Henry in the Huddle | Moore could be right addition at right time for Jayhawks (2024)

photo by: AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Mississippi State guard Shakeel Moore (3) is pursued by Kentucky guard Antonio Reeves (12) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Starkville, Miss. Kentucky won 91-89.

The Kansas men’s basketball team’s acquisition of Shakeel Moore did not arrive with the greatest fanfare.

On3 ranked him as the 285th-best transfer in the portal. 247Sports gave him a comparatively generous ranking at 274th. For comparison, AJ Storr, arguably the jewel of the Jayhawks’ offseason, is a top-10 transfer on both sites.

In addition, the exact fashion in which Moore’s transfer manifested itself did not make his commitment feel nearly as momentous as those that preceded it. As opposed to, say, Alabama transfer Rylan Griffen, who was linked to the Jayhawks for weeks and whose commitment seemed a foregone conclusion by the time he pledged to KU on April 26, Moore only had his name start to float around as a potential KU target in very close proximity to his commitment.

And by the time he committed on June 5, the news was overshadowed by, or at least seen strictly as a direct response to, the loss of guard Elmarko Jackson to a torn patellar tendon as confirmed by an MRI just hours earlier.

But the truth is that whether the Jayhawks still had Jackson or not, Moore would have made almost too much sense as an addition to KU’s already impressive 2024-25 roster.

Modest rankings notwithstanding, he provides instant defense to a team with questions on that side of the ball, and a backup point guard to a team that saw one promising possibility at that position decommit (and now another fall victim to a season-ending injury).

“Shakeel is a combo guard who can play on and off the ball,” head coach Bill Self said in announcing his official signing on Tuesday. “He’s a terrific athlete, and we feel like he will be a nice complement to the personnel already on the roster. His experience and maturity should allow him to be a good fit here. He’s a tremendous young man that will graduate from Mississippi State this summer.”

Self’s choice to describe him as a “complement” to KU’s 11 healthy players is apt, because the very fact of Moore’s acceptance of a scholarship offer to KU with this level of talent already coming in shows his implicit willingness to play a smaller role.

That description also matches what Self had said he was looking for in another roster addition, just two days before Moore’s commitment: “How do we have somebody that can come in and be a nice asset to us and benefit the other ones’ skill levels?”

Because even if Moore’s not a top-notch scorer — he’s averaging 8.4 points per game for his career — and even if he’s a bit small at 6-foot-1, he has started 68 career games between tournament-caliber teams in two of the nation’s most prestigious conferences. He could undoubtedly have found a fairly high-level team on which to play more, perhaps even be a primary option, in his final year of eligibility.

Instead, he picked KU, which even with the loss of Jackson figures to use him as somewhere between its seventh and ninth man.

Recall that Self recently said he didn’t see it as too much of a challenge to stack additional pieces with so many highly touted players already coming in because he found that “guys that have been in college for a while … if they haven’t won consistently where they’ve been, that winning does kind of drive their motivation many times.”

Certainly the possibility of tournament success was a motivating factor for Moore last offseason, heading into his final season at Mississippi State. When the Bulldogs took on Pittsburgh in the First Four at the end of the 2022-23 season, he got open for a potential game-winning 3-pointer but missed. He expressed multiple times during the successive campaign how “hungry” he was to grow beyond that disappointment.

Ultimately, Mississippi State earned a No. 8 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament but took a resounding loss in the first round to Michigan State, meaning Moore is still seeking the first tournament win of his career.

Moore said in a video posted by KU on social media he’s looking forward to “going to battle with my new brothers.”

“I can’t wait to get on the floor with them and get that going, and get that chemistry going,” he said. “I definitely have goals of winning a ‘natty’ this year, and conference championships, and all of the above.”

What exactly will Moore’s role in helping the Jayhawks achieve those goals look like? The first thing to note is that against some teams, the fact that he and Harris are both undersized could prevent them from both being on the court at the same time. (Harris is listed at 6-foot-2, 170 pounds.) That means he’ll likely be called upon more often to use the point-guard portion of his combo-guard skill set. The more he can do that for KU, the better, after Harris was by any metric overtaxed by having to play nearly 36 minutes a game last season.

Before Moore committed (and particularly in the several hours between the revelations of Jackson’s injury and Moore’s pledge), South Dakota State transfer Zeke Mayo seemed like a strong candidate to man the point when Harris was off the court. Like Moore, he is a veteran entering his first year at KU; unlike Moore, he has reliably hit on a high percentage of 3s throughout his career and also has a reputation as a shot creator.

If Mayo steps into the role of backup point guard, that would obviously limit Moore’s minutes, though Moore could still conceivably play off the ball in such a scenario. That said, it’s hard to imagine, frankly, that he would be a better choice to occupy any given set of minutes at shooting guard than, say, Storr or Griffen.

Speaking of Griffen, he told JayhawkSlant when he committed, “Kevin (McCullar Jr.) left, so guarding the team’s best player, that’s a role that’s open and I need to step up to the challenge.” How well he does that will also affect Moore’s minutes, because Moore’s defensive background — he was a top-15 candidate for national defensive player of the year honors as a junior — is part of what makes him an appealing addition for KU.

Because of that pedigree and because of his experience, it will be hard to squeeze Moore out of the rotation entirely. After acquiring a string of the best players available to start out KU’s offseason in the transfer portal, Self and his staff made an acquisition with more of an eye toward positional need, and it won’t be a surprise at all if it pays off in spades.

photo by: AP Photo/Mike Stewart

Mississippi State NCAA college basketball player Shakeel Moore speaks during Southeastern Conference Media Days, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Birmingham, Ala.