Hunter Dickinson jokes about Arkansas’ aggressive transfer portal approach

Former Michigan and current Kansas player Hunter Dickinson became the top commodity in the entire transfer portal cycle when he hit the open market following a prolific and accomplished three-year career with the Wolverines. But when he did enter the portal, Dickinson was hit with a tidal wave of coaches reaching out to him.

“Yeah, my recruiting was pretty crazy. When I first entered the portal, my phone was going nuts for a couple days and it was pretty fun,” Dickinson shared at a recent press conference. However, he says he only liked the attention for a little while.

“But it got old pretty quick” Dickinson added. “It reminded me of my high school recruitment, where I just couldn’t wait to get it over with, because… you know, you got to think about it. Like, you know, every school is calling you and every school’s got like four or five coaches.”

He singled out Arkansas and head coach Eric Musselman’s program as one who tried their darnedest to keep up with him.

“I mean, Arkansas has got like 20 calling you. Arkansas I had like 20 people calling me from them. But yeah, you think about like six or seven schools, four coaches (each), that’s like 24 people trying to call you like every other day. And so it gets to be a lot.”

After that rundown of his recruiting saga, Hunter Dickinson was then asked what it was about Bill Self and the Jayhawks that stood out from Arkansas and other who pursued him. His answer:

“I think the thing that sold me about Kansas was that it checked all the boxes in terms of having one of the best coaches of all time present, having the history and tradition of Kansas basketball. But also (Coach Self) having that pedigree of developing bigs, so I just feel like it checked all those boxes in that area.”

Also, Dickinson admits he just wants to win basketball games after his team battled on the bubble each of the last two seasons.

“My biggest thing was that I wanted to go somewhere to win, so why not go to the most winningest program in NCAA basketball history with six national championships? I wanted to develop and coach Self has done great things with big men. … I knew wherever I went was going to be a risk because I was coming into a new environment, but I feel like at Kansas it was less risky.”

There should be plenty of winning and individual success for Hunter Dickinson at Kansas this upcoming season.