Can Kentucky stop one of college basketball’s best freshmen? ‘This dude has no memory.’

Included in playing one of the nation’s top college basketball teams Saturday night will be a unique challenge for the Kentucky Wildcats …

Keeping tabs on Kansas freshman Gradey Dick.

There were high expectations for the 6-foot-8 guard coming into the 2022-23 season, but it’s safe to say Dick has exceeded even the loftiest of hopes that the Jayhawks had for him.

And he’s proven to be a pain for opposing coaches.

Dick is averaging 14.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game for Kansas, shooting 43.7 percent from three-point range and 82.7 percent on free throws. On a team with a realistic chance to defend its national title, he’s been one of the top players — the Jayhawks’ second-leading scorer and their most prolific three-point shooter.

Bill Self is in his 20th season as Kansas head coach, and the two-time NCAA champion and Hall of Famer has already put Dick in select company.

“I will tell you this without hesitation … there have only been two players that I am aware of off the top of my head that have had a freshman year that challenges Gradey’s,” Self said on his weekly radio show last week.

Those players: former No. 1 recruit Andrew Wiggins, who ended up being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft; and Ben McLemore, the four-star guard who exceeded expectations in his first season at Kansas, becoming a Wooden Award finalist and the No. 7 pick in the 2013 draft.

Wiggins is the all-time leading scorer among freshmen at Kansas, tallying 597 points in his one year on campus. McLemore scored 589 points. KU great Danny Manning — the program’s all-time leading scorer — had 496 points as a freshman.

Dick has 297 points through 20 games, and a return trip to the national title game would put him right near the pace to match Wiggins’ freshman scoring total. Wherever he ends up on the final list, Dick is having a phenomenal first — and likely last — year as a Jayhawk.

Dick — a Wichita native — is the son of Carmen (a former Iowa State basketball player) and Bart Dick (a multi-sport athlete at Fort Hays State), and his KU fandom began early. The college freshman said he attended his first game at Allen Fieldhouse when he was 7 or 8 years old — alongside his father and brothers — and got so excited that he threw up.

When Dick is on the court himself, he’s difficult to rattle and often impossible to defend.

“He can’t remember the bad stuff,” Self said during the preseason. “He may miss 10 in a row, but he thinks he’s going to make the next 10.”

The KU coach noted in the fall that former KU stars Mario Chalmers and Brandon Rush had attended a preseason practice and pointed out that the floppy-haired freshman had a three-point shot that was basically unguardable. “You can’t block him,” Self recalled his former players telling him of the newcomer who’s 6-8 with a high-release and a steely approach.

“I think mechanics are part of it,” Self said. “The other thing that’s probably more important, though, when it comes to shooting, this dude has no memory. I mean, none.”

Dick was only the No. 22 overall recruit in the final 247Sports composite rankings for the 2022 class, but the McDonald’s All-American was also a Naismith finalist and earned Gatorade national player of the year honors as a senior. He was expected to have an instant impact as a freshman, but his long-term basketball stock has also increased over the course of the season.

Lists of the game’s top freshmen usually include Dick at No. 2 or No. 3 overall (Alabama’s Brandon Miller is the undisputed No. 1). Projections from ESPN, The Athletic, USA Today and 247Sports posted this month all have Dick among the top 16 picks in the 2023 NBA Draft, with the lottery looking like a real possibility for a player who might be the best shooting prospect in the entire class.

And he’s shown he’s way more than just a shooter.

“Even not making shots — I mean rebounds in traffic, keeping balls alive, competing — he’s getting more and more adept at learning how to win,” Self said last week. “He’s been absolutely a gem to coach. Terrific.”

The No. 9-ranked Jayhawks will come into Rupp Arena mired in a three-game losing streak — and they’ll try to avoid the first four-game skid of Self’s tenure at Kansas — but all three of those losses came against top-20 teams, and two of them were on the road in league play.

In the last one — a 75-69 defeat at Baylor on Monday night — Dick tallied 24 points, shot 8-for-13 from the floor, and made all six of his free throws. His season-high so far is 25 points — and 6-for-12 on threes — in a win over North Carolina State in November, and his national breakout came a week before that, when Dick scored seven points in a late flurry (14 for the game) to lift the Jayhawks over Duke in the Champions Classic.

“He’s having an unbelievable year,” Self said. “It makes it more special that he’s a freshman.”

When the freshman is able to get hot offensively, it often means great things for Kansas — more space on the floor and less stress on frontcourt star Jalen Wilson, the team’s leading scorer.

Stopping him on Saturday night will likely be high on Kentucky’s list of priorities.

“I’m having a blast,” Dick said. “This is my dream as a kid growing up in Kansas, coming to a school like Kansas. I’ve seen the guys playing before me — you know, going to the games — and the shoes I want to try to fill. Hopefully, I’m going toward that.”

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