Senior Graham personifies Kansas’ toughness
SAN ANTONIO – Devonte’ Graham has always had an edge to his game.
The Kansas senior said it started out of necessity as a teenager because of his height.
The 6-2 guard was 5-3 as a freshman in high school and 5-6 on his first driver’s license. He didn’t sprout up until his junior and senior years at Broughton High School (Raleigh, N.C.), but by then, the chip-on-his-shoulder demeanor as a basketball player already was deeply ingrained.
“You just have to be scrappier, tougher than a lot of people,” Graham told USA TODAY. “That’s helped my whole career with my work ethic. You have to work harder when you’re smaller — because you’re not as strong. It’s definitely helped me become the player I am today.”
That edge stayed with him when he wasn’t recruited by big-time schools out of high school and had chose Appalachian State before he decommitted and spent a post-graduate year at Brewster Academy.
“I had to work my way to Kansas,” Graham said. “It wasn’t handed to me.”
Graham’s inner fire is part of why coach Bill Self was ecstatic for him to take the reins as the team’s leader and top player heading into the start of the 2017-18 season.
“Devonte’ deferred a lot last year — in large part for what was best for our team,” Self said in October, referencing the backcourt tandem Graham formed with 2016-17 national player of the year Frank Mason. “Now what’s best for our team is for him to have the ball in his hands. People will see how much better he is.”
Self ’s forecast proved to be true, as Graham finished as a first-team AllAmerican and the Big 12 player of the year while guiding the Jayhawks to their 14th consecutive Big 12 regular-season title. He’s averaged 17.2 points and 7.3 assists per game.
But the outlook under Graham’s leadership didn’t look pretty early on, with back-to-back home losses to Washington and Arizona State causing Self to say this group was the “softest team that Kansas has had since I’ve been here.”
“I just remember thinking, man, this could be a long year,” Graham said.
Fast-forward to March and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
After the last two much-more-talented Kansas teams (2015-16 and 2016-17) bowed out of the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight — as No. 1 seeds — it’s the Graham-led Jayhawks, with less talent, that broke through to the Final Four.
And in a year when the Big 12 has been as tough as the conference has ever been, it was Graham’s play that steered Kansas to yet another regularseason title.
Self never stopped believing in his senior guard, a Wooden Award finalist. “He never doubted me,” Graham said. “He kept telling me how good of a player I was and telling me what he needed me to do for the team to be good.”
Except Self knows how tough of an individual assignment Graham has drawn in the Jayhawks’ national semifinal matchup against a favored Villanova team. Graham will be tasked with stopping national player of the year Jalen Brunson, who uses an array of craftiness and post-up moves to score and get defenders off their feet to draw fouls.
“I think if you look at (the Big 12 Conference) as a whole, 40% of our teams had a point guard who was All-American. So obviously (Devonte’) is as prepared as anybody could be. He’s played against the best. But he hasn’t played against the national player of the year,” Self said. “And I think that Jalen is strong. He’s stronger than those other (Big 12) guards. We haven’t played against a point guard that posts, and Jalen posts a lot. I do think there’s unique challenges.”
Graham’s matchup against Brunson will call on him to hold his own against a player who uses his strength over opposing guards. The veteran is grateful he’s no longer 5-3. And his assignment coincides with the mind-set he’s held his whole career.
“No player I’ve played against posts up and plays poised like that,” Graham said. “I’m gonna have to fight, gonna have to battle. I’m used to it.”