Injured Kansas point guard Dajuan Harris Jr., right, watches the action with teammate Rakease Passmore during the second half on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self believed he was going to have his point guard Dajuan Harris Jr. for Tuesday night’s game against UCF — the same way he had Harris in the fold for the prior 159 games, including 98 in a row as a starter.

“We thought he was playing this morning,” Self said. “We thought he was fine this morning and obviously he goes out to shootaround and couldn’t do anything on it.”

“It” being Harris’ ankle, which he had tweaked at practice on Monday. When it dawned on Self that Harris wouldn’t be able to play, Self said, “I thought this would be as hard a game as we have.”

In some sense, he was right. Without their sixth-year floor general, the Jayhawks looked as disorganized on both sides of the ball as they have in any game since the start of the new year.

“It’s tough when you’re down an All-American point guard, arguably,” guard Zeke Mayo said. “Juan’s typically out there to help us a lot down the stretch and help us close games.”

Instead, their performance on defense was bad enough that Self deemed it necessary to play previously unpracticed lineups with three post players in KJ Adams, Flory Bidunga and Hunter Dickinson, “just to try to have any defensive presence out there,” and with Adams helping to serve as what Dickinson called — somewhat ironically given his size — a “mini point guard” alongside primary ball handler Mayo.

“I thought the big lineup was great for us,” Mayo said. “Definitely gave us a little bit of a defensive edge, helps with rebounds and everything.”

After a rough start, those lineups finished the night with a minus-1 point differential, and KU overall finished the night with a 91-87 victory.

“We were just trying to survive,” Self said. “I think it’s pretty evident how valuable Juan is after watching our ball handling and getting us into offense and defense.”

The Jayhawks played without a point guard for much of the game because Harris’ replacement Shakeel Moore, a starter since Jan. 5, incurred two fouls early in the first half and gave up two 3-pointers defensively at the start of the second. After subbing out with 17 minutes and 57 seconds to go, he only played one additional second for the rest of the night.

That meant a lot of lineups with ostensible shooting guards David Coit and Zeke Mayo bringing the ball up the court.

After giving the ball away twice in his first 41 seconds of action, Coit eventually took advantage of the opportunity afforded by his season-high 28 minutes, including 18 in the second half.

He connected on four 3-pointers — as many as he had made in every game since Dec. 8 combined — and did well filling in for Moore as the primary defender on UCF’s Darius Johnson, who only scored six points in the second half compared to 13 in the first.

“It definitely felt good, obviously to get a win and be a part of it and have a bigger role in that,” Coit said. “The first two turnovers, I had two bad turnovers, live-ball turnovers, just playing nervous, and then after that he yelled at me, got on me, told me just to play free and just keep going. ‘It’s all right, forget about it, man up, you’ll be all right.’ And after that I felt comfortable out there. I think just stepping up, just making sure that I had Juan’s back, making sure I had my teammates’ back, that’s all that was.”

Self praised Coit’s “courage” and said KU couldn’t have won without him.

“He’s grown up being the smallest guy in every room, he’s had to probably fight a little harder than most do because of that, and I love the kid,” Self said. “He’s shot it so poorly by his ability, but he can shoot shots, and he’ll win another game or two or three for us this year.”

Time will tell whether Coit needs to have Harris’ back once again. Self didn’t know after Tuesday night’s game if Harris would be good to go for Saturday but said he hoped so.

“Today, fortunately, it’s Tuesday,” Self said, “tomorrow will be an off day, treatment all day and then we’ll see if he’s able to go on Thursday (at practice).”

The Jayhawks play Baylor at Foster Pavilion on Saturday at 3 p.m.