Kentucky spent the better part of a year chasing Tyran Stokes.

Tuesday night in Chicago, it has to guard him.

That’s the easy storyline for the Champions Classic, and it’s the least useful one. The real question for Kansas’s freshman isn’t whether he can punish the school he turned down. It’s whether he can run a good team’s offense against a defense that has just shown everyone where its holes are.

He can. And that’s why Kansas wins this game.

Start with how he got here. Stokes arrived in Lawrence as the No. 1 player in the 2026 class, ranked first by 247Sports, ESPN and Rivals. He grew up in Louisville. In late April he picked Kansas over Kentucky and Oregon, and CBS Sports wrote that Kentucky “went all-in” on him among high school prospects. It “didn’t pay off.”

The man who scouts these prospects for CBS didn’t hedge either.

“Stokes is the most talented prospect in the national class,” said Adam Finkelstein, CBS Sports’ director of basketball scouting.

So far the regular-season numbers are modest, and that isn’t a knock. He had 15 points and seven rebounds in the opener, a 95-65 win over Fordham. He had eight points, five rebounds and two assists in 21 minutes of an 89-45 rout of Middle Tennessee. Nobody needed him to do more.

The exhibitions told you more.

Against Duke he had 27 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. Against Louisville he had 15 points and nine rebounds. Kansas lost both games at Allen Fieldhouse, 90-84 and 89-83, and Bill Self shrugged it off.

“Nobody is leaving out of here the least bit discouraged,” Self said.

Now look at the other bench.

No. 23 Kentucky is 2-0. On Friday it beat James Madison 89-80 at Rupp Arena, and the number that stuck was 45. That’s how many threes James Madison took, which ties the most any opponent has ever attempted against Kentucky, a mark Tennessee set in January 2025. The Dukes made 15. They took 26 of those in the first half alone, when Kentucky forced exactly one turnover.

That gets filed as a three-point problem. It’s bigger than that.

A team doesn’t take 45 threes because it fell in love with the long ball on the bus ride over. It takes them because they’re open. A defense that forces one turnover in a half isn’t pressuring the ball. It’s chasing it.

Here’s the twist. Stokes isn’t the guy who makes you pay from 25 feet.

ESPN’s Jeremy Woo, who has him No. 1 on his 2027 draft board, describes “a powerful, fluid athlete” who scores in the paint and in transition and passes well. He also lists the obvious question: “an inconsistent shooter from both the foul line and 3-point range.”

Self said much the same thing on signing day, with a coach’s polish.

“He’s powerful and can be a great facilitator, and maybe what he does best is pass the basketball.”

So forget the 30-point fantasy. What Tyran Stokes has to show on Tuesday is the Duke version. Catch it on the move. Get downhill against a defense that doesn’t take the ball away. Draw the second defender, then find the shooter Kentucky leaves behind. If Kentucky guards Kansas the way it guarded James Madison, that shooter will be standing there waiting.

Watch his assists and his turnovers. The points column will lie to you.

That’s also where it can go sideways. Woo flagged turnovers and decision-making as the part of his game that isn’t ready yet. Kentucky has the athletes to make a freshman pay for one lazy pass in a big building on national television.

Kentucky has real firepower, too. Milan Momcilovic came over from Iowa State as a career 42.7 percent three-point shooter, and he scored only seven against James Madison. He won’t be that quiet twice. Zoom Diallo scored 16 on Friday. Mark Pope’s team can win a shootout.

It just can’t win one while giving away 45 threes.

Then there’s the draft talk, which will get loud on Tuesday whatever happens. Woo wrote that Stokes “starts the season with a significant opportunity to establish himself at No. 1.” That is a season-long job. One November night in Chicago doesn’t settle a June draft, and anyone who tells you otherwise on Wednesday morning is selling something.

The betting market agrees with the basic verdict. DraftKings had Kansas as a 5.5-point favorite, with the total around 152.5, as of Sunday’s SB Nation preview. KenPom gives the Jayhawks a 73 percent chance and projects an 83-76 final. Lines move, and two games against tune-up opponents don’t prove much for either team, so nothing about the number is a sure thing. But the logic behind it holds up.

Kansas is the better team. Tyran Stokes is the reason it’s better in this particular matchup.

Tip-off is around 9:30 p.m. ET at the United Center, on ESPN, about 30 minutes after Duke and Michigan State finish.

Kentucky spent a year trying to get him the ball.

On Tuesday, Kansas will.