Big scoring days from the Jayhawks star don’t necessarily translate to wins
As a longtime Michigan fan and alumnus, I’ve watched Hunter Dickinson play a lot of basketball. Before his ballyhooed transfer to Kansas, Dickinson was a star in Ann Arbor, including a memorable freshman year in which he led the Wolverines to a Big Ten Regular Season Championship, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and an Elite 8 appearance. It was no coincidence that his decision to transfer marked the beginning of the end of Juwan Howard’s tenure as head coach of his alma mater.
Despite the limitations that make him a longshot to play in the modern NBA, Dickinson remains a dominant player at the college level. He’s averaged nearly a double-double over his career while shooting better than 70% from the foul line, 56% from the field, and nearly 36% from beyond the arc (albeit on limited attempts). At 7-foot-1 and more than 250 pounds, he creates matchup nightmares for opponents on a nightly basis.
Yet, if Dickinson puts up what at first glance appears to be gaudy stats against Duke on Tuesday night, it may counterintuitively mean the Blue Devils have done their job.
As strange as it may sound, the best gameplan for Jon Scheyer’s young squad may be to concede one-on-one post opportunities to Dickinson. Dickinson scores primarily using a stellar back-to-the-basket game, exploiting his large frame to shoot hook shots that are minimally affected by smaller defenders. The issue is that, even against overmatched defenders, those are exactly the type of shots the analytics say are the least valuable. Dickinson is most dangerous when an opposition’s worry about those shots leads them to either aggressively front him, ceding opportunities for easy dunks, or when he can pass out of double teams to open three-point shooters (he averages nearly 2 assists per game over his career, a solid number for a center).
Consider Dickinson’s most successful season in college, that freshman year at Michigan. Dickinson shot better than 62% from the field in the Wolverines’ 23 wins compared to 49% in their five losses. He also averaged an assist per game in wins but just 2 total assists in losses. Notably, that year’s Michigan team surrounded him with plus three point shooters: four regulars shot better than 39% from deep, while future NBA star Franz Wagner shot a respectable 34% himself.
But Dickinson’s next two years in Maize and Blue were disappointments at a team level, even as his raw statistics improved. In an 18-14 year for Michigan, a sophomore Dickinson shot more on average in losses than wins, while also averaging nearly 1.5 fewer assists in losses as compared to wins. While both trends continued in his junior season (when the Wolverines missed the NCAA Tournament entirely), they were more pronounced in his shot numbers: Dickinson took nearly 1.5 more shots per game in losses than he did wins. Notably, in those two years combined Michigan had as many regulars shoot better than 39% from deep as in Dickinson’s first season, and one of those players was Dickinson in his junior year.
Fast forward to Dickinson’s first year at Kansas, which was again exemplified by stellar individual statistics but a team that failed to meet expectations. Dickinson averaged more than 2.3 assists per game, but that number was .5 higher in wins than in losses. In some of Kansas’ worst losses of the year, at home to BYU and at UCF, he had just one assist per game. Two of the six games in which Dickinson attempted at least 18 shots were losses as well (although more competitive ones at Iowa State and Kansas State).
While slightly confounded by the much stronger supporting cast he had in Lawrence as opposed to his final two seasons in Ann Arbor, the general trend still held: Kansas losses were often hallmarked by abnormally high shot totals or abnormally few assists from Dickinson.
This is particularly notable entering Tuesday’s contest, because Kansas’ supporting cast is looking much more like that of Dickinson’s disappointing last two seasons at Michigan than his first. Two Kansas starters, KJ Adams Jr. and Dajuan Harris, are extremely poor shooters: Harris shoots just 20% from deep while Adams has yet to attempt a three this season. Zeke Mayo, who Kansas targeted in the transfer portal largely due to his reputation as a shooter, has only shot 31% this season, perhaps explaining why he has come off the bench in Kansas’ last two games after starting their first three. While David Coit, Rylan Griffen, and AJ Storr are all shooting greater than 40% from deep, none of them average more than 21 minutes per game, indicating they have yet to earn coach Bill Self’s full trust (and that number may be a mirage for Coit and Storr who both have only approximately 3 shots from deep each game).
With Harris, Mayo, and Harris likely to be surrounding Dickinson for much of the game, there will only be one frightening threat from deep on the court for Kansas for long stretches. Duke can leverage that situation to prevent Dickinson from beating them as a passer.
Indeed, the best gameplan for the Blue Devils may be to challenge Dickinson to beat them. Lest we forget, Khaman Maluach’s length is something that Dickinson (or any college player) has rarely dealt with, and will at a bare minimum make his go-to post moves more difficult. If Duke’s freshman can be content contesting Dickinson and resist fouling him, Kansas’ hopes may rely on their star center shooting well above his usual rate against one of the most unique post defenders he’s seen in his career. That’s a tall task, even for a tall man.
