I’ve made it home

Kansas basketball coach Bill Self told the Journal-World late Tuesday night that all of his Jayhawks made it back to campus on Tuesday to begin preparations for Friday’s matchup with Texas.

Several but not all of the Jayhawks returned to their hometowns for a couple of days following last week’s victory over Stanford in Sacramento to celebrate the holidays with friends and family.

Included in Tuesday’s on-campus arrival was new freshman Silvio De Sousa, the 6-foot-9, 245-pound forward from IMG Academy, who just last week learned that he had become eligible to join the Jayhawks for the second semester of the 2017-18 season after graduating from IMG a semester early.

De Sousa arrived in Lawrence near the end of KU’s Tuesday night practice and will have to pass a physical exam Wednesday morning before joining the Jayhawks on the practice floor.

His status for Friday’s game remains up in the air as he first has to have his amateurism certified by the NCAA before he is allowed to participate in competition.

As soon as he passes the physical, though, De Sousa will be eligible to participate in team practices.

The photo De Sousa attached in the Tweet that announced his arrival in Lawrence (see above) was taken during his official visit to campus back in August. The new KU big man will wear No. 22 when he does finally suit up with the Jayhawks, which was the number he wore at IMG.

While there clearly are issues and elements of this team that need to be addressed as the Jayhawks continue to try to piece their team together and find a way to fully click, it’s also clear that the team leaders are locked in on getting everyone ready for the Big 12 portion of KU’s schedule.

“We feel pretty good,” Devonte’ Graham said after the Stanford victory. “We get to go home for Christmas and have a few days with our family and then we come back and it’s time to ramp it up a couple notches and go on this nice little conference run.”