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With the loss of Grant Jerrett, and transfer of Angelo Chol, the Wildcats had a few spots to fill, particularly in the frontcourt. And Miller found his man in former Kansas forward Zach Peters.
"We’re very fortunate," Miller said. "Timing sometimes is everything and in this case it really was. Zach Peters is somebody who Kansas recruited and was a part of the program. He got hit with a number of different early injuries and I think any freshman that deals with that many injuries in a short period of time, you can see why it took a while to get healthy. Now that he’s healthy, in his mind he had that thirst to be a college basketball player and pursue his dreams. I think we couldn’t have added a more quality player for what we need."
Now, expectations shouldn’t be too high for Peters, as he has experienced a litany of injury problems in his career thus far. The most concerning? Three concussions, two of which he suffered within a five week span last fall.
The Lawrence Journal-World said Peters suffered five incidents of trauma to his head over a 14-month period before choosing to transfer from Kansas.
He was a highly touted recruit early in high school but suffered a concussion as a junior, along with a number of injuries playing football as a senior and left high school a 3-star recruit.
Despite all of that, Miller still sounds pretty optimistic.
He said the UA looked "deeply" into the concussion history and is confident that Peters can contribute. Miller, though, was unsure whether or not a hardship waiver that would allow Peters to play for the UA right away would happen or not.
"His style, of play, he’s a very skilled player," Miller said. "He can shoot the ball from the perimeter and one of the things I was excited about is that he’s not small. He’s 6-10, he has a physicalness to him, he can move around on the perimeter, he can shoot the basketball, he can pass from the high post and he gives us a skill level that maybe we had with Grant moving forward."
The closest he’s been to game action came in Kansas’ summer exhibition tour to Europe last year where he averaged 5.0 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.