Strong summer sets stage for big junior year for KU’s Devonté Graham

photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas guard Devonte' Graham (4) flashes a smile during a run by the Jayhawks.

The list of possible choices included some of the best players in college basketball, including three from Kansas. But in the end, KU junior guard Devonté Graham was the last man standing.

During the past couple of weeks, a Twitter account dubbed “College Bball Polls” asked its followers to pick head-to-head matchups of the top players. A thousand-plus fans gave Graham the victory over Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes in a landslide, 93 percent to 7 percent, just another sign that expectations are building for Graham’s second year as a starter for Bill Self’s squad.

“That’s crazy,” Graham told the Journal-World when asked about the unofficial poll. “I don’t know who’s voting, but that kind of gives me a good feeling about what people think of me as a player.”

During the past several months, Graham stacked the best summer of his life on top of his best season as a Jayhawk.

After finishing the 2015-16 season with career bests in points (11.3), assists (3.7), rebounds (3.3), three-point shooting (.441) and more, Graham spent the summer focused on getting bigger and stronger. He split time between Lawrence and his home of Raleigh, N.C., where he played pick-up games with several current NC State players, former AAU teammates and former college standouts T.J. Warren (NC State) and Darius Johnson-Odom (Marquette).

He also shined at the Adidas Nations camp — “A lot of guys try to play different when they’re in front of NBA scouts,” he said. “But I just played my game and tried to be real solid on both ends of the court, of course.” — and employed the help of a former KU great to set a path toward achieving his summer goals.

“I kind of talked with Aaron Miles about what I wanted to do during the summer,” Graham said. “Expectations have gone up even more for this coming season.”

That’s for everything. Points. Assists. Defense. Leadership.

“Being a leader is one of the biggest ones,” Graham said of his summer emphasis. “It was big last year, but we had a lot of leaders who left and graduated or went to the NBA and now we have a bunch of young guys who don’t know what’s going on, so that’s one of my biggest things.”

With the fall semester starting this week, Graham got his first true opportunity to step into that leadership role. He executed it as much on the court and in the weight room as he did away from the gym and said a big reason for that was that the coaches covered everything else.

“We talked about all that other stuff in our (Monday) meeting so I didn’t really have to tell ’em,” Graham said. “Coach talked about get to class early, don’t be late, sit in the first three rows and stuff like that.”

Graham said all of those instructions, which he now has heard for three years straight, reminded him just how close he was to the start of his third year as a Jayhawk.

“I’m kind of still trying to figure out how summer went that fast,” Graham joked. “But I know how much the intensity is about to increase, just from being here and stuff. I can kind of sense it in the coaching staff.

“It definitely feels like the season is coming really fast. They started talking about boot camp (Sept. 19-23) and I was just like, ‘Oh, man. It’s here. It’s definitely here.'”