Kansas center Hunter Dickinson (1) gets a steal from Arizona guard Caleb Love (1) during the first half on Thursday, March 13, 2025 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. Photo by Nick Krug

Kansas City, Mo. — The Kansas men’s basketball team’s senior-night victory over Arizona on Saturday was a shining example of center Hunter Dickinson’s potential, a sparkling display of post offense on one of the best nights of his career, and an answered challenge from head coach Bill Self that demonstrated Dickinson could will the Jayhawks to victory against high-level competition.

Dickinson’s performance in the Jayhawks’ 88-77 loss to those same Wildcats at T-Mobile Center on Thursday was not quite any of those things.

The fifth-year senior center from Alexandria, Virginia, picked up a workmanlike 19 points and 12 rebounds — the sort of statistical night that would be exceptional for a large percentage of the nation’s post players — but when he began speaking to reporters postgame in KU’s locker room, the first words out of his mouth were “I’d just say I let my team down today.”

“I can’t go out there and play like I did today, or we’ll go home early,” he added later.

On offense, Dickinson had to play second-half catch-up after his first-half stat line of 3-for-10 shooting — including 1-for-7 inside the 3-point line — played a large role in KU’s eight-point halftime disadvantage.

Early on, he short-armed a post hook shot that could have cut a 10-0 Arizona run in half, after his deflected pass had helped the Wildcats kick the run into gear in the first place. But his pair of early 3-pointers — a newly rediscovered skill in his arsenal — helped account for those particular issues.

The truly problematic stretch for Dickinson occurred late in the first half.

Some of Dickinson’s most electrifying plays of the year have began when he has gotten his hands into passing lanes, then gone coast to coast to earn tough buckets completely on his own. He did that against Oklahoma State and Colorado in KU’s first two victories after its late-February “new season” reset.

But for whatever reason on Thursday, when KU trailed by just three and had a chance to continue its charge as the halftime break approached, Dickinson stole the ball from Caleb Love but, with Arizona’s Trey Townsend in front of him, opted to sling it behind him to a teammate — it wasn’t clear if he wanted KJ Adams or Dajuan Harris Jr. — with a low-velocity pass that instead found its way to David Coit. Coit lobbed the ball to Dickinson, who missed a dunk.

By the time halftime arrived, he had come up empty on another dunk attempt when the ball slipped out of his hands as he went for a putback.

“I got to get in the gym,” Dickinson said. “I got to get more shots up. I got to practice really good and try to get ready for a hopeful three weeks (in the NCAA Tournament).”

But the part of Dickinson’s performance that aggravated him in particular was his ball-screen defense.

Just moments before the second missed dunk, he had left center Henri Veesaar open after Veesaar faded off a screen into open space at the 3-point line.

The Estonian 7-footer drilled a 3 that doubled Arizona’s lead from three points to six. On the night, Veesaar tied for his team lead with 19 points on 7-for-11 shooting, more than double his season average after foul trouble had made him a complete nonfactor in Saturday’s initial matchup. It matched the second-highest point total of Veesaar’s career.

“I just got to be more aggressive on the ball screens,” Dickinson said. “I let my teammates down in ball-screen defense. I wasn’t good enough out there.”

Issues guarding the perimeter in particular weren’t unique to Dickinson, though. Guard David Coit, for example, said he struggled with finding the right balance between playing help defense on the perimeter and helping too much.

“It’s just mental errors,” forward KJ Adams said. “… I think we just got to watch more film together as a team and figure that stuff out and just be more connected.”

“I don’t question our confidence, I just question our focus,” Coit added. “Not saying that our head is somewhere else, but on those defensive breakdowns, on scout, all those focus and discipline type of things, that’s what we know we have to work on.”

Like many aspects of this year’s KU team — a group that has found its greatest success when it forces opposing offenses to play below their typical standard — that requires Dickinson to play an integral role. As he put it, “It starts with me.”

“I’d say we’re probably one of the more volatile teams in the country,” he said. “When you look at it, we’ve played with the best in the country and been neck and neck with them and beat some of them, and we’ve been neck and neck with a lot of average teams. So it depends on which Kansas team shows up. The blessing and the curse about these next couple of games is you only have to be great for 40 minutes, and then you get another 40 minutes.”