photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas forward Carlton Bragg Jr. (15) celebrates after finishing a lob jam next to Baylor forward Terry Maston (31) during the second half, Friday, March 11, 2016 at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.

The most famous smile on the Kansas University campus belongs to a student whose listed and seemingly outdated height is 6-foot-9, but he’s well over 7-feet when going from one class to another atop his preferred mode of transportation, a hoverboard.

Carlton Bragg Jr. purchased his first one the day he received his first cost-of-attendance check. Not quite a year later, he upgraded to the one he now rides.

“Make sure to get the one with the warranty,” he advised.

Something of a gentle giant and very much a gentleman, Bragg wonders if that leads to a misconception about him.

“I’m very competitive,” Bragg said Wednesday from behind a desk in the media-relations office. “Even though I smile, I’m very competitive with everything I do.”

photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas forward Carlton Bragg Jr., left, and players on the Jayhawks' bench erupt in the second half after a three by KU guard Wayne Selden Jr., Thursday, March 24, 2016 at KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky.

For example?

“Just like in the weight room today, Frank (Mason III) had two blues (on the bar), that’s 60 kilos,” Bragg said. “So I put two blues and a white, that’s 70 kilos. Or like Landen (Lucas) today, he did 65 dumbbells. I did 70, just trying to get a little better, trying to outwork people.”

His warm, genuine smile also might create the impression that this is a young man who never has wanted for anything, has skated through life without enduring much stress.

“Happiest day of my life?” Bragg echoed a question. “Committing to Kansas. It changed my whole life, more than just basketball. I have a lot of freedom, friends I can trust, and it’s a lot safer. And I get to eat a lot. I don’t have to eat a little. My mom raised us (older brother, younger sister), and she raised us well, playing both parts (mom and dad). But it was hard. Not having a lot of food to eat. Not having a little extra money to go to the store like other little kids can. Not getting extra money to go to the movies. Our money was limited.”

Even as a child, though, Bragg said he knew how hard his mother worked to put food on the table.

“Christmas was hard,” Bragg said, “but I always thanked her every time we got something.”

Bragg expressed gratitude for the influence of his grandmother, Helen Walk.

“I think I got it from my grandma, going to church with her and her always being a good person rubbed off on me,” he said.

Walk and her grandson talk, “every day for two hours, and then we text. She gives me words of wisdom. I enjoy it, too, but sometimes she can talk a little bit too much. You know how grandmas can be, have to give you every little bit of information about life. She’s very educated. She has a lot of wisdom.”

Bragg comes from the Cleveland neighborhood of Wade Park.

“Pretty good neighborhood until the summer time, and then it gets wild,” Bragg said. “People get out of control.”

How wild? Gunshots. Bragg said he lost four friends, one dying at the age of 14, another at 18, two others in their 20s.

“Wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Bragg managed to stay in the right place.

“Going to the gym, staying away,” he said of how he escaped his friends’ fates. “Going to a friend’s house, staying away.”

Now Bragg lives in luxurious McCarthy Hall, where the loudest shots he hears are cue balls crashing off stripes and solids.

“I’m pretty good at pool,” Bragg said. “I would say Devonté (Graham) and coach (Norm) Roberts are the best. Coach Roberts is real good. He’s beaten me. I’ve beaten him. It’s a fair match right now.”

Of McCarthy Hall, Bragg said, “I love it. It’s a lot better than where I come from.”

Not that Bragg’s freshman season was all smiles. A McDonald’s All-American, he averaged just 8.9 minutes. And then there was adjusting to his new coach. Bill Self’s instruction does not come coated in sugar or anything else sweet.

“Coach is yelling at you as a freshman, and you don’t know what to do,” Bragg said. “You keep messing up, and he keeps yelling. It doesn’t get any better. It’s just hard. I think every freshman goes through that.”

Athletic and armed with a soft shooting touch, Bragg projects as a starter at power forward.

“It will still be challenging, but you get a lot smarter just watching, especially watching Landen Lucas,” Bragg said. “He’s really smart, on and off the court. He mentors me a lot, makes sure I’m always being mindful and thankful, just being a nice guy.”

Bragg said that when the Selfs had the players to the house for dinner, Lucas prepared him.

“He told me, ‘Let the ladies eat first, and make sure you talk to everybody who’s there,’ stuff like that,” Bragg said.

The sophomore forward said he hopes that his father, a house painter in Omaha, Neb., and an accomplished bowler and also named Carlton Bragg, will come down for a game this season. He added that he would like to see his 2-year-old nephew, Deonte King, at a game in Allen Fieldhouse.

“He watches all our games on TV,” Bragg said of his nephew. “He likes to Facetime me a lot, and he’ll be dribbling and say, ‘I’ve got my basketball.’ ”

Deonte’s Uncle Carlton will have the basketball in his hands a lot more often this coming season, via crashing the offensive boards and from using screens to get open for his lethal mid-range jumper. He comes across so much more comfortable than a year ago, so much more confident, so at home.