On Monday afternoon, it was announced that Hunter Dickinson, the 7-foot-2, 260-pound center from Alexandria, Va., will participate in Tuesday night's “Senior Night’ festivities. While KU’s talented big man does plan to give a “Senior Speech”, that doesn’t mean a return next year is off the table.
“No, this doesn't mean that it's it for me,” said Kansas big man Hunter Dickinson with a smile on his face. “It's just more of an if it is it for me, I want to be able to go through with it.”
Dickinson arrived in Lawrence following an extremely successful run at Michigan with the highest of expectations. Currently, he’s averaging 18.3 points and 10.7 rebounds per game. Offensively, he’s connected on 56.1 percent of his field goals, 34.5 percent of his shots from behind the arc, and 64.2 percent of his free throws.
As impressive as Dickinson has been this season, Kansas enters Tuesday night’s home game, the last of the season, against Kansas State with an overall record of 21-8, 9-7 in league play, 14-1 at home, and 3-6 away from Allen Fieldhouse.
In fact, for the first time since 2020, Kansas finds itself outside of the top 10 in the most recent AP Poll.
“I know, yeah, I saw that,” said Dickinson when talking about the latest AP Poll update, which placed Kansas at No. 14. “I was like, damn, once I got here things just kind of went to crap. I think the mentality, you know, that we've kind of had, especially after the Baylor game was kind of just know we just got to get ready for March. Obviously, I don't think we can probably statistically or have any chance of winning the Big 12.
“We can still win the Big 12 tournament, but I think the NCAA tournament is the goal of every team in college basketball when the year starts,” he added. You don't need to be a one-seed or a two-seed to win it. I think UConn proved that last year when they were a four seed and they just got hot at the right time.”
A season ago, Connecticut ended the season as the last team standing on the first Monday night in April. In defeating San Diego State, 76-59 in the National Championship game, the Huskies ended the season with an overall record of 31-8 and 13-7 in league play. UConn finished the season 15-2 at home and 6-5 on the road.
“They were a team that had, if not the most talented, one of the most talented rosters in the country,” said Dickinson. “I remember because I had my podcast, so I was talking about college basketball and I was talking about them back in like, I think it was November or December and how they had some hiccups and some down stretches where people around the country were kind of like what happened at UConn?
"They were a preseason top team and they kind of fell off a little bit and people wondered what happened,” he added. “But that talent kind of rose to the top eventually and when it came time to where the games really mattered and one loss and you go home, they were able to string out six in a row. And I think that's something that this team is very capable of.”
In fact, before meeting with the media on Monday, Dickinson stumbled upon some unexpected confidence and did some when he quite possibly least expected it.
Before winning its second straight Super Bowl last month, the Kansas City Chiefs hit rock bottom on Christmas Day. Kansas City, in losing to the Las Vegas Raiders, fell to 9-6 and it looked like an early exit was coming when the playoffs started a few weeks later.
However, behind Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs ended the season on a six-game winning streak. In all, Kansas City defeated Cincinnati at home, the LA Chargers on the road, the Miami Dolphins (playoffs) at home, Buffalo (playoffs) on the road, Baltimore (playoffs) on the road, and, in the Super Bowl, the San Francisco 49ers, 25-22.
Dickinson, with KU’s run through March about to begin, sees some similarities between the Kansas City Chiefs and this current Kansas team.
“I kind of gained some more confidence today because I was going on Twitter and I saw somebody compared us to the Chiefs, and I was going through the comparisons,” he said. “I think they compared (Johnny) Furphy to Rashee Rice. I will say I'm not the biggest Chiefs fan, Bill's mafia, but I know, yeah, it does hurt being here, seeing the Chiefs win. They luckily, thankfully, humbly compared me to (Patrick) Mahomes, which I appreciate.
“But then they just said how they had a little rough stretch during the regular season and when it came time win when it mattered the most, they were able to pull off a streak of, I think, four wins, maybe five wins, in-a-row, in the playoffs and now nobody cares about what they did in the regular season. They're Super Bowl champs. I saw that today and that kind of inspired me a little bit.”
Kansas City, after losing at home to Oakland on Christmas Day, didn't drop another game the rest of the season. No. 14 Kansas, with a big home game against Kansas State looming on Tuesday night, hopes to embark on a similar type of run that will carry them through the month of March and into early April.
