Everything Bill Self said about Darryn Peterson before TCU
Kansas head coach Bill Self updated the status of Kansas guard Darryn Peterson to the media on Monday.
The freshman guard has dealt with injuries all season long, from a hamstring strain to cramping. He’s missed a total of nine games and had missed two in a row before returning against UCF this past Saturday, where he scored 26 points in 23 minutes.
Self said after the UCF game that he planned to restrict Peterson’s minutes to around 24, and he played 23 minutes, 18 of which came in the first half.
“In the second half I thought he started out fine, but then it started bothering him obviously,” Self said after UCF. “The thing about it is, we knew, we expected something like that to happen. But we were hoping that it would be a situation in which I could control it a little bit better by minimizing his minutes in the first half.”
Here’s everything Self said on Monday about his star guard before Kansas takes on TCU at home on Tuesday:
On how he wants to approach Peterson’s minutes vs. TCU: “I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer. With that being said, I said minute restriction. That minute restriction is — there’s no guarantee. There’s not medical evidence saying only play him this much or play him that much or anything like that. The one thing I would say, playing him less in the first half is something we haven’t done. So we haven’t done it. Would that possibly impact the second half? Don’t know. I’ll wait and see how he feels. He felt really, really good the other day and played obviously pretty well the first half. But the second half after the first TV timeout obviously, he needed to come out. And then sub him in and makes a 3 in 15 seconds and he needed to come out then too. So don’t think for a second he didn’t play down the stretch because of a minute restriction. He didn’t play down the stretch because his legs didn’t allow him to do that. So hope like heck that it’ll be better. But we don’t quite have the formula yet in how to do this, nor does anybody have the formula yet. I don’t think anybody has the answer specifically how to handle it other than the fact he feels well. He feels well and certainly just not quite to the point to where he can probably go extended like we need him to go. So long story short, I don’t really know.”
On if there’s been any discussion about shutting him down: “No. No. The kid, no. Not at all. There’s people that have their own opinions on that. But no, there hasn’t been one thing talked about that. So we hope it doesn’t get to that, obviously. But this is something that he’s going to have to deal with regardless of timing and all of that stuff moving forward. So hopefully we can help him get his arms around that and deal with it.”
On how he knew Peterson was not good to go second half vs. UCF: “I knew. I knew. I asked him. I knew during the game. One of my coaches said that he motioned something to them and then I knew it. I knew it then. He went back in and stuck the 3, but just couldn’t move like he needed to.”
On if it’s getting hard as a coach to coach basically two different units: “I don’t want to say hard. I think coaches and teams go through this all the time. And when you have a full complement of guys or maybe you think you do and then you don’t and all that stuff, that happens a lot. So we’ll just have to adjust.”
Self was also asked if Peterson and Elmarko Jackson, who’s dealing with a knee injury, would be “probable” for tomorrow. He said yes. The Big 12 injury report comes out at 8 p.m. on Monday.
Tipoff for TCU-Kansas is set for 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
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