At least one UCF player remembers competing against KU Jayhawks’ Hunter Dickinson
UCF power forward Omar Payne will be matched against Kansas All-America candidate Hunter Dickinson on Wednesday night for the second time in the well-traveled Payne’s five-year college basketball career.
Payne’s Illinois Fighting Illini defeated Dickinson’s Michigan Wolverines, 93-85, on Feb. 24, 2022, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dickinson scored 13 points and grabbed 11 rebounds while Payne played sparingly, failing to score in four minutes.
Earlier Payne’s junior season, Dickinson did not play because of injury while Payne had two points and three boards while logging seven minutes in the Illini’s 68-53 win over the Wolverines on Jan. 14, 2022, in Champaign, Illinois.
“Big physical dude, great touch, good feel for the game; good IQ. He’s shooting more than when I first played him,” the 6-foot-10, 230-pound Payne said Monday at a news conference held in advance of Wednesday’s Big 12 battle between No. 3-ranked KU (13-1, 1-0) and unranked UCF (9-4, 0-1). Tipoff is 6 p.m. Central at a sold-out Addition Financial Arena in Orlando, Florida.
“I’ve got a little bit of experience (playing against Dickinson), but he probably did get better as a player. From what I know we’ve got to play hard, don’t let him get to his sweet spots, just work him,” Payne added.
Dickinson, a 7-foot-2, 260-pound senior, has averaged 19.4 points and 12.4 rebounds. Payne, who has played for four schools — UCF, Jacksonville, Illinois and Florida — averages 5.2 points and 4.0 rebounds. He had three blocked shots in the Knights’ Big 12 opener, a 77-52 loss to Kansas State on Saturday in Manhattan.
For the year Payne has 19 blocks. Reserve Ibrahima Diallo, who is a 7-foot, 245-pound senior, has 28 rejections.
The K-State game was UCF’s first as a member of the Big 12.
“Getting used to the atmosphere and being in the Big 12. This is our first year so this is all a learning (experience),” Payne said of the challenges faced in the opener.
Of the KU game, which will be played before a capacity crowd of 10,000 fans, Payne said: “I feel one thing that’s helped me over the years is I treat every game the same because any team is beatable. Any team can lose.
“The biggest excitement I have is really just showing what UCF can do and why we deserve to be here, because at the end of the day, we never had this opportunity before. So this is the time to make history and we get to show what we can do.”
Coached by former Duke player Johnny Dawkins, who directed Stanford to a second-round win over KU in the 2014 NCAA Tournament, UCF seeks its first win over a ranked team since Jan. 19, 2020, when the Knights visited No. 15 Florida State and won, a 86-74 victory. The Knights have lost their last seven games against ranked foes.
“We are excited about it,” eighth-year UCF coach Dawkins said of the sellout and enthusiasm for Wednesday’s game. “I’ve talked to our guys about staying grounded while understanding it’s a great opportunity. You are playing against a storied program, storied coach.
“You want to stay in the moment, not make it bigger than it can be. Our guys need to understand it’s still going to be about the same thing every game is going to be about during the year: execution.”
KU will be facing a UCF team eager to rebound from the lopsided loss at K-State.
“We are excited to do the same thing we faced this weekend,” Dawkins said. “Our crowd is going to be raucous. They are going to be a sellout crowd. Of course we are excited about that. When you can have everyone in the arena on our side or most of the people in the arena on our side, it’s a great feeling.”
Dawkins, who played and worked as an assistant coach at Duke, said he understands the challenge KU faces every game.
“The thing about being a blue blood and a program like Kansas is this: You are going to get everyone’s best shot every single night,” Dawkins said. “That can work for you because you have to be always prepared. You know you are not going to have any night you go into the game where young people are going to give you less than their best. That means you always have to be at your best.
“The thing that’s been phenomenal about teams like Kansas and Duke of course is that you look at the sustained excellence they’ve had, the decades of excellence they’ve had. It’s one thing to get there. You see teams all the time that get there (with) a great tournament run or get to the tournament, but they have been able to sustain that for decades, which is remarkable. That’s what a blue blood does, is consistency of high standards and winning success.”
