, with four more blocks for good measure, doing the majority of his damage in a single half. He had another one against UCF with five blocks and in between played his best pure offensive game, scoring 19 points in a career-high 36 minutes against Houston.
“He’s a monster, isn’t he?” said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, who knows a thing or two about athletic, long-limbed big men.
That was the string of performances that preceded a game against Baylor in which Bidunga got benched for 16 of 20 minutes in a second half that saw the Bears score 60 points and erase a 21-point deficit. Self said postgame he didn’t play Bidunga down the stretch because he didn’t score, a comment that drew the ire of KU fans.
Hence the chants for Flory two days later against ISU.
Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) fights for position with Arizona forward Tobe Awaka (30) during the second half on Saturday, March 8, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
Now what?
As those chants eventually faded, so too did a bit of the hype surrounding Bidunga’s performances, in part because of a reason Self immediately identified after the ISU game: “They have a chance to chant whatever they want, and I love Flory too and I want Flory to play too, but there was no doubt that KJ Adams was a guy that had to be on the floor tonight because he relieved all pressure from a ball-handling standpoint too.”
The much-maligned Adams has made it difficult for Self to keep him off the court — and Self likes to keep him on the court to begin with. He’s been far more aggressive in the right moments on the offensive end, scoring in double digits seven times since returning from injury compared to five times before. (It helps that he’s shooting free throws at 75% compared to 60% in the previous three years of his career.) And while Bidunga has the superior length and the shot-blocking ability, Adams still has the strength and discipline needed to deal with a wide-range of 4-man post threats from Kansas State’s Coleman Hawkins to Houston’s J’Wan Roberts, while also switching onto guards on the perimeter as needed.
Adams played the best game of his career in a home loss to Texas Tech, when he scored 21 points and added 13 rebounds; Bidunga’s 13 minutes in that game were his second fewest of conference play.
Meanwhile, when he has gotten into the game, the freshman seems to have plateaued once more. He’s shooting less efficiently, going 17-for-29 (58.6%) from the field between his return to the bench and the end of the regular season compared to 64-for-81 (79.0%) before; he’s also just 6-for-16 (37.5%) at the free-throw line compared to 18-for-29 (62.1%). He continues to block shots as well as anyone in the league, but outside of a 13-rebound second half against Oklahoma State on Feb. 22 hasn’t contributed nearly as much as he once did.
That performance at least demonstrated anew that Bidunga doesn’t need to be a focal point or a starter to make significant contributions — something that was clear from his opening games at KU.
He’s already shown that he can handle big moments — think Duke or Houston — and for KU to reach its ceiling in March he may need to do so again.
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