photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas guard Rylan Griffen (6) gets past Brown guard Lyndel Erold (4) to put up a shot during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Lawrence.

Rylan Griffen came home for the holidays with a battle wound.

After hitting heads with one of Brown’s players during the second half of Kansas’ win over the Bears on Dec. 22, Griffen saw the effects of the collision for days afterward — or was unable to see, as it turned out.

“I had a black eye for like two days,” he said on Monday. “I actually couldn’t see out of it for, like, really until Christmas, (when) it started to open up a little bit more.”

When he initially took the hit to his eye and a knot began to develop — to the point that head coach Bill Self said he was told “it would be Rocky Balboa in ‘Rocky II'” if Griffen returned to the game, so he didn’t — Griffen wasn’t sure what had happened.

In fact, he thought he had slit his eye, like he said he did three times during his sophomore season at Alabama.

“It’s all good now,” Griffen said. “Just a little black for a little bit, but I think even the black stuff is gone now too.”

That means one of KU’s key players is healthy and raring to go ahead of Tuesday’s conference opener against West Virginia — right around the time of year when both Griffen’s teammates, like point guard Dajuan Harris Jr., and Self have said transfers generally start to settle in.

Of course other transfers like David Coit (Northern Illinois) and Zeke Mayo (South Dakota State) have integrated themselves quite well on a much tighter schedule, and Shakeel Moore (Mississippi State) is only just starting to become healthy so hasn’t had the chance to do so.

AJ Storr, from Wisconsin, and Griffen have been the primary transfers under scrutiny. They arrived with high expectations during the offseason, but neither is averaging more than eight points or 21 minutes per game.

Self, who has frequently spoken about the challenges of teaching transfers from four-year schools how best to play given that they come in with preconceived notions, reiterated on Monday that his new players have generally been what the KU staff expected: “I actually believe they are what we believed that they were when we recruited them. I don’t see warts, I see laboring (while) becoming adjusted. So I think that’s a positive, in that it’s not like this guy can’t get 15 a game, it’s this guy doesn’t feel comfortable enough yet to get 15 a game.”

Griffen, for what it’s worth, seems to be more at ease these days. The wing, who has started seven of KU’s 11 games, said he’s playing more freely and continuing to adjust well.

“Yeah, definitely,” he said. “Just settling in, knowing what we try to get into, knowing how we want to play, knowing that we pretty much get every team’s best game for the most part, just having all that in my mind, now experiencing that after the first part of the season.”

With that first part — a 9-2 nonconference campaign — in the books, KU is moving into a more pivotal phase as it enters the Big 12, and will need to play to its full potential.

“With AJ and Rylan, they’re both going to be much better players the last two thirds of the season than they have been the first third, just because I do think they’re more comfortable,” Self said. “I can’t say that makes for guaranteed success, but I certainly believe that there’s a much better chance of them having much more success now … moving forward than there was from November 1 up until Christmas.”