By Michael Swain, 247Sports.com
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas basketball will enter the 2023-24 season with 10 scholarship players on the roster following the dismissal of Arterio Morris. KU enters the season with six scholarship guards on the roster in Dajuan Harris, Kevin McCullar, Elmarko Jackson, Nick Timberlake, Jamari McDowell and Johnny Furphy. KU also has four scholarship forwards on the roster in Hunter Dickinson, Parker Braun, KJ Adams and Zach Clemence.
Bill Self seemed comfortable with the state of the roster on Monday when the KU head coach met with reporters.
“We’ve got 10 and 10 is plenty,” Self said. “One probably will redshirt, so we’ve got nine. I’m not going to play nine a lot of minutes anyway, you guys know that. The practice stuff is fine from a depth standpoint because we’ve got enough walk ons and we’ve got some good walk ons. So that doesn’t really bother me. What would bother me would be injuries. And I don’t know how you prepare for that now. I’m not really into load management at this juncture of the season. So what we could do is, is be open to bringing in somebody at Christmas. You could do that and then you could add some depth on the perimeter and it could eliminate some of that if that’s an option, which right now we’re certainly looking at that.”
The option for a mid-year addition had not been brought up by Self regarding this year’s team until Monday. The KU coach said there are still options out there.
“Yeah, we wouldn’t sign somebody just to sign somebody,” Self said. “But yeah there could be guys available, especially international guys.”
As it pertains to international prospects, KU has had some success recruiting players who aren’t originally from the United States. Most recently, Australian native Johnny Furphy joined the team. KU also holds a commitment from Flory Bidunga, who is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo but now lives in Indiana. There are past examples too, such as Ukraine native Svi Mykhailiuk, Canada native Andrew Wiggins, Cameroon native Joel Embiid and Russia native Sasha Kaun.
Even before KU will be able to add someone to the roster, the staff will also make redshirt decisions, as Self mentioned above. He was asked if it would be freshman guard Jamari McDowell or junior forward Zach Clemence.
“I don’t think Jamari will be a guy that we could look into doing that now,” Self said. “I think Zack still is. The arrangement we have with Zack and what he wanted, I think is very fair of what he requested. So unless something changes on the interior. I do see Zack still redshirting at this juncture.”
Clemence initially entered the NCAA Transfer Portal in the spring but later agreed to return to KU with the hope of taking a redshirt this season to improve.
