KANSAS

Kansas Basketball Lands Australian Johnny Furphy

KU gets a late commitment from Johnny Furphy, who is reclassifying to become immediately eligible.

Derek Noll

Kansas Basketball Lands Australian Johnny Furphy
Kansas Basketball Lands Australian Johnny Furphy /
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G’day mate! 

And a good day it was for Kansas basketball. The Jayhawks added what is sure to be their final piece of the 2023-2024 basketball puzzle when they landed Johnny Furphy out of Australia. What’s more, once a question of whether he will play this year or next, we have a definitive answer. Furphy will reclassify and be eligible to play for Kansas this fall.

After a wild spring riding the transfer portal through its highs (Hunter Dickinson and Nick Timberlake) to the lows (Ernest Udeh and MJ Rice) and to the weird (Zach Clemence), Kansas is getting a late summer surprise gift. Call it a Christmas-in-August kind of situation for Bill Self and the Jayhawks as they get a talented player that is only going to improve.

The Canberra, Australia native is already considered a big-time athlete and has recently impressed while playing in the United States. He played in the Sportsradar Showdown in Las Vegas and in the NBA Academy Games in Atlanta and averaged 14.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 1.3 assists, and 1.8 steals per game in the academy. The six-foot-seven wing was so impressive that Kansas, Duke, Gonzaga, and North Carolina were among the schools interested in Furphy’s services.

But ultimately, Bill Self and the Jayhawks sealed the deal for Johnny Furphy. He will take the scholarship spot of Marcus Adams, Jr., who recently transferred to Gonzaga.

From a roster perspective, the addition of Furphy makes Kansas more versatile. Because of his size and outside shooting ability (he canned 35% of his threes in the Academy games), Kansas will have even more options. We can now see a scenario where Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar could be on the bench simultaneously and KU could run out a small, quick, and potentially dynamite five with KJ Adams in the middle, Furphy and Nick Timberlake on the wings knocking down threes, and two of Dajuan Harris, Elmarko Jackson or Arterio Morris setting things up.

While not nationally ranked, Furphy is expected to be a top-100 recruit according to some experts. And if you look at his highlight package, you can see why.

Kansas is set to play in Puerto Rico in a few hours and Bill Self is recruiting a player 15 time zones away while he himself is 2,300 miles away from Lawrence. Wizard status, confirmed.

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Derek Noll
DEREK NOLL

An avid Jayhawks fan his entire life, Derek graduated from the University of Kansas in 1999 and has been writing about the Jayhawks since 2014, getting his start at Rock Chalk Talk.  He specializes in uniform analysis for basketball and football and offers a humorous take on player performances through Player Ratings posts.

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