Josh Selby was suspended for the first 9 games of the season.  How much did that really hurt? At first it didn’t seem like a big deal at all, he debuted with a 21 point game against USC at home and hit the game winning three pointer. KU fans were going crazy and figured they had the next John Wall or at least the best freshman of this season. Selby followed up the USC game with an 18 point game against California. He’s still looking good and we hadn’t even seen him really show off his ball handling and driving skills, which were supposed to be what he was best at.  Then he faltered, scoring only 2 points against a weak opponent and the question then became “can he bounce back from a poor performance.” He followed it up with a 18 and then 16 point game.

But then came big 12 play, where your playing top athletes and superior teams to what he had seen so far. He’s averaging less than 10 points a game and over 3 turnovers per game. He’s starting to show that he IS a freshman, unfortunately for him he had such high expectations that people assumed he wouldn’t have these freshman learning curves. But he is a freshmen and he’s got to get the feel of a more fast paced game against top athletes. The problem is that most freshman are supposed to learn these things during the non-conference part of the schedule, but Selby was suspended for most of it. Now that KU is into Big 12 play, coach Bill Self is not going to let Selby stay on the court when he’s having a poor game so he can learn from his mistakes. Take the Nebraska game for example, he only played 13 minutes and the majority of that was in the first half. He played very poorly and committed a career high 4 turnovers in that short amount of time on the court. If that had been a non-conference game that didn’t mean much, Self probably would have left him in. But its conference play now, where every game matters and KU can’t afford to lose a game just so a freshman can learn from his mistakes and try to fight through them.

The good news for KU fans is that he’s still an extremely talented player and will continue to get better even if he does only play in 13 minutes per game. Surprisingly, at 18-0 the Jayhawks can get much better if Selby gets into a groove which every big 12 team is hoping doesn’t happen. Especially Texas, when they have to go visit the Jayhawks in Allen Fieldhouse tomorrow in the biggest matchup on the Big 12 schedule for the whole year. If Selby can have a big game tomorrow, that could give him the confidence and the momentum to really break out for the remainder of the year and make an already very good KU team even better.

To see the KU vs. Texas game at the Historic Allen Fieldhouse or any other KU basketball games visit www.ticketsforless.com or call the friendly staff at 913-685-3322. Tickets for Less can also assist you in getting tickets for any Big 12 game in the conference.