Parks and Rec basketball player Peyton Mallory.

Five-year-old Peyton Mallory loves the Kansas Jayhawks. Saturday at the Community Building, Mallory showed his support for the Kansas men’s basketball team, which played DePaul later that afternoon, by wearing his No. 30 Julian Wright jersey during his Parks and Rec basketball game.

During the game, Mallory made several nice passes and worked his way through the defense to get in good scoring position. Getting open helps Mallory enjoy his favorite part of playing basketball.

“Making shots,” he said.

The 3-point shot is Peyton’s favorite. Even though he did not make a 3-pointer during the game, he still had fun playing basketball with his teammates.

While Peyton was the only player on his team that wore a Kansas basketball jersey Saturday, he could have worn a jersey other than Wright’s.

Peyton has a collection of KU jerseys. In addition to his Wright jersey, he has jerseys of Mario Chalmers, Brandon Rush, Rodrick Stewart and Christian Moody.

Peyton watched the Kansas vs. DePaul game and was sad the Jayhawks lost the game. But Peyton had some coaching advice about what the Jayhawks needed to do to win the game.

“Shoot better,” Peyton said.

While coaching is not in Peyton’s immediate future, he has already been exposed to the coaching aspect of basketball. His mother, Kristin, is the girls basketball coach at Lawrence High. Peyton and his 7-year-old brother Jackson are regulars at their mom’s practices and often help rebound during practices.

Besides giving her own team pointers, Kristin also gives tips and advice to her two sons.

“They know more about the philosophy of basketball than they probably should,” she said.

Peyton and Jackson use many of those pointers while watching the KU games on television which is something the two boys go all out for.

“They put their game shorts on and kind of alternate jerseys,” their father Mike said. “And they kind of play basketball during the game.”

The two boys have a mini-goal set up in the house and they practiced being the Kansas Jayhawks as the game was played. When they are not making shots on their mini-goal, their eyes are usually focused on the television.

“They kind of know what’s going on because they’ve seen so many games every season,” Mike said. “They get extremely excited. They like to jump around on alley-oops and dunks.”