Bill Self still has one big question about Kansas – and it goes beyond Darryn Peterson
The big debate within the broader basketball community hinges on Darryn Peterson’s durability and whether the questions surrounding him will cost the highly touted Kansas freshman the No. 1 spot in the NBA draft.
How serious are the hamstring problems and cramps that have limited Peterson to playing in 17 of his team’s 28 games and only 465 of the 1,130 minutes his team has played?
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Is he tender, is he disinterested or is he really that compromised by injuries? Are these health issues that will resolve themselves with some time, or will durability issues follow him long-term until he turns pro?
“Everyone has an opinion about it:” Darryn Peterson of Kansas tells the injury story
Force yourself to look at it from a different perspective, and perhaps you might even convince yourself that Peterson persists in continuing to play and not shut it down and proceed straight to the NBA lottery.
Either way, these are questions NBA evaluators need to consider.
The biggest question on Bill Self’s mind: can his team, his squad, with or without Peterson on the court: develop the consistency needed to make a breakthrough in the NCAA Tournament?
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On his good nights, No. 14 Kansas looks like a bruiser with enough poise and courage to be a March Madness threat.
“Our ceiling is high,” Self said on ESPN, minutes after knocking off No. 4 Houston in a 69-56 win, “but we can also play at any level.”
Bad Kansas, then good Kansas. The good Jayhawks show up against Houston
The last two games have illustrated the bipolarity of this team. The Jayhawks were painful in a blowout loss to Cincinnati, a team on the wrong side of the March Madness bubble. Two days later, Kansas defeated a Houston team with Final Four potential.
We should have known a pickup performance was coming. A couple of things you need to know about Self: He doesn’t lose back-to-back home games. And he doesn’t lose at home on Big Monday. Period.
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Big Monday is a good test of a team’s durability because it brings teams back to action two days after the previous game. In this way, it mimics the March Madness structure of playing twice in three days.
Houston was dead-legged at Allen Fieldhouse. Two days after losing to Arizona and a week after losing to Iowa State, the Cougars shot 32 percent against Kansas. That’s three straight losses for Houston against top-15 teams in the nation’s toughest conference.
“We just ran out of steam,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said.
Compare Houston’s fatigued performance to that of Kansas, which continued to play better as the game went on.
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Afterward, Self continued to look at the score printout during a postgame interview with Scott Van Pelt.
He couldn’t have cared less that Flory Bidunga only scored four points, because the Kansas big man made life miserable for Houston on the other end of the court.
“Totally dominant,” Self said of Bidunga.
Self also noted that Tre White shook himself out of his shooting slump to score a season-high 23 points.
“He was great tonight,” Self said.
And while he didn’t mention it, it couldn’t have been lost on Self that Peterson played 30 minutes. He didn’t play great, but he made some significant baskets. Not the best or worst on the court, but a guy on the court all the same for most of the game, long enough to score 14 points.
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Darryn Peterson puts the hot takes to rest for one night anyway
At no point in the game could you rationally believe that Kansas would be better off parting ways with Peterson, as some have recently suggested.
Everyone thinks highly of Peterson, and that includes the personalities who wield the biggest megaphones.
“I can’t trust him,” ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said recently.
This counts as a mild opinion.
Now, for the spicy:
“Sometimes a divorce is good for everyone involved,” Dick Vitale wrote on social media after the Cincinnati loss, and “I firmly believe it needs to happen NOW (in Kansas). The Darryn Peterson soap opera needs to end.”
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Well, that’s one thing.
Here’s an alternative: Kansas can’t count on Peterson as the driving force behind a Final Four run. He’s talented, but unreliable. The Jayhawks probably need him on the court, contributing, to advance to the final weekend of the tournament, but they will also need Bidunga’s elite defense and big performances from White and Melvin Council Jr., as the Jayhawks got against Houston.
At times this season, Self has seemed understandably frustrated by Peterson’s sporadic availability.
“There’s a way (for Peterson) to change the narrative. Play. Finish,” the veteran Kansas coach said earlier this season.
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Now, Self acknowledges that Kansas playing so many minutes without the future NBA lottery pick has “forced our other guys to grow up.”
This is the kind of compliment that follows an impressive victory. Just two days earlier, Self had called his team weak, not just Peterson, but the entire team dangerous.
From soft to firm, in two days.
Kansas has now beaten Arizona, Iowa State and Houston. This is the caliber of opponents a team must be able to handle to reach April.
Yet not even Self seems to know what to expect from his team from game to game or whether Peterson will be on the field any minute.
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“I have a good idea of who we need to be,” Self said. “Do I know who we are? No. But I still think we have time to figure it out.”
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bill Self has a key question about Kansas that goes beyond Darryn Peterson