Dajuan Harris, Gradey Dick share confidence in Joseph Yesufu

Kansas guard Joseph Yesufu put exclamation point on the Jayhawks’ home win over Texas this week to pull KU within one game of the Longhorns atop the Big 12 standings. With just over four minutes to play, a missed Texas shot landed in the right hand of Dajuan Harris, who threaded a flawless all-in-one-motion pass between several Longhorns to hit a charging Yesufu on the break. The shifty senior sprinted to the goal and slammed it home to give Kansas a nearly-insurmountable 11-point lead just before the last media timeout.

That’s probably the play of Yesufu’s career in in a Jayhawk jersey, virtually sealing the deal in a must-win home game for Big 12 regular season title purposes. Take a look at the incredible pass by Harris and the flush that followed:

#9 Kansas gets a huge win over #5 Texas 88-80 to keep its hopes alive in the Big 12 race.

Dajuan Harris doing it all – 17 points, 6 rebounds, 4 steals, and 5 assists with none better than this pass without taking a dribble to get Joe Yesufu the huge dunk. Special stuff. pic.twitter.com/l1do6ShmSp

— Sully Engels (@sullyengels) February 7, 2023

Harris and freshman wing Gradey Dick joined Joseph Yesufu in the postgame, where the other two were asked about Yesufu’s game-deciding play. Harris spoke first on the play, which he was obviously involved with:

“Joe’s one of the best — he is probably one of the best scorers on our team and we tell him every day, coach tells him to be aggressive and we’re gonna get that out of Joe. Because he’s a great scorer, he can do everything, he can guard the ball. So we’re gonna we need that out of him like every game, so he got to just keep it up.”

Gradey Dick then added:

“It was huge. But at the at the same time, we’re not surprised at all, because we see it every day.” He also called his celebration, “a little cherry on top.”

The game itself was a massive win for Kansas in the race for the conference crown.

“It was as close to a must-win as you can have this early in the season to win the league,” KU head coach Bill Self said afterwards. “I mean, if you go down three games with, what would that be, seven left? You’d have to win out, probably, and you’d have to get a lot of help from others.”

Winning this game kept Kansas in the mix, at the very least. But with the current state of life in the Big 12 — where practically every game is a quad one showdown — you can’t let your foot off the pedal. Coach Self knows it’s still a tough road to hoe to come back and overtake Texas for the league title.

“Now we still have as hard of a schedule as anybody, but at least we can kind of control our own destiny, that if we play well we’ll have a shot.”