More than five minutes passed from the moment Hunter Dickinson’s right sneaker scraped across Maliq Brown’s temple to when the officials finally announced their ruling in Tuesday's marquee matchup between Kansas and Duke.
The eight-letter word KU coach Bill Self used to describe their decision was an indication of the severity.
Yeah, sorry, I can’t share it with you.
Self didn’t say “ejection”, though that does fit the letter requirement, and it’s exactly what happened to Dickinson with still 10:26 to play in the second half and just a single basket separating the teams. Dickinson’s absence did not cost the Jayhawks this game, and by extension their undefeated start, so maybe this could serve as the best kind of lesson for Dickinson as his team pursues a second national title in the past four seasons.
It is long past time for Dickinson to cut the garbage and play. He’s bigger that most everyone he encounters on the floor. He’s more skilled in the low post than anyone currently playing college basketball. He’s in his fifth year of college basketball and already has scored more than 2,300 career points. He is someone many outlets designated as a preseason first-team All-American.
He has advanced to an Elite Eight and Sweet 16, but he’s never seen the inside of the Final Four. The way to get there is to play winning basketball, not winning every personal interaction with every opponent assigned to defend him.
What we learned about Kansas in this 75-72 victory over Duke is power forward KJ Adams should be the leading candidate for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award, and the Jayhawks have many more offensive options than a year ago. We discovered they can survive a lengthy Dickinson absence because freshman center Flory Bidunga can handle himself physically.
But we didn’t see Kansas for a full, significant game as an entire unit because Dickinson, ostensibly more mature as a fifth-year senior than the freshman-dominant team he was facing, was called for a flagrant-2 foul following a rebound battle under KU’s basket.
Striking Brown near the hairline with his foot was at least the second, and possibly the third, dubious action from Dickinson on that sequence alone. He led with his elbow into a hook shot, then appeared to go over Brown’s back for the ball and pull him to the floor (although that was a tangle and not easy to discern responsibility).
This has been Dickinson in basketball shorts for too long, and certainly longer than necessary. Like Duke guard Grayson Allen in the previous decade, Dickinson is an outstanding performer who seems oblivious to the line separating hard play from cheap shots.
As the final, meaningless shot was fired in Kansas’ upset loss to UCF last January, Dickinson could be seen needlessly flinging a Knights player to the court with a forearm to the chin. He was called for a flagrant foul against a Kansas City player in December 2023. While playing for Michigan, he stepped on a prone Wisconsin player in February 2023.
Kansas can’t afford to assume these sorts of shenanigans won’t develop in an NCAA Tournament game, when it matters most. Because although this game did not carry that degree of consequence, it was a prime-time, nationally televised battle against one of the only three schools with a greater basketball brand than KU. If Dickinson is not to deliver his best behavior on stage, who can be certain he won’t get himself run in the NCAA Midwest Region final?
Following the game, Self told reporters he agreed Dickinson’s action warranted a flagrant foul call, but an F-1 (two free throws and possession of the ball to the offended team) instead of F-2 (ejection). So the coach knows there was a problem, and he’s surely aware this was not the first.
When Allen was a freshman at Duke in the 2014-15 season, few knew much about him until he forced himself into a hero’s role in the national title victory over Wisconsin. As his career advanced, though, he became better known for his propensity to trip opposing players. In 2016-17, coach Mike Krzyzewski decided it was necessary to suspend Allen for such an action against an opposing player from Elon. By his senior season, though, he comported himself more cleanly and led Duke to 29 wins and an overtime Elite Eight loss to Kansas.
It took the great Mike Krzyzewski four full years to get Allen to be that player. Self, also a Hall of Famer, is in only his second year working with Dickinson. His job is far from finished, but if he doesn’t start making progress soon, it’ll be done before anyone at KU is planning.
