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Ben McLemore banged up in Switzerland

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USA’s Ben McLemore plays the ball during the basketball friendly match between the national team of Switzerland and USA’s University team of Kansas Jayhawks in Fribourg, Switzerland, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012. (AP Photo /KEYSTONE/Peter Schneider)

AP

It’s not often that a basketball team has as much success as Kansas did last season while relying so heavily on the production of two players.

In fact, if the Jayhawks had knocked off Kentucky in the national title game back in April, they would’ve been the second-most unbalanced team to win a title in the past 15 years, behind Melo’s Syracuse team and in front of Kemba’s UConn team.

Think about that. The amount that Kansas relied on Thomas Robinson and Tyshawn Taylor made them more unbalanced than the UConn Fighting Kembas.

The reason that this is noteworthy is that Bill Self, quite obviously, will be without that duo during the 2012-2013 season. Taylor graduated and Robinson left school to become the fifth pick in the draft.

The guy that has been selected by just about everyone with an opinion on the matter to fill that void is Ben McLemore, the talented redshirt freshman that was forced to watch last season from the bench with academic issues. Kansas is currently in Switzerland, and this was supposed to be a chance for McLemore to become acclimated to his teammates. That hasn’t exactly worked out, however:

Kansas University red-shirt freshman Ben McLemore started but played just five minutes in Wednesday’s game because of a nagging injury.

The guard tweaked his groin on Saturday during KU’s last pre-European tourpractice in Lawrence.

“He wants to play,” KU coach Bill Self said. “He needs this more than maybe anybody on our team, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to get to have it.”

McLemore played 16 minutes in KU’s first game against Switzerland on Tuesday.

“He’s been trying to play, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to get out there much,” Self said. “We’ll give it another try in Paris (on Saturday) and see what happens.”


Bummer.

Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.