Kansas basketball Hunter Dickinson craved the chance to beat Michigan State
ATLANTA — Over the course of a season, Kansas basketball coach Bill Self outlined postgame, it takes a few different things to win a lot of games.
A team has to win the games they are supposed to. A team has to win the games in which they play great. A team has to figure out, during the games in which it isn’t playing its best, how to prevail anyway.
On Tuesday, during a Champions Classic matchup against Michigan State in Atlanta, the No. 1 Jayhawks (3-0) accomplished that third option during a 77-69 win against the Spartans (2-1). Self’s squad overcame issues that came with inconsistency hitting shots, especially in the first half, and a comeback attempt from Michigan State. And throughout much of the contest graduate center Hunter Dickinson proved to be Kansas’ star as he finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds against a Spartans program that served as a rival of his earlier in his college career.
“Obviously, I went to Michigan, I graduated from Michigan,” said Dickinson, who transferred to KU ahead of last season. “And so, I’ve still got that rivalry inside of me. Like I said earlier, it was a big game.”
Dickinson, who also had three steals and a block, to go along with an assist and a turnover, proved to be the only Kansas athlete who played substantial minutes to hit shots with much regularity. He went 13-for-21 (61.9%) from the field, while hitting his only 3-point attempt, for a team that shot 40.6% from the field and 29.4% from behind the arc. The main knock against his performance, as Self noted postgame, was he needs to be a better free-throw shooter after a 1-for-4 clip from the line.
Dickinson dealt with an injury during the preseason that led to him missing both of the Jayhawks’ exhibition games. Since first appearing in the team’s regular-season opener, he’s steadily improved how many points and rebounds he’s recorded each contest while still producing elsewhere. He’s now averaging 21.3 points and 9.3 rebounds per game.
There might not be another former rival like Michigan State left on Kansas’ schedule, but looking ahead even in non-conference play alone their are a number of opportunities against high-profile opponents. The Jayhawks play Duke later this month in Las Vegas, and next month have games on the road against both Creighton and Missouri before a home game against NC State. And when those games take place, Kansas will have more experience of playing a lineup with Dickinson and freshman forward Flory Bidunga on the floor together — which Dickinson enjoyed — that helped them win Tuesday against the Spartans.
“(Senior forward) KJ (Adams) hasn’t done anything since Friday, we didn’t know that he would play,” said Self, asked if Dickinson playing with Bidunga was a product of the scout on MSU or a result of Adams not being at 100%. “He shot today, and said he was fine, but you could tell he wasn’t himself. So, I actually thought, since Michigan State played two bigs, we’d be better off playing those two together. And we did, we practiced it for 20 minutes one practice, so we should be pretty adept at doing it. But I actually thought they did pretty well together.”