Kansas freshman center Udoka Azubuike dunks in warmups prior to Saturday's game against Stanford.

Kansas big man Udoka Azubuike returned to action at full speed and full strength on Tuesday afternoon, at first wowing campers at Bill Self’s annual summer camp with powerful dunks and jams for 30 minutes and then running through a full-court, full-contact session of pick-up ball with teammates new and old for another 30 minutes.

Kansas coach Bill Self said after the action that it was good to see the 7-footer back on the floor.

“Today’s the first day he’s been back,” Self said of the Nigerian sophomore-to-be who missed the final 25 games of his rookie season with a wrist injury. “He’s out of shape, but he looks pretty good. He certainly makes a big difference from a physical standpoint. I realize what we missed last year just seeing it for 30 minutes today.”

Still wearing a small brace on that left wrist, Azubuike worked and moved like a man happy to be back on the floor. Although the injury significantly limited what he could do last December, the decision to shut him down completely was as much about being cautious and not making things worse, which allowed Azubuike to go through quality rehab and reach full recovery.

Now that he’s there, Self said he was eager to see his big man close the gap quickly in his conditioning.

“It may get sore, he may get it hit or whatever,” Self said. “But he’s going to be able to practice full-speed from this point forward.”

While Azubuike’s return to action was as big a story as any on the first day the 2017-18 Jayhawks got together for real, Self said the new group, which featured fresh faces Charlie Moore, Dedric and K.J. Lawson, Billy Preston and Jack Whitman — along with one more on the way — will require a little longer period of time to learn the way things are done at Kansas.

While much of that will come in July, during the Jayhawks’ 10 practices leading up to their summer trip to Italy, and, of course, once school starts during preseason practices, the bulk of what went down Tuesday and will continue throughout the summer was mostly philosophical in nature.

“If there was a main objective (it was) to try to get ’em to move the ball rather than have the ball stick the whole time,” Self said. “With young kids, that’s all they know is the ball sticking.”

Asked how long it might take for that message to sink in, Self joked, “four years,” before adding: “If you watch our veterans play, the ball moves and with the young kids the ball doesn’t. I would say, reasonable, to get where they’re decent at it, a year. But probably you’re going to keep preaching the same thing as long as they’re here.

“I wouldn’t say it’s anything different. You know, we get the 10 practices in July, but I’d say the biggest challenge is just getting the guys to understand how we want to play and to get them to understand that the game is not about them as it is about us and just get the ball to move and understand how we want to score and how we want to guard. We’re not going to be any good at that for a while but hopefully we’ll be decent at that by November.”

Garrett to arrive early

Freshman guard Marcus Garrett, who graduated from Dallas’ Skyline High on Monday night and initially was slated to arrive on KU’s campus Friday, changed his plans and was expected to arrive in Lawrence Tuesday night, his uncle Matthew Watts told the Journal-World on Tuesday afternoon.

With Garrett in the mix, the Jayhawks will be one player away from full strength, with senior-to-be Svi Mykhailiuk still overseas in Ukraine playing with the Ukrainian national team in preparation for a FIBA event later this summer.

Teahan held out

Walk-on freshman Chris Teahan, the younger brother of former KU sharp-shooter Conner Teahan, was suited up on Tuesday but did not run through any drills or scrimmage action.

“He’s cleared,” Self said. “He had mono. He showed up to school just recovering from mono so they said he had to take a week or two weeks off of contact before he could get hit.”

Former KU walk-on Tucker Vang also was absent on Tuesday and Self said the status of the walk-on spots was still up in the air at this point.

“I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do yet,” he said. “Tucker and I talked. He was good for us last year. I just don’t know what roles those guys are going to have right now. I’m not going to say yay or nay. I think we could use some size. We’ve only got five big guys, and if we could have one more big guy that would probably be helpful.”

Self on Matta

Like many people around the college basketball world, Monday’s news that Ohio State head coach Thad Matta was done with the Buckeyes came as a surprise to Self, who last squared off against Matta twice in 2012, first at the Final Four in New Orleans and later that year during a non-conference game in Columbus, Ohio.

“I know Thad pretty good,” Self said. “That certainly was a shocker to me. You know, he’s the third winningest coach in his first 17 seasons of all-time — Roy (Williams), (Mark) Few and him. But the last two years haven’t gone quite as well, but he’s a good coach.”

Before leading the Buckeyes for 13 seasons, Matta coached one year at Butler and three years at Xavier.