Kansas G Johnny Furphy to Make First Career Start vs. Oklahoma
Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks announced on Friday afternoon that the team would debut a new starter for Saturday’s matchup against No. 9 Oklahoma with freshman guard Johnny Furphy making his first career start.
Self spoke on the switch to the starting lineup at a recent press conference saying, “We’re going to start Johnny tomorrow. So Johnny is going to start one, we’ll try something different. And we’ll see how that goes.”
Self continued by highlighting the impressive play of Furphy mentioning, “I thought the first half the other day, he made the play in transition that was about as athletic of anybody that we’ve ever had taking off one foot like that in transition. I mean, I don’t remember CB looking like that as a freshman and that takes confidence to make that play. But he’s shown flashes of shooting the ball with more confidence and looking to shoot the ball. I haven’t seen him be a lot different confidence-wise in attacking the basket off the bounce and some things like that but he’ll get there.”
The freshman from Australia is currently averaging 5.6 points and 2.6 rebounds per game as well as 48.3% shooting from the field. Furphy will start in place of fellow freshman Elmarko Jackson who has had a sluggish start to the season.
Self spoke on what he needs to see more of from Jackson saying, “Aggressiveness, athleticism, but that’s what I want even when he’s not coming off the bench too. So there’s nothing major about this. It’s not something that ‘Well, this is something that we’re really trying to change our the outlook of our team.’ We’re not at all. But in all honesty, I think Johnny has been playing more consistently well here of late.”
Saturday’s matchup between the No. 3 Jayhawks and the No. 9 Sooners tips off at 1:00 PM CT at Allen Fieldhouse, live on ESPN and ESPN+.
