KU basketball’s Hunter Dickinson speaks for first time on flagrant two foul vs. Duke

Hunter Dickinson has had the opportunity to study the replay of the flagrant two foul that forced his ejection from last Tuesday’s Kansas-Duke nonconference basketball game in Las Vegas.

Upon extensive review, KU’s 7-foot-2, 265-pound senior center from Alexandria, Virginia figures his foot to the head of Duke’s Maliq Brown — while both were on the ground scrambling for the basketball with 10 1/2 minutes to play — should have been ruled a flagrant one.

The lesser of two evils — a flagrant one — would have assessed a technical foul to Dickinson but would have kept him available the rest of that game, a 75-72 KU victory.

“I think the thing that probably got it (to be) a flagrant two was the ‘slo-mo,’’’ Dickinson said Monday at a news conference held in advance of Wednesday’s game at Creighton. Tipoff is 7:30 p.m. at CHI Health Center in Omaha.

“I feel like if you watched it in real time and normal speed, I feel like it was a flagrant one. I feel like a flagrant two needs to be a little bit more malicious intent for that to occur. I put myself in that position and the refs made the call. So if you are going to put yourself in that position you can’t really be too picky and choosy with it,” he added.

Dickinson — his comments on the flagrant two were his first on the matter since last Tuesday’s game — wound up scoring 11 points on 4-of-11 shooting with six rebounds in 24 minutes. His backup, freshman Flory Bidunga, filled in the rest of the way and scored six points with eight rebounds in 16 minutes.

“I didn’t know I had to leave right away,” Dickinson said of a rule that sent him off the bench into the locker room after the ejection. “I was able to stay on the bench and talk to (Bidunga) a little bit before I had to exit.”

Bidunga has averaged 8.0 points and 5.3 rebounds while playing 13.2 minutes a game.

“I was able to get a good glimpse of him the last 10 minutes of that Duke game,” Dickinson said, smiling. “He’s been really good, really fun to play with, really fun to be around. He’s been growing at such a rapid pace. He has so much potential. I feel a lot of untapped potential. He’s really good right now. He’ll get even better.”

KU basketball injury update

KU coach Bill Self at Monday’s news conference gave an update on senior guard Shakeel Moore, who will not play in Wednesday’s game at Creighton because of a sore foot.

“He’s not 100%. He may not even be 85%. He may not be that 100% all year long. I mean, he had surgery (on foot in September),” Self said, “There’s going to be some discomfort when you have surgery. It’s not at the point now where he feels he can contribute, which to me is disappointing, not that he’s not out there but the fact after this much time he doesn’t feel he can really go on it. But I also think that we’ll get him back out there. It’s going to take at least a month longer than we anticipated.”

Self said he didn’t think a medical redshirt would be considered for the senior transfer from Mississippi State.

“I can’t say positively because I don’t know how he’s going to respond a month from now,” Self said. “We didn’t recruit him here to play next year. We recruited him to play here this year.”