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Kansas guard Wayne Selden hopes to have a healthier knee next season

Wayne Selden, Jr.

Kansas’ Wayne Selden, Jr. (1) dunks the ball during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Georgetown Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013, in Lawrence, Kan. Kansas won the game 86-64. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

AP

Kansas is going to enter next season as one of the nation’s top ten teams, the favorite to win their 11th straight Big 12 regular season title and a contender to win a national title.

In fact, the Jayhawks have a very good chance of being better next season than they were last season, when two of the projected top three picks in the 2014 NBA Draft were on the roster of a team that won the Big 12 regular season title.

But that doesn’t mean that Kansas will enter the season without question marks, as they have a number of players at key positions that will need to prove themselves. Can Perry Ellis be the go-to guy on a team that makes the Final Four? Just how good will Kelly Oubre and Cliff Alexander be in their first year at the college level? Can Devonte’ Graham, Frank Mason or Connor Frankamp be the answer at the point?

And then there’s Wayne Selden. Selden was considered a potential lottery pick entering last season and likely would have gone in the first round had he decided to enter the 2014 draft, but that was more based on potential than it was his performance as a freshman. He averaged just 9.7 points last year, but it was a season that was hampered by a knee issue that he had surgically fixed this offseason.

From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

“You can’t really make excuses, because I’ve been playing with my knee like that for three, four years now,” Selden said. “So it became normal, and I didn’t really realize it.”

Selden has worked to rehab the knee over the summer and is still getting treatment for it.

“It’s feeling pretty good,” Selden said. “I don’t think I’m still fully 100 percent, but I feel like I’m getting really close to being there.”


Selden entered college with the reputation of being a powerful slasher, but the knee injury hampered some of that explosiveness limiting him, at times, to playing a role as a spot-up shooter. That’s not his strength.

But with a healthy knee and an offseason’s worth of rehabilitation, the hope is that we will get a chance to see a brand new Wayne Selden next season.

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