Why Dajuan Harris says blowout loss at Arkansas could help KU basketball in long run
Kansas senior Dajuan Harris would have set his personal record for points scored in a game had Friday night’s 85-69 blowout loss at Arkansas been a regular-season contest instead of an exhibition for charity.
The point guard’s 26 points on 11-of-17 shooting witnessed by 19,200 fans at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Arkansas, were three more than the 23 he put up in a Champions Classic victory over Kentucky last November.
“It still wasn’t enough,” Harris said of his scoring prowess versus the Razorbacks, ranked No. 16 in the preseason AP poll to KU’s No. 1 rating.
“I’ve got to score, but I just try to be aggressive for my team,” he added after a game in which he went 4-of-5 from 3 to his teammates’ 3-of 18 mark from beyond the arc. He hit five 3s in that game versus UK last season.
Harris is of the opinion that Friday’s defeat, painful as it was to experience, actually will help the Jayhawks in the long run.
“They were more athletic tonight, just a better team tonight,” Harris, a 6-foot-2 native of Columbia, Missouri, said. “We’ve got to come back, get better next practice. We’ve got to learn from this. It ... was a good thing they did that to us. We’ve just got to learn from it.”
Harris stressed it was a “good thing” because “we needed that. They humbled us. That’s a good thing.”
Harris knows why KU trailed 25-17 after one quarter and 45-33 at halftime. The practice game, by the way, was played in quarters, not halves.
“They just hit us in the mouth,” Harris said. “We’ve got to get our big back, get Rylan back, get Shak back. We’ve got to keep getting better.”
Center Hunter Dickinson (injured foot), guard Rylan Griffen (hip) and guard Shakeel Moore (ankle) are expected to practice Sunday or Monday, coach Bill Self has said. The Jayhawks will play Washburn in a second and final exhibition game on Tuesday (7 p.m., Allen Fieldhouse) then open for real on Monday, Nov. 4, against Howard (7 p.m., Allen).
Harris said the Jayhawks on Friday did not take lightly the ability of Arkansas guards Boogie Fland (22 points, six steals, five assists) and D.J. Wagner (24 points).
“They are projected to be pros for a reason,” Harris said. “They had a great game. All the credit goes to them. They had a great game.
“They pressured us. We’ve got to take care of the ball better.”
KU had 17 turnovers to Arkansas’ 13.
Harris had special praise for true freshman Fland, who was committed to play at Kentucky prior to coach John Calipari stepping down to take the Arkansas job.
“He blew up every screen, he ran through every passing lane,” Harris said. “He might be better on defense than offense. He’s a good all-around player. Coach Cal got a good point guard.”
Of his own effort, Harris said: “I was ready to play. This is my last year. I want to go out with a bang. I wanted it to start out great for us this game. We’ve got to learn from it. I think it will help us for the long run.”
Senior forward KJ Adams, who had nine points, three rebounds, no assists, four turnovers and two steals in 32 minutes, said, “I made a lot of unforced turnovers back-to-back. That’s something I need to work on and our team needs work on. They played harder than us this game. The next couple practices we’re going to work on that and try to get ready for the season.”
Like Harris, Adams thinks KU can gain from the humbling exhibition loss played before 19,200 fans in a hostile gym.
“They did a good job on their part, bringing the fans, getting into it,” Adams said. “I had fun playing, but we’ve got to get ready for road games like this when it actually matters.
“That’s why you have exhibition games like this, to experiment, see what’s happening. Coach (Self) probably wanted to see different scenarios with different guys out there. That’s the benefit of us doing that especially against a good team like Arkansas. It shows what we can and cannot do.”
UA coach Calipari tried to keep it all in perspective after the game.
“Look, they had two of their better players out,” Calipari said of Dickinson and Griffen. “So let’s not do triple backflips. But what I liked was, we really guarded the ball pretty well.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2024 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Why Dajuan Harris says blowout loss at Arkansas could help KU basketball in long run."
