KU’s Bill Self hoping small forward Jalen Wilson breaks out of ‘freshman funk’ soon
After starting 14 straight games and 15 of 16 on the season, Kansas freshman small forward Jalen Wilson was relegated to the role of sixth man Saturday at Tennessee.
“He’s pressing now, going through that freshman funk,” KU coach Bill Self said of Wilson before the Jayhawks’ 80-61 blowout loss to the Vols. Self was explaining the opening-lineup switch of Dajuan Harris for Wilson in a pre-game interview with the Jayhawk Radio Network.
“We need him to get out of that. Hopefully coming off the bench will give him a different look, different feel and help him a bit,” Self added of the 6-foot-8, 215-pound native of Denton, Texas.
Harris, a freshman guard from Columbia, Missouri, who picked up two quick fouls, wound up playing 10 minutes in the first half to Wilson’s eight. They both logged 21 minutes in the game.
“He did some things tonight that were pretty positive offensively,” Self said of Wilson, who scored 10 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished six assists. “Defensively, (he was) not very good. Nobody was.”
Wilson, who was 0-for-3 from three-point range and failed to score in Thursday’s 59-51 home win over TCU, hit two of five threes Saturday after making four of his last 15 and 7 of his last 24.
“I don’t think anything’s going on with Jalen. Everybody gets into their ruts,” KU forward David McCormack said of Wilson, who has scored in single digits in four of six games after big games against Kentucky and Creighton (23 points each game), Texas (20 points) and West Virginia (17).
For the year, Wilson has averaged 12.2 points per game on 45.4% shooting. He’s made 25 of 71 threes for 35.2%
“We have teammates, coaching staff ... we have to help him out, push him, do whatever we can as teammates, whatever we can do, to help him,” McCormack said.
Perhaps filling the stat sheet in various categories at Tennessee will help boost the redshirt freshman’s confidence heading into Tuesday’s 7 p.m. home game against Kansas State.
“I would say rebounding, energy, playing downhill, being a good passer, knocking down (shots). He used to be a 35% three-point shooter.” Self said when asked what he’d like to see out of Wilson in coming games. “I think everybody needs to play just a little better.
“With him, obviously playing with the swagger he played with earlier would be very beneficial.”
Harris joined McCormack, Marcus Garrett, Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun in the starting lineup Saturday. It was just the third game in which Self has gone with a different group than Wilson, Garrett, Agbaji, Braun and McCormack..
Of Harris’ play, which included no points, one assist, one steal and no turnovers, Self said: “I think Juan has done pretty well of late. I thought it (starting him) might take some pressure off Marcus to have another ballhandler out there. It didn’t play out that way, He (Harris) got two quick fouls and we got behind.
“You get behind (17-8, 21-10 and 40-26 at half) early in the game, even thought there’s plenty of time, Juan is a much better player when playing ahead than behind. If Marcus is in the game, that group, unfortunately I thought it’d be a better defensive team. We probably played OK defense, considering the shots they made (28 of 53 for 52.8% and 8 of 13 threes for 61.5%). ...
“The way they got the ball and were able to elevate over our guys from an athletic standpoint, that was kind of a telltale sign we’ve got to do a lot of stuff to keep ball out of the paint.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2021 at 12:14 PM with the headline "KU’s Bill Self hoping small forward Jalen Wilson breaks out of ‘freshman funk’ soon."
