KU’s Mason, Graham put a smile on the faces of Jayhawks fans

After an acrobatic, hang-in-the-air drive for a basket in the second half against Stanford on Saturday, Kansas point guard Frank Mason beamed.

So after the game, a reporter asked KU coach Bill Self about Mason’s obvious joy in that moment and why we don’t see more smiles from the Kansas senior.

Nobody ever asks Self about junior guard Devonte Graham’s lack of exuberance because it is there, always, for the world to see.

As Graham was knocking down five three-pointers in the first half at Allen Fieldhouse — it seemed like 15 — he smiled and pointed to the crowd after each shot. He stroked his hands through his wiry hair as if that hair was giving off magic. Graham, it seems, never stops having fun.

And Mason scowls a lot.

But Self had a different take after KU’s 89-74 win over the Cardinal that improved the Jayhawks’ record to 7-1.

“Frank plays with just as much joy as Devonte, he just doesn’t show it,” said Self, who in his 14th season has won 210 games and lost nine in the Fieldhouse. “There are guys who equate guys who don’t smile as not being happy and they think that guys who smile all the time are jovial.”

Self doesn’t make the correlation. What he sees and what he’s developed is one of the nation’s best backcourts.

Graham had all of his 15 points in the first half while Mason scored 12 of his 20 in the second. The Jayhawks were almost as good from the three-point line (12 of 22) as they were from the free-throw line (13 of 22) as four KU players scored in double figures.

There’s a lot of talk about 6-foot-8 super freshman Josh Jackson, who was more Clark Kent than Superman against Stanford with a pedestrian 13-point, three-rebound, four-assists, three-steals performance. That’s a pretty good pedestrian, huh?

There’s a lot of talk about big first-year center Udoka Azubuike. There’s a lot of talk about the improvement of Lagerald Vick and the need for Svi Mykhailiuk to make shots and for the Kansas bigs — Landon Lucas, Azubuike and Carlton Bragg — to do a bang-up defensive job and protect the time.

Meanwhile, there’s not much concern expressed about the Kansas veteran backcourt of Mason and Graham. They are taken for granted, and why not? They’re that good.

“Frank and Devonte complement one another so well,” Self said. “They know where one another is going to be and they set each other up. They’re fun to watch and I think that’s contagious with the rest of our team.”

The three-point bug certainly was spreading Saturday.

Self didn’t know whether to be elated about the long-distance shooting or irked by the free-throw struggles, but did say talking about free throws only leads to more free-throw woes. So he didn’t spend much time talking about them.

In the second half, Mykhailiuk, a 6-8 junior, got what Graham had in the first — hot from the three-point line. After not scoring in six first-half minutes, Mykhailiuk had 13 points in the second half and made three treys.

Kansas won’t shoot as well from the three-point line in every game and will need more from its inside players from time to time. But Lucas, Bragg and Azubuike did combine for 19 points and 15 rebounds Saturday. Add 6-9 Dwight Coleby to the mix, and the KU frontcourt also combined for 16 fouls and sent Stanford center Reid Travis to the line 22 times. He made 19 and both numbers are records for Kansas opponents.

“Our big guys fouled 16 times, 16 times basically guarding one guy,” Self said. “That’s unbelievable.”

Lucas, who tried to avoid a post-game question about Travis and his 29 points until he had no choice but to answer, said he was embarrassed by all the fouling. But he vowed that he and his big friends would get a handle on the fouls that plagued the Jayhawks on Saturday.

The shooting of the guards made up for any transgressions, anyway. Graham and Mason work so well together. Graham, who had been struggling with his perimeter shooting in the first six games after making 44 percent of his three-pointers last season, is now 15 of 35 after a 3-for-15 start.

Mason is also dangerous as a long-range shooter, but is lethal when he utilizes his supreme quickness as a slasher. When Mason gets to the basket, he’s either going to finish, get fouled or find an open shooter on the perimeter.

There’s a lot to like about the Jayhawks but not a lot of talk about the two players to like most. That’s because Mason and Graham long ago passed from talk to action.

This story was originally published December 3, 2016 at 7:21 PM with the headline "KU’s Mason, Graham put a smile on the faces of Jayhawks fans."