During a timeout video at Allen Fieldhouse freshman guard Josh Selby said he would rather have the ability to be invisible than be able to fly. In Kansas’ 82-57 victory over UT-Arlington on Wednesday, Selby seemed to be invisible, well, when looking at the stat sheet at least.
In his three games back from his nine-game suspension, this was Selby’s worst performance. With the expectations being so high before he ever set foot on the court in live action, coach Bill Self said jokingly that Selby, who was making his first career start, should never miss a shot. On Thursday, he missed eight of them. He was 1-9 for the game and 0-5 from behind the arc; finishing with a season-low two points after coming into the game averaging 19.5 points per game. After his performance, that averaged dropped to 13.7.
Self after the game wasn’t too worried about Selby’s shooting, but his off-the-ball presence.
“I’m not a math major but in a 40-minute game if you play all 40 and everybody has the ball the same amount of time, that means he’s only going to have the ball four minutes a game,” Self said. “What do you do the other 36? That’s where he’s got to get better.”
Self knows players are going to have off games; it’s just how they play when the shots aren’t falling.
“He’s going to make shots, he’s going to miss shots,” Self said. “That’s going to happen. But he’s got to learn how to play without the basketball a lot better. Primarily on the defensive end, but he’s learning; it’s all new to him.”
Sophomore guard Elijah Johnson who also started the game didn’t realize that Selby had two points until the end of the second half. Johnson said that Selby is a good teammate because Selby didn’t show on his face that he had two points.
“There have been some games where I’ve been in the gym at night shooting 500, 600 shots just so when I take those one or two shots in a game, I know I’ll make them and I ended up missing both of them. That hurt a lot to put in work and then have one or two opportunities and to strike out like that. I told him you will strike out sometimes; you just have to keep playing. “
Self and his staff are going to use the next three weeks before classes resume to become a better team. He said this is the time when all teams should get better, but he said that a team “doesn’t get better unless everybody is in one accord and one mindset about what is important.”
Self said that practices haven’t been interesting so far over break, but anticipates them becoming more interesting.