It was clear nearly a year before Darryn Peterson donned a Kansas jersey for the first time that regardless of how his lone season with the Jayhawks unfolded, he would be one of the most talented players ever to wear the crimson and blue. That’s because head coach Bill Self did not hesitate to call him the best player he has recruited at KU.
The only players KU has landed in the recruiting era who received higher ratings on 247Sports than Peterson coming out of high school were Andrew Wiggins in the 2013 class and Josh Jackson in the 2016 class. But Self asserted that Peterson was in a category all his own when it came to the combination of immediate readiness and long-term upside.
“I’ve said all along I think that Sherron (Collins) is the best basketball player that we’ve recruited since I’ve been here,” Self said on Dec. 30, 2024, a day before Peterson took in his first game at the Phog. “And if you stop and think about who would be next, you could say Wiggs, you could say Joel (Embiid), even though Joel was a prospect more than a player at that time, and there’s one other name that comes to mind — that’s Josh Jackson.
“To me, Darryn’s the best player we’ve recruited since we’ve been here, when you talk about a player and a combination of a player and a prospect. I think that’s without question.”
That comment put Peterson in rarefied air from the start. And over the course of his year with the Jayhawks, he has demonstrated an unparalleled level of pure scoring ability — when he got to the rim again and again versus TCU, when he only needed a half to demolish Baylor and BYU, when he shook off a bad game to make the tying and winning 3s at Texas Tech and in one of his smoothest overall performances yet against Kansas State
But inconsistent availability, even as late as mid-February, as he battled a variety of ailments has marred Peterson’s freshman season. And while he will surely go on to great success in the NBA, perhaps even as the top pick in the draft this June, how he is remembered by KU fans will have quite a lot to do with what he accomplishes in March.
Here’s a look at a pair of one-and-done prospects who came in with their own high billing — Wiggins and Jackson — and how that translated to the NCAA Tournament.
Kansas guard Andrew Wiggins splits defenders during the Jayhawks 80-69 win against the Eastern Kentucky Colonels Friday at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.
WIGGINS
While Andrew Wiggins himself may not have embraced the spotlight over the course of his recruitment out of Huntington Prep in West Virginia, that didn’t stop fans and media from saddling him with some of the greatest expectations of any high school prospect in recent memory. A Sports Illustrated profile three months before Wiggins made his commitment decision that had a recruiting analyst forecasting he could become “the Michael Jordan of Canada” also featured a favorable comparison to Tracy McGrady and the projection of a “(Kevin) Durant-like impact” if he went to Florida State.
Instead, the Vaughan, Ontario, native joined Kansas for the 2013 recruiting class, which also included an unheralded but fast-rising 7-footer in Embiid, Conner Frankamp, Brannen Greene, former Towson signee Frank Mason and Wayne Selden Jr.
All six played extensively on a young team whose returning experience included junior guard Naadir Tharpe and sophomore forward Perry Ellis. Wiggins, a small forward, led the team in scoring with 17.1 points per game and added 5.9 rebounds and a team-high 1.2 steals. He received consensus second-team All-American honors.
While he was the Jayhawks’ top defender in his sole year at the collegiate level, he also put together what is still the best scoring season by a freshman in program history, narrowly exceeding Ben McLemore and Jackson. That included the best single-game point total for a freshman Jayhawk when he racked up 41 points on 12-for-18 shooting at West Virginia, in the state where he played high school basketball. That effort, however, came in a loss, as did one of his other top performances on the year — 26 points and 11 rebounds at Florida in nonconference play — but of course he also featured as the leading scorer in six Big 12 wins as KU went 14-4 in the league and clinched its 10th straight league title, and then he dropped 30 in an overtime victory over Oklahoma State in the Big 12 tournament.
For as much as Wiggins accomplished over the course of the season, he did not get a defining March Madness moment like so many Jayhawk stars before and since.
KU was not operating at full strength in the tournament. Embiid, who had flashed his own sky-high potential over the course of the year and played himself into top NBA Draft consideration, suffered a stress fracture in his lower back in February and then aggravated it on March 1; he did not appear again after that point.
The Jayhawks earned a No. 2 seed after losing three of five ahead of Selection Sunday, and as a result drew No. 15 Eastern Kentucky in St. Louis. They did not necessarily dazzle against the Colonels, committing 13 first-half turnovers and going down as many as nine points. EKU led with nine minutes remaining but conceded a 9-0 run, capped off by Wiggins’ three-point play. Jamari Traylor helped seal the deal late. Wiggins led all scorers with 19 points — without even making a 3-pointer, as KU was 0-for-7 from beyond the arc — and Traylor and Frankamp’s contributions off the bench received plenty of recognition in sending KU on to the second round against No. 10 seed Stanford.
The Jayhawks would have been able to get Embiid back if they had won to reach the Sweet 16. Instead, they fell 60-57 to the Cardinal, troubled by Stanford’s length and zone defense, and Wiggins’ career ended on a decidedly sour note with four points on 1-for-6 shooting, four rebounds and four turnovers.
He said after the game that wherever he went on the court he felt like he was running into three Stanford players, calling it the worst game of his life, and added, “I wasn’t there for my team. If I would have been there, we would have won for sure. If I would have played better, scored more, my team wins. I blame myself for this loss.”
As for how the actual game unfolded, Ellis and Traylor missed shots inside that could have tied the game with 1:17 to go and Stanford went up seven points with half a minute left. Frankamp knocked down two late 3s to prolong the game and had a chance at a third to force overtime but missed.
Self said afterward he didn’t think the result should affect what Wiggins accomplished the rest of the season. It was a grim end for the Canadian phenom and the rest of the young Jayhawks.
A week later, Wiggins declared for the draft. In June, he became the second KU player ever selected No. 1 overall, after Danny Manning. Embiid went third and, after two seasons derailed by a foot injury, became one of the most successful Jayhawks ever to play in the NBA. He still plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.
Wiggins got traded by the team that picked him first overall, the Cleveland Cavaliers, to Minnesota, where he was the NBA’s rookie of the year in 2015. Wiggins has since played for Golden State and Miami and was an All-Star and NBA champion with the Warriors in 2022.
Kansas guard Josh Jackson (11) drives against UC Davis guard Siler Schneider (5) during the first half on Friday, March 17, 2017 at BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
JACKSON
Coming out of high school, Josh Jackson was the highest-rated player in the history of 247Sports and the consensus No. 1 prospect in the 2016 class.
It might not come as a surprise, then, that Jackson managed to shine even in a lineup with eventual National Player of the Year Mason, Devonte’ Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk in the backcourt. Jackson averaged 16.3 points and 7.4 rebounds. One of his defining performances came on the road at Texas Tech, as Mason battled an illness and eventually fouled out, when Jackson played 40 minutes, posted 31 points and 11 boards and made the game-winning free throw to beat the Red Raiders 80-79.
Jackson encountered a number of off-court issues during his lone season with the Jayhawks. He was suspended for KU’s Big 12 tournament opener after mismanaging a traffic violation. The Jayhawks ended up suffering an upset loss to TCU in that game. He had also been charged with a misdemeanor for criminal damage to property in a very public case involving a member of the KU women’s basketball team, the affidavit for which was released the day before KU opened its tournament run against UC Davis. (He later reached a diversion agreement.)
Jackson was permitted to play in the NCAA Tournament, in which KU retained a No. 1 seed despite the loss to TCU. He said in the lead-up to the Jayhawks’ opener against UC Davis in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that he couldn’t remember another time he had missed a game, and discussed how excited he was to get going in the postseason.
Indeed, he came out strong against the Aggies with 11 first-half points and finished with 17, seven rebounds and two assists. He finished a lob from Graham with a dunk on a backdoor cut and impressed teammates with a couple of acrobatic finishes that helped fuel the Jayhawks’ run in the first half.
The next challenge for Jackson and KU came in the form of Michigan State, a team that had recruited him and also featured a pair of his former childhood teammates in Miles Bridges and Cassius Winston. Jackson, a Detroit native, started the game a little overexcited but finished it as the game’s leading scorer with 23 points on 9-for-16 shooting, scoring at all three levels and lifting KU to a 20-point win.
The second weekend of the tournament featured a fortuitous draw for the Jayhawks: They got assigned to play in Kansas City, Missouri, at what was then called the Sprint Center.
Jackson said prior to the Sweet 16 game against Purdue that he felt he still hadn’t “put it all together in one game.” But the matchup with the Boilermakers was much more about his teammates. With another contender for player of the year, Purdue forward Caleb Swanigan, on the floor, Mason scored 26 points and Graham added 26 more in a brilliant offensive showing as KU won 98-66. The freshman Jackson still compiled a 15-point, 12-rebound performance, his 12th double-double of the season.
The world never got to see what Jackson apparently putting it all together might have looked like (if he really hadn’t earlier in the season), as foul trouble limited him throughout the first half of the Elite Eight matchup with Oregon. He tallied another double-double in the span of the second half, and KU cut an 18-point deficit down to six, but the Jayhawks faltered in the final minutes and lost 74-60. That brought Mason’s career to an end without a Final Four trip. Graham and Mykhailiuk came back for another year and managed to make it to the Final Four, but Jackson was unsurprisingly one-and-done.
He went No. 4 overall in the 2017 draft to the Phoenix Suns, but only spent two seasons with the team before they traded him to Memphis. Jackson played for the Detroit Pistons and Sacramento Kings, and briefly signed with Toronto, but was out of the league by the fall of 2022.
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