Two new scholarship players will join Kansas University’s men’s basketball team this upcoming season.

They are: Jeff Graves, 6-foot-9, 260 pounds from Iowa Western Community College; and Moulaye Niang, 6-9, 200 from El Cajon, Calif.

Graves hails from Lee’s Summit, Mo., where he played both high school football and basketball.

He has known about Kansas a long time, having attended coach Roy Williams’ Kansas basketball camp nine years ago. At the time, Graves never dreamed he’d someday become one of Williams’ prized recruits.

“Coach Williams’ camp is where I learned the basics,” Graves said. “That camp helped my coordination and defense, too,” added Graves, who picked KU over Missouri, Long Beach State, Illinois, Florida State and Iowa State.

Graves was all-state in basketball and honorable mention all-state in football his senior year of high school.

He was recruited only by Long Beach State in basketball, while Nebraska, Kansas State, Kansas and others tried to get the lineman to sign a football agreement.

“I didn’t like getting hit in the knees,” Graves said of his decision to give up football. “I felt if I hurt my knees in football, that would hurt my basketball career. I really love basketball. My focus is basketball.”

Graves became a hot juco recruit after competing at the Mullen Junior College camp in Oklahoma the summer before his soph season at the Iowa school.

“I’m glad I went to the Mullen camp. That’s where you get exposure,” Graves said. “Coach Williams called me when it was over and I thought, ‘Whoa, this is Roy Williams of Kansas.’ Coach Knight (Texas Tech) called. It’s pretty exciting when somebody like Bobby Knight calls you.”

He loves his choice — KU.

“Coach Williams tells you the truth. He told me, ‘If you want to come here, you’ve got to work hard.’ He said I had to work hard on the court and academically.”

Graves faces some challenges at KU — that is, keeping pace running the Jayhawks’ relentless fastbreak offense. He averaged 16.8 points off 65.7 percent shooting with 8.1 boards last season.

“I am curious to see (if Graves can keep up),” Iowa Western coach Jim Morris said. “A lot of people come up to me and say Jeff doesn’t seem like a Kansas-type player just because he’s so big. He’s a little different from any player you’ve had there, just because he is so big. He has a big ol’ barrel chest. He reminds me a little of Tractor Traylor — obviously not that big, but big.”

The 6-8, 284-pound Traylor, who played for the Charlotte Hornets last year, weighed 300 pounds during his college days at Michigan.

It’s obviously more difficult for a Traylor-type player to run the court at breakneck speed, than say, Drew Gooden, KU’s fleet 6-10, 230-pounder now with Memphis of the NBA.

“I don’t know if he’ll adapt to them or they to him a bit,” Morris said of Graves and the Jayhawks. “Jeff can run. He definitely can run, but to run as long as they run and as hard as they run, I’m not sure anybody on our entire team can do that.”

Graves last year had arthroscopic knee surgery that forced him to miss the first six games of a 22-9 campaign in which he averaged 16.8 points and 8.1 boards. He came back strong after rehab.

“He is a pretty mobile big man,” Morris said.

A dazzling 65.7 percent shooter from the field, Graves hit 59.3 percent of his free throws. He was under 50 percent his freshman season.

“He was ‘Shaq attack’ for a while,” Morris said, comparing Graves to the Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal, who, like Graves, gets double- and triple-teamed and hacked and sometimes struggles to convert. “His rotation was good. The problem was follow-through. He’d short-arm it. Once he stayed at the line and kept his hand up, he was fine.

“He won us a lot of games,” Morris said, noting Graves was one of six Iowa Western players to average double-digit scoring. “He anchored that middle for us. He’s a first-team All-American.”

Meanwhile, Niang is a high school signee from El Cajon Christian High in California, who signed with KU over San Diego State and others. He originally hails from Senegal.

The former soccer standout loves to run and saw a lot of that in KU last season.

KU averaged 90.9 points per game and scored 100 or more points in 12 games.

“They get the ball inside to the big men. They run the floor,” said Niang, who averaged 16.2 points off 53 percent shooting and 9.8 rebounds for 20-9 Christian High.

“That is a big part of my game. I run all day long.”

The first-team all county selection showed a nice touch both inside off a jump hook and outside off a conventional jumper last season.

“Moulaye didn’t shoot a lot of threes, but shot and made a significant number of shots from 15 or so feet,” Christian High coach Curtis Hofmeister said.

“He’s ahead defensively of where he is offensively. He is improving offensively, but has a lot of work to do before he is a Final Four-type player. He’s a terrific defensive player. He must improve his strength. He is competitive and quick enough, one of the quickest kids in the country at his size.”

Niang has played basketball for eight years.

“I think I played better than last year,” he said. “I am a little bit stronger and more patient. We played against really good teams and that has helped me a lot. I still need to get bigger. Right now I’m working on my body. I have worked with a personal trainer for two weeks and have put on five pounds.

Niang, who will major in business, compiled a 3.92 grade point average and was named captain of the San Diego Union-Tribune’s all-academic team.

“The coaches and teachers told me, ‘If you do your homework here (in U.S.) you will at least get a B,”’ Niang said. “I kept doing my homework every night. When you do homework and well on tests, you can always get a low A or at least a B,” he said.

Hofmeister said he’ll never forget working with a player like Niang.

“He’s a great kid who does work very hard,” he said.

“Some people look at Moulaye — non-basketball players — and say, ‘He’s so big, why didn’t he score 30 a game?’ He’s just not there yet. With the work ethic and athleticism he has, surround him with good players he will get there.”