Perhaps no potential top team in college basketball has as many moving pieces as Kansas.

The Jayhawks currently have eight players signed on for the 2019-20 season and five potential prospects to add (or re-add) to the fold. There’s Silvio De Sousa’s status with the NCAA, recruits RJ Hampton and Jalen Wilson and last year’s backcourt of Devon Dotson and Quentin Grimes, both of whom are testing the NBA Draft waters.

And after last week’s NBA Draft Combine, Sports Illustrated’s Jeremy Woo wrote that Kansas looks likely to return at least one of its NBA hopefuls.

“As Kansas continues its pursuit of uncommitted RJ Hampton and Michigan decommit Jalen Wilson, the fate of last year’s backcourt remains up in the air,” Woo wrote. “Dotson and Grimes each had positive moments at the combine, but it doesn’t feel like either player moved the needle enough to solidify his draft status. Both are presently looking at second-round selections (at best) and G League time if they turn pro now. It seems likely Dotson returns. Transferring may be on the table for Grimes.”

Woo’s comments match up with those from Sam Vecenie’s review of the combine for The Athletic (premium), with the primary thought on Grimes’ transfer seeming more like hearsay than anything else, with the general thought that Grimes may need to go elsewhere should he return to college to show off his skill set as a primary ball-handler.

The problem with that is that it totally flies in the face of the last 10-plus years of Kansas basketball, where the Jayhawks have seamlessly played two point guards together, dating all the way back to Russell Robinson and Mario Chalmers (and Sherron Collins/Chalmers). That trend continued with Collins/Tyshawn Taylor, then Taylor/Elijah Johnson and was seemingly perfected with Frank Mason III and Devonte’ Graham.

If anything, Grimes’ journey is not unlike that when Kansas paired Graham with Malik Newman. Newman was a high school point guard — like Grimes — and struggled at times with his aggressiveness when playing off the ball next to Graham. But the 2017-18 Jayhawks truly took a step forward once Newman’s comfort level grew and he felt more comfortable attacking. A terrific postseason followed, one where the Jayhawks made the Final Four thanks in large part to Newman’s 32 points against Duke.

A similar fate could await Grimes, should he return. The lightbulb never fully came on for Grimes the way it did Newman, but in his defense, it was his freshman season, rather than his third year in a college program. Either way, it’s silly to look at Grimes’ first year and determine that he couldn’t fit in a system that has proven itself to accommodate multiple point guards at once over and over again.

Of course, the key point here is Dotson. Regardless of what happens with Grimes, Hampton or Wilson, returning Dotson is the biggest key to Kansas hopping back on the Big 12 title train, and he would be a likely candidate for preseason Big 12 Player of the Year next to Udoka Azubuike.