Kansas Star Darryn Peterson Won't Return From Hamstring Injury Tuesday vs. UConn

Darryn Peterson will not play for No. 21 Kansas against fifth-ranked UConn at Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday night, Jayhawks coach Bill Self said.

"He is very close," Self said in a social media post. "He has worked his butt off, but he is still not 100 percent. He is day-to-day."

The star freshman played the first two games of the season, a blowout of Green Bay and a loss at North Carolina, but this will be his seventh game missed with an injured hamstring. Peterson sat out a loss to Duke at Madison Square Garden in New York and three games last week at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas.

The Jayhawks still managed to go 3-0 over power conference schools without Peterson. Without Peterson, Kansas briefly fell out of the top 25 in week 4 after starting the season as the No. 19 team. They returned to the top 25 on Monday, jumping to No. 21, following wins against Notre Dame and Syracuse – four spots ahead of where they were in the poll when Peterson first went down with a hamstring injury.

Kansas coach Bill Self said Monday that Darryn Peterson has looked good in practice while coming back from a hamstring injury, but he would not know until Tuesday whether the star freshman would be available when the No. 21 Jayhawks play No. 5 UConn.

"He has practiced, and he's gone up and down," Self said Monday. "The hesitancy I have is that before we'll announce anything, he has to test out medically from a strength and flexibility standpoint, and we'll know that in the morning."

Peterson was widely considered the nation’s No. 1 recruit coming out of high school, and many NBA mock drafts have pegged the 6-foot-5 guard as the first pick for the June draft. Peterson has flashed that potential in limited chances, scoring 21 points in 22