Shocker: I agree with Mike Vernon that the Darryn Peterson experience’s main problem is messaging, not performance.

Hear me out. It doesn’t take long, when scouring Hawk chatter, to discover a ton of dissatisfaction within the KU fanbase right now. Fair enough. There’s no relax champ, to quote a wise man.

While I think the stress around the player’s injuries is overblown, KU hasn’t exactly been transparent about it. They’re creating noise when they could simply just communicate better, and that’s on them. The team deserves better, and I’m sure the whole saga affects them.

Anyway, DP — what a player, lol. We’re not even seeing him at the height of his powers yet. In Sunday’s Border Showdown, Mizzou drew up a press that forced Peterson to give up the ball before we could start our half-court offense. Save for a couple of nice takes and one crazy finish at the rim, we haven’t seen Peterson get downhill yet, which is a massive part of his game.

It’s coming.

Spacing when DP is on the ball? That’s a nice-to-have with Peterson. He doesn’t really need it, especially with that quick-trigger, arc-heavy deep stroke. A number of at-best “iffy” DP looks just happen to go in. His gravity is creating so much passively — the Jayhawks missed a lot of these open looks early in the game, but boy, where they there! That’s an exciting development.

Let’s give the ensemble their flowers. This group is a top-10 D per KenPom and they’ve played a lot of elite comp. The switch-everything philosophy has mostly worked, assisted by an elite rim protector to funnel to.¹ They’re still figuring out what the flow is with Peterson on the floor; Tre White didn’t get going until someone simply had to get going with Peterson on the bench. There’s too much ball-watching, and listen, I’m doing it too. I can’t help it!

To suggest that the Jayhawks are “better without Peterson” is farce. We need his scoring, his movement, and his ball-handling, badly. The optimal starting lineup haven’t had as many reps as you would like, and we’re gonna see some swings and trends within the rotation. (I want more Rosario, although he is not helping himself with bad plays early in his cameos.)

JaMari McDowell is making the most of Self’s trust, knocking down open set shots and playing with juice. Bryson Tiller has been up and down, but when KU was able to get into their zone offense and methodically break it down, that was some vintage Self hi-low action.

Mizzou did what they could to slow KU down, and it mostly worked. They couldn’t hit a shot, but they kept KU from opening up in transition, which is going to be something other teams will surely mimic. Peterson with options on the break is a terrifying prospect to an opponent right now. They will do everything to snuff out those opportunities as much as possible.

Hang in there. I’m going to try and take it easy with my Peterson praise — and I’m overly wrapped up in the crazy NIL thought experiment of the enterprise, I could read a book about it — but he’s given KU a shiny glimpse of their ceiling. Let’s grind and get there.

Big tilt against Will Wade’s NC State on Saturday, and I’ll see you there, metaphorically.