College Basketball Week 2: 5 biggest takeaways

Svi Mykhailiuk Has Finally Arrived

Svi Mykhailiuk’s age has been a running joke in college basketball since he landed on campus in 2014. The idea was always that his youth made him an intriguing prospect — the kind that would one day help carry Kansas to its billionth Big 12 title in a row.

Over the course of the previous three seasons, we have only seen flashes of the once promised brilliance. While he was solid, especially last season, Svi never materialized into that prolific scoring option many assumed he would one day be.

That appears to have changed. Maybe not yet officially, but you need not worry about those semantics. After all, semantics are for losers. Eh, I digress …

With three games under his belt this season, the still only 20-year-old Mykhailiuk is scoring 19.7 points per game on 50 percent shooting from the floor and making 48 percent of his shots from distance.

On Friday night against South Dakota State, he scored a career-high 27 points in the Jayhawks’ victory over the Summit League favorites.

I’m not yet ready to claim Svi as anything more than just a dude getting crazy buckets early in the season, but the numbers he’s putting up does infer he’s finally becoming the type of player so many people expected him to be last season.

The Jayhawks don’t have a true test in their non-conference schedule until December. We can argue about how this provides corrupted data in terms of Svi’s development all we want. Do that if you want. It doesn’t change the fact that he still has a few more games to continue to build confidence — something Bill Self and company really need him to acquire as Kansas makes a run for another Big 12 title.