photo by: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Kansas center Hunter Dickinson shoots over Illinois forward Coleman Hawkins during the second half of the NCAA college basketball exhibition game Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023, in Champaign, Ill. Illinois won 82-75. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Champaign, Ill. — Neither former Illinois coach Bill Self nor former Michigan center Hunter Dickinson experienced an ideal return to the State Farm Center, but at least Self got to reunite with eight or nine of his former Illini players from the three years he spent in Champaign and received a pretty warm reception in his old stomping grounds.

Dickinson, however, came out of the gate in Sunday’s exhibition game with a string of early missed jumpers and hook shots and a traveling call and was 3-for-8 by halftime, stirring up an away fan base that he had once called “annoying” during his Michigan tenure and that booed him vociferously every time he touched the ball.

He said postgame that component was “pretty expected.” Dickinson explained at Big 12 Conference media day this month that it makes games more fun for him when he plays the role of the heel: “I just enjoy kind of leaning into it because the opposing team is going to hate you regardless. You might as well give them a reason to hate you a little bit more.”

But at least on this occasion Dickinson didn’t sufficiently feed off the energy that the 12,592 people assembled in State Farm Center sent his way. It was an atmosphere “not at all” like your typical exhibition game, forward KJ Adams Jr. said: “It was a fun environment. I feel like the fans showed for them.”

As KU’s whole roster is fond of pointing out, wearing “Kansas” emblazoned across your jersey means getting every team’s best shot — especially when you are ranked No. 1 in the nation. Self pointed out that Dickinson (though he may not have the history of back-and-forth with Big 12 teams yet) will undoubtedly receive a similar hostile treatment, or “level of fan interest” as the coach gently put it, elsewhere this season.

“I think that’s going to happen at other places too,” Self said. “So he needs to feel that.”

After an erratic opening frame, the 7-foot-2 center scored 14 points on putbacks and layups and such in a more promising second half, completing an overall stat line of 22 points and nine rebounds. But it was not on the whole a sparkling return to the court, certainly not by the standard set by a preseason All-American nod, conference player of the year honors and, maybe most strikingly, Self’s prior praise as the most talented offensive center he’s ever coached.

There were some encouraging signs even so as the game progressed. Dickinson curtailed the Illini’s opportunistic rebounding (39-32 over KU on the night) with those putbacks as the game went on, and cut well to the basket to finish lobs from Adams and Dajuan Harris Jr. The interplay with Adams, so potent and promising in Puerto Rico, did resurface, and Dickinson’s own widely praised passing set up a three-point play for Kevin McCullar Jr. that helped KU draw closer in the second half.

Furthermore, the shot selection was generally good; the sorts of quick-release elbow jumpers he was taking should be his bread and butter, as a center who can stretch the floor, if teams give him the space and the split second required to complete them, even if he wasn’t always on the mark Sunday. And he went back-to-the-basket and posted up Coleman Hawkins for an effortless spinning layup to open the second half, the sort that made you wonder why that didn’t just happen all game long.

For Dickinson himself, it was defense that emerged as the biggest area for improvement. He took responsibility for the traction that Illini guard Terrence Shannon Jr. gained early in the game on his way to a 28-point performance.

“We got to do a better job of not letting him get so comfortable early on in the game,” Dickinson said. “I think we — myself — gave him a couple too many easy looks off the pick and roll, and I think that really got him going. And so once you got a good player like that feeling himself, and feeling it out there, it can get to be hard to stop.”

So far, the best proof of concept for Dickinson remains KU’s second exhibition game in Puerto Rico in August, the initial matchup against the Bahamas in which he led all players with 28 points on 11-of-13 shooting and added six rebounds and four assists. But that was a different version of the Jayhawks who were far from fully formed.

In total, reflecting on Sunday, Self rattled off a slew of situations the team can learn from that came to the forefront in Champaign: “Late clock; how we’re going to guard ball screens; who’s going to be a rim protector; pick and choose when we run rather than run every possession; ball and body movement, we can get real stale real fast.”

That’s not all on Dickinson, not by any stretch. He is, though, the player that the Jayhawks will play through, the anchor of their offense — particularly prominent in that role given the lack of depth available on the roster — and the sort of center Self hasn’t been able to deploy in recent years. And Self has made centers with far less hype coming in immensely successful in the past.