Shooting guard will be position to watch in Puerto Rico

Kansas guard Nick Timberlake pulls up for a jumper during a scrimmage before the Bill Self basketball campers on Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

When Kansas men’s basketball returned three decorated veteran starters — KJ Adams Jr., Dajuan Harris Jr., Kevin McCullar Jr. — and then snagged the highest-profile transfer in recent college basketball history, Hunter Dickinson, that naturally locked down four of its five starting spots.

All indications are that a trio of newcomers is vying for the last one, though, each player with his own merits. We now know for sure, following head coach Bill Self’s assertion last week that Arterio Morris would travel to Puerto Rico and Monday’s indefinite postponement of Morris’ misdemeanor assault trial, that all three will be in attendance for KU’s summer trip to San Juan.

This island getaway could in fact be something of a trial by fire for the KU men’s basketball team. We know that the Jayhawks briefly practiced against the Mass Street alumni squad this offseason — a motley crew of overseas veterans who had barely played together and were generally something like 12 years older on average than the current KU team — but the Puerto Rico trip will be KU’s first real chance to take on outside opposition.

By all accounts, it should be formidable. It hasn’t yet been revealed which Puerto Rican professional team KU intends to play, but the Jayhawks will face the Bahamian national team twice, and the track records of the players involved suggest that the Jayhawks will be in for more of a challenge than they faced in Italy six years ago, the last time they went on an overseas trip.

Even if KU doesn’t get to take on the full complement of Bahamian stars, there’s a good chance the Jayhawks will have to contend with, for example, Buddy Hield, a seven-season NBA veteran with a career average of 16 points per game. Hield played in international qualifying for the Bahamas last summer, is expected to be in Puerto Rico according to Self and is, of course, a shooting guard. In fact, of the five Bahamian veterans Self mentioned as possible attendees when speaking to media, four play shooting guard.

That level of opposition will double the level of scrutiny that position group receives.

Dickinson’s commitment to KU produced an onslaught of justified hype, but in the backcourt, Nick Timberlake had emerged from Towson as a highly sought-after transfer himself. He picked Kansas over the national champion Connecticut Huskies. Timberlake is a shooter (17.7 points per game on 45.5% shooting from the field and 41.6% beyond the arc in 2022-23) on…