Prospect Preview and Way Too Early Impressions of the Kansas Jayhawks

Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

The Kansas Jayhawks figure to be a Final Four contender this year, and they have no shortage of NBA prospects. I’ll give a preview for the Kansas prospects to keep an eye on, as well as my way-too-early thoughts of how they have looked through two exhibitions and one regular season game.

CLIFF ALEXANDER

6’9 PF, 250 lb, 7’2 Wingspan

Cliff Alexander is the top guy to watch on this squad. He’s slightly undersized at 6-foot-9 for the power forward position in the NBA, but he makes up for it in strength, length, and sheer athleticism. Put simply, Alexander is a beast. He’s stronger than anyone he will be going against this year, and he knows what to do with that strength. He already seems to be adept at battling for positioning under the basket, sealing his man, catching the ball and finishing with incredibly soft hands. It’s tough to say whether he will have a viable jumper or not, though he did sink a pair of long twos in the season opener.

Alexander will likely thrive in Bill Self’s post-heavy, high-low offense, and certainly is a better fit for it than this year’s top pick in the draft, Andrew Wiggins. While he has the potential to be a dangerous pick-and-roll threat, odds are we will not see much of that while he is at Kansas. He also figures to be an incredible rebounder, snatching any loose board near him with positioning, strength, and length. It would not be surprising at all if he put up rebounding numbers similar to Julius Randle at Kentucky (about 10 per game with a rebounding percentage between 20-25).

Defensively, there’s also reason for optimism. Alexander has the potential to be a very good rim protector, and if that holds true, he has much more defensive value than other power forward prospects. For now, though, he’ll have to earn a starting spot for Self, but I can’t imagine it’ll be too long before we’ll be hearing “From Chicago, Illinois…” at Allen Fieldhouse before games.

As with the rest of the guys on KU, it will be interesting to see how Cliff responds to the incredibly early challenge that is the Kentucky Wildcats on Tuesday in Indianapolis.

KELLY OUBRE

6’7 SF, 200 lb, 7’1 Wingspan

Kelly Oubre certainly has more of an unknown intrigue to him than Alexander. His physical attributes are absolutely tantalizing for a wing. About four times during the three games I’ve seen him play, I stopped just to think about how absurdly long his arms are.

Outside of him physically, though, we don’t know much about Oubre yet. On offense, he certainly can finish above the rim with authority (his left-handed tomahawks are particularly fun), but his jumper appears to be fairly streaky and sometimes can be very flat flings toward the rim. Defensively, Oubre is very promising. He’s incredibly active, and his length helps him in contesting shots and disrupting the passing lanes. It’s difficult to have much more to say on Oubre until we see him play more.

Sadly, he only got four minutes in the season opener against UC Santa Barbara. It’s certainly way too early to put much stock into this but I would caution all the projections of him going top five a little bit. Then again, around this time last year I was saying the same thing about Joel Embiid.

WAYNE SELDEN, JR.

6’5 SG, 230 lb, 6’10 Wingspan

Wayne Selden will still play in the NBA and he obviously has the physical tools to do so, but I would sell his theoretical stock right now. He was a good, not great player for Kansas last year, posting per 40 minutes numbers of 13.3 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game. But he shot just 32.8 percent from three and had a True Shooting percentage of 53.2.

Selden is really good at finishing at the rim (69.1 percent via Hoop-Math), but he doesn’t create shots for himself very well. He does have good court vision and is a very willing passer, but has been known to overpass, leading to careless turnovers. Defensively, he was one of the reasons KU’s defense wasn’t the typical top 10 Bill Self defense last year. He particularly struggles with off-ball defense, either losing his man, not knowing when to help, or getting confused on ball screens.

There was enough reason to believe Selden played a decent amount of last season banged up. Now that he’s healthy, I was hoping to see some noticeable improvements from him during the first few dress rehearsals before Kentucky. Sadly, I haven’t seen any. The coaching staff insisted Selden has just looked off, so perhaps we will see more of what he’s capable of against Kentucky. Nevertheless, my way-too-early thoughts are that he is probably the same player we saw last year.

SVIATOSLAV MYKHAILIUK

6’8 SG/SF, 195 lb

Yes, I had to triple check that I had spelled that correctly. If it makes it easier (it does), everyone around Kansas is just referring to him as Svi.

I don’t really know if those measurements are correct, and I don’t know what his wingspan is, but Svi is huge for a wing. He is tall and long, has a good shooting stroke with both a quick trigger and quick release, and Bill Self has already labeled him as the best defender on the team. We will need to see more of him before we really know what he’s capable of, but there’s a lot of raving about this Ukrainian in practice.

Intrigued? This might help: He’s only 17 years old. He won’t be eligible for this year’s draft, but he’s definitely someone to keep an eye on going forward.