Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson Dealing With Undisclosed Knee Injury
Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks fell to UCF on Wednesday evening as the Knights’ home debut in the Big 12 Conference ended in dream-like fashion, a 65-60 win over the No. 3 team in the country.
Kansas blew a 16-point first-half lead in the loss and is now 1-1 in Big 12 play. The loss kills a chance for Kansas to secure the No. 1 spot in the AP Poll after both Purdue and Houston lost on Tuesday, but it sounds like there could be bigger issues for the Jayhawks to deal with.
In his post-game interview, Coach Self mentioned that star center Hunter Dickinson is dealing with what he called “a bad knee,” revealing that the Jayhawks’ top player wasn’t at 100%.
When asked about the timing of bringing Dickinson back into the game and why it didn’t happen earlier, this is what Self had to say.
“I don’t know, because he’s got a bad knee,” Self said. ” If he didn’t have a bad knee, I’d say yes, for sure. But yeah, he’s been struggling with his knee and practice and everything. So we knew going into it. It would be really good if we could get him less minutes. He told me even in the first half when things were going well, that he was really laboring. I don’t think that’s what cost us. I think that’s when four other players kind of figure out ‘Okay, we don’t have him, we need to really take better care of the ball and execute better and get what we want as opposed to maybe being loose with it.”
There had been no indication that Dickinson was dealing with a knee injury before the postgame interview, but now it’s a major storyline to keep up with heading into the weekend.
The impact that Dickinson has had for KU cannot be overstated, as he’s averaging 18.9 points and 11.9 rebounds per game in 2023-24. Having him healthy down the stretch is going to be vital to the Jayhawks’ success in a brutal conference slate.
The Jayhawks are set to host No. 9 Oklahoma this weekend, with the Sooners coming off a road loss to TCU. There’s no rest for the weary in this conference. Welcome to Big 12 basketball.
