Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - An Indictment or Just a Bad Game? Recap of Kansas Jayhawks Getting Crushed at Creighton Bluejays

Starting point is 00:00:00 Kansas crushed by Creighton. Is this an indictment on the team or was it just a bad performance we discuss on today's Locked on Jayhawks? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Eric Johnson, you can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. This is Locked On Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. Thank you to the everydayers catching each and every show. We're free and available wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:35 And you can find us on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition of Locked On Jayhawks, we are recapping the Kansas Creighton game. Was this an indictment on how good this team possibly is, or was this just a bad game because Kansas was blown out and it felt like a lot of games that they suffered a season ago when they did not have nearly as good of a season as many of you hoped for? First, today's episode of the show is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. You can start the

Starting point is 00:01:05 season with a big return on fan duel new customers can place a five dollar bet and you'll get started with 150 in bonus bets if you win your first five dollar bet just visit fanduel.com to get started so we'll recap the game we'll get into our game awards um we'll get into that conversation and what's next for ku all on today's episode of the show. So let's start with this. Was this an indictment on the team? Like, is this what this team is? Like, is this team, did they show a lot of, I guess, Achilles heel in this one?

Starting point is 00:01:35 And you might be saying, oh, well, the bigger sample size, they beat North Carolina and Michigan State. North Carolina just got smashed by Alabama. They're sitting at four and four. How good of a win really was that for Kansas at this point in time? The Michigan State win. Michigan State's been fine, but they haven't been that great. Now the Duke win, that one seems to be holding up very well and shows the ceiling of this team. But is this going to be what the floor of this team is? That the ceiling, we know they can beat some of the best teams in the country. They showed that a little bit last year, but that

Starting point is 00:02:00 the floor is that you are going to be in danger when you go on the road, similar to last year's team. I think that's what was unfortunate about this. It felt like Kansas didn't just lose this game on the road. I mean, shoot, you look at the 2019-20 team that was the best team in the country. They lost their Big 12 Big East game at Villanova, but that was a close game. This was a blowout, and that made it feel a lot like last year's results

Starting point is 00:02:27 when things weren't going well for you. And just like everything went wrong for KU in this game. Kansas only shoots 36% from the floor. They only shot 36% on two-point shots, which is their worst since the 2022 season. Ironically, the game that they had their worst two-point shooting percentage, they shot under 30 on twos that was in a win over texas on senior day for that national title winning season so i don't know maybe that's actually a good side uh but they only shot 36 on twos they actually shot 35 on threes eight of 23 only five did the free throw line didn't get to the free throw line

Starting point is 00:02:59 very well so you weren't getting the free throw line and part of that was you know in the first half i think it was a little bit about you weren't like driving to the rim. I think you were going for the shots that they wanted you to take, which were those little push shots, the floaters, which we talked about in the pregame that like that was okay. The ones that I didn't like were the out of system or DeJuan launching up a billion shots or the contested mid-range shots. You're not going to get fouled as many on those. In addition to that, the refs were horrible in this game. The whistle was incredibly one-sided, and Creighton kept getting away with push-offs and everything.

Starting point is 00:03:30 That didn't decide the game. Creighton still whooped Kansas in this one, but that obviously wasn't great. So you have those things going into, you're not shooting well from twos. In the second half, you felt like you said, hey, we didn't take any layup attempts really in the first half. Let's force the issue. Let's take some layups in the second half. And they were just like, okay, we didn't take any layup attempts really in the first half. Let's force the issue. Let's take some layups in the second half. And they were just like, okay, we're going to play vertical defense,

Starting point is 00:03:49 and then we're going to play good defense. We have good rim protection. And then the times that we don't, we're probably not getting a call for a foul, and we are just going to shut down your twos, and then KU is going to miss a billion layups. So you didn't chew layups well in this game. In the end, Kansas goes 8 of 18, so below 50% on layups. That obviously is also not good.

Starting point is 00:04:07 The three-point defense was really bad. We knew coming in, Creighton takes a lot of threes. They haven't been making a lot of threes, just 31%. We figured they were probably a better three-point shooting team than that, though, and they were due for a reversion to the mean. Well, they had their reversion in this game, 12 of 29 from three, 41%. Now, part of that was they were probably due for a reversion in this game 12 of 29 from 341 percent now um part of that was they were probably due for a reversion another part of it was maybe they got a little lucky that this will be a bit of an

Starting point is 00:04:30 outlier performance for them but also i think be above it all like there were a lot of open threes especially in that first half that kansas gave up and that continues to be a bugaboo for this kansas defense um and when you have hunter dickinson out there it's going to be harder to guard you know the three-point shooting um and the times where you did like hard head ball hard hedge uh ball screens and you had hunter chasing a perimeter player on the outside they got like a dunk out of it because um you ended up with ryan kalkbrenner rolling by so it's like it's very hard to set up a good defense with the for this specific matchup i should say right there are certain matchups that that it doesn't impact you as much but for a team

Starting point is 00:05:11 who's just going to have like everybody shooting threes and you're going to be taking 30 in a game and it's going to stress you that way it's really hard for ku to set a defense with their current personnel that is going to work well against that and And then above all and beyond, I mean, Kansas actually did a great job with turnovers in this game. It was 15-5 in turnovers. They led, Creighton had the 15, Kansas only had 5. They led 12-7 in points off turnovers. I know the rebounding battle doesn't look great,

Starting point is 00:05:38 but that's just because Kansas missed a billion more shots. They missed 17 more shots than Creighton, so obviously that's going to be a part of it. But it's the shot selection in this one I shot selection and shot distribution in this one are the ones that really come to mind so you look at the shot selection I thought this was especially bad in the first the second half it was just forcing the issue of layups that weren't always there um but at least maybe you can live with that a little bit more because typically if you do that you're going to get to the free throw line more again didn't really happen in this game. And typically, those are going to be higher percentage shots.

Starting point is 00:06:06 In the first half, you were just taking some bad shots, I think, in general, but also the shot distribution. DeJuan Harris shot 21 times in this game. Now, DeJuan's had some good offensive performances this year. You don't want him taking 21 shots. That's not part of his game. And in theory, if you were stacking guys up on this team in terms of who is your best bucket getters, DeJuan is not going to be ill, right? In theory, it should be AJ Stewart. It should be Hunter Dickinson. It should be like Zeke Mayo.

Starting point is 00:06:35 You don't want DeJuan taking 21 shots, right? The best part of his game is his defense is facilitating and that he can make some shots here and there that fit into the rhythm of the offense. So that was not great. You end up with Hunter Dickinson only taking four shots, and the KU three big men between Dickinson, Budunga, and Clements taking a combined seven shots in the game for KU. And if you add KJ Adams into that discussion of big men, 13 shots from those four players compared to 21 shots for dewan harris so that's that great shot distribution and i know ryan kalkbrenner's is really good uh defensive big

Starting point is 00:07:10 man he's gonna limit shots on the inside and and they're two four men are six foot ten so they're clogging up the paint but it felt like kansas didn't really even try to get hunter digginson on the block right it felt like they weren't even trying to post the ball. I don't know what was up with that, but you end up with a game where Hunter Dickinson has six points and only takes four shots. And again, I don't know if that was more on the individuals, were they making a decision to do that? I don't entirely know.

Starting point is 00:07:42 It definitely, I i think becomes a problem when if if hunter dickinson is going to only be getting up four shots it almost gets rid of the whole purpose of him being out there if he's playing 25 minutes per game because the whole idea of hunter dickinson is going to be that he is this unbelievably great offensive big man that he has this great finesse that he has this great post work and everything like that that he's going to give you an advantage on the rebounding battle and as an offensive post score, and that you're going to be able to work your offense around that post scoring. Well, if he's only taking four shots, he's not having a big impact on the offensive end. And then if you're talking about, okay, well, then how can he have a positive impact on the game? Well, we talked about this just a minute ago.

Starting point is 00:08:27 This is not a good defensive matchup for Hunter Dickinson. A team that launches a bunch of threes and is going to spread you out. Bad matchup for Hunter Dickinson. So if he's not giving you anything on offense, it's going to be a problem on the defensive end. So just like so many things went wrong for KU in this game. Creighton was hot from three. Pop Isaacs who came in not having a single game Pop Isaacs didn't have a single game in his first eight games where he

Starting point is 00:08:50 shot above 40 percent from the floor he went 10 of 15 from this game now a lot of those were wide open shots right makes it a lot easier on him some of them were were you know maybe got a good bounce here there some of them were contested he just made a good shot he goes 10 for 15 in the game six of nine from three so like it's a combination of those things. I will say if we're if we're answering the question here, was this an indictment on Kansas or was this just a bad game? I think it is a little bit of both. I know that's cheating a little bit on the answer.

Starting point is 00:09:14 But if you want me to lean toward one more than the other, I am right now just leaning toward it just being a bad game because it's happened just one time last year. It happened multiple times. It kept happening. And so if you go out on the road this weekend at Missouri and you lose again, then maybe we'll circle back to this and say, yeah, maybe that is an indictment of who they are. But as of now, the bigger sample size that this is the one off, they looked a little sluggish. They look like they missed a lot of shots that they didn't normally make. You were without Rylan Griffin, who, you know, I guess Kansas has been lost twice, if you count the exhibition game to Arkansas, both in bloods, both without Rylan Griffin.

Starting point is 00:09:52 So maybe he's the most valuable player on the team for Kansas. And, you know, that led to the first half wing minutes being a disaster. You got two combined points, one of five, like three fouls from the two wings who were playing without Rylan Griffin in the first half. No store had a good second half or at least a decent second half there. But yeah, as of right now, I'm just leaning toward this being a bad game where you missed a bunch of shots. You missed a bunch of layups. You had a weird game plan in a weird way.

Starting point is 00:10:19 It felt a little bit like that Washington game at the T-Mobile Center like a handful of years ago. I think there's 2018 just from the standpoint of, if you remember, they basically were like, we're going to only let the Gerald Vick shoot for your team. And it was like that, but with DeJuan Harris in a different way. They played zone and it was kind of a different way in how it went about. But this felt a little bit like that to me. And Creighton was hitting shots. Creighton always does well against number one teams at home or like top five teams at home. That's just what they do. They were due for a big performance and they kind of hit it so as of right now I am leaning toward that but this definitely backs up some worries I had about the

Starting point is 00:10:53 three-point defense and you know uh just how dominant of a team is Kansas number one are they number five whatever it is like yes absolutely on some of those things all right let's get to our uh game awards here real quick i i guess real quick um before we get into the game awards i will say we we saw a little bit more minutes from rickies passmore and zach clements in this one i actually liked the zach clements minutes in this one the rickies passmore minutes did not go super well starting to wonder if uh he's gonna end up getting buried on the depth chart i don't know maybe you can't afford to right now obviously you can't can't with Ryland Griffin out as well, but it seems like it's going to take him another year to kind of come around here.

Starting point is 00:11:29 I will say also, if we're talking about a Dyden in long term, like that basically zone where Creighton in the first half was just like, they did it all game, but DeJuan just shoot the ball. I'm not overly worried because, again, no Ryland Griffin. Not all teams have a Ryan Kalkbrenner in the middle for elite rim protection and if dewan is shooting the ball from three at more career norms than what he has so far early this season then it's going to be just fine all right game awards next this is

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Starting point is 00:12:43 Thank you for tuning in to Locked On Jayhawks, making it your first listen every day. Check out Locked on College Basketball, Locked on College Football for your second listen every day. And certainly that, you know, I mentioned kind of felt like some of the performances last year. It certainly felt that way on the offensive end. It felt like a lot of times last year, Kansas ended up being a slog on the offensive end. But again, not every team is going to have Ryan Kalkbrenner.

Starting point is 00:13:07 Hopefully a good learning experience for KU. But that was certainly ugly for Kansas. So Zach Clements was two for two. Hunter Dickinson was two for four. Outside of that, no player on KU. I guess Flory was one for one. No player on KU shot 50%. I mean, it's kind of bad all the way around um for

Starting point is 00:13:27 this one for ku but again uh unless they start stringing these bad performances together i'm gonna just view this as a bad game and then long term um i i still think they're gonna be all right uh you have that duke win which looks really good. And last I saw, Duke was leading Auburn, which looked like the best team in the country. So who knows how that one will finish and everything. All right, game awards in this one. The best moment. It's a little harder to pick the best moment

Starting point is 00:13:55 in a game that you lose by 13 points. I did think the Zeke Mayo three, you were down 13 in the first half where he gets the defender to fall, hits it straight on. That was cool. Zach Clements, I thought that was a really cool play when he read that one uh like alley-oop pass gets in front of it he immediately passed it to Juan Harris then goes to store for the dunk and I think that was I mentioned briefly that I liked the Zach Clements minutes I thought he was really decisive and aggressive and those two things we haven't always seen from him that I

Starting point is 00:14:24 was impressed with what he brought to the table when he came off the bench for the limited time in seven minutes that was a cool moment i i guess the best moment is probably just that like 7-0 run you went on to start the second half where you're like okay here comes that kid's on slot they're gonna be fine they're gonna win this game and then uh yeah things did not certainly finish that way worst moment i don't know. Pick your Pop Isaacs open three. Pick your Pop Isaacs made shot. The Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:52 This might be the worst moment. We're going to give out a separate award for this. The Jalen Hurts Push Award. No tush, just all push. It goes to Stephen Ashworth. What were your favorite pushes from Stephen Ashworth? I mean, here's my top three.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Number three, he had one where he pushed off DeJuan Harris. Looked like he traveled after two, but then DeJuan gets called for the foul. Number two, he had a clear push off on a drive when they were running. Gosh, that was the second half. And then number one has to be his push from behind on Zeke Mayo, where the official is right there and doesn't make the call. Steven Ashworth, just the ultimate Jalen Hurts push award. So congrats to him.

Starting point is 00:15:35 And each of those could qualify for worst moment as well. The billion missed layups for KU. I don't know. A lot of bad moments in this one, as we said. Pretty much everything went wrong. Awful startups for KU. The, I don't know, a lot of bad moments in this one, as we said. Pretty much everything went wrong. Awful start award for KU. That could really go to the whole team. They got down, what, 10-2, 11-2 in the early going of this one.

Starting point is 00:15:53 But specifically, it's going to go to the KU Wings. So the first half was really bad for the KU Wings. They, in 20 minutes between AJ Storer, Keyes Passmore, wound up just one of five from the floor. They had three fouls. They did have two steals, but they had just like one rebound in that span, zero assists. Now, Storr ended up with 12 points. He picked that up a little bit.

Starting point is 00:16:15 Not great efficiency, four of 13, but he did at least end up with 12 points. Passmore was scoreless. He had one rebound, zero assists, three fouls, two turnovers in his 10 minutes of play. But he actually had a better plus minus i guess he played way less minutes but minus four to aj stores minus eight um the awful start though specifically so the very first drive of the game jamiya neal drive right by aj store gets a layup then aj store takes that like really bad mid-range shot at the again going back to the shot selection thing then on the other end he loses jamiah neal off the ball gives up an easy layup and then uh bill self's like okay that's a bad start let's put in ricky's pass more and immediately he like

Starting point is 00:16:54 comes in and catches the ball with his heel out of bounds so that was about as bad of a start as you can figure out kansas needs to figure out this aj store thing they have plenty of time still to do i shouldn't say plenty of time. The college season is relatively short. But, like, I guess you run it out of non-con games, too. You have, what, like three non-con games, four non-con games remaining? You need to figure out the AJ Storr thing because AJ Storr, at his best, can really help this team and would help a team in a game like this where he can grind out buckets for you in a game you weren't really getting those.

Starting point is 00:17:22 They have to be able to unlock him in a very real way uh okay what about our plus minus king and uh jester i guess we could call jester would go to the worst so the plus minus king in this one how about zach clements we mentioned like in his minutes he was plus six he had the best plus minus on k you in the game plus six and seven minutes good for zach cle. The second best plus minus, you might be wondering, it was Flor Badunga. He was even. He only played 12 minutes, but he was even. And then you look at the worst plus minus, and it was Hunter Dickinson at minus 14.

Starting point is 00:17:54 Oh, no, I actually scratched that. It was KJ Adams at a minus 18, followed by Hunter Dickinson at a minus 14. And what does that tell you? Because it tells me something. I guess the KJ one, I have less to kind of explain with that but with hunter digginson being minus 14 whereas flory and zach were combined plus six i think that was matchup dependent going back to the idea of okay it's one thing if hunter digginson's giving

Starting point is 00:18:14 you 15 20 points especially in a game like this where you couldn't really score offensively hunter would have been giving you buckets on offense that would have been huge for you right um but the problem is when that wasn't happening now you're just talking about okay if you're not getting offensive production from your centers it just comes down to what are you bringing on the defensive end and of course flory and zach who are a little bit more mobile are going to be better matchups for a matchup like creighton where they're going to be bombs away from three now there are other matchups like you think about michigan state who's playing a couple big men even duke to a certain extent who you know cooper flag can shoot threes and malawak can shoot threes occasionally um they do play you know a good amount of size down low so that actually is an okay matchup for

Starting point is 00:18:54 hundred against indefensibly this was not really one of those um okay our offensive mvp of the game this is tough because again i, I guess Zeke Mayo. I mean, it's not an ultra-efficient shooting night. Five of 13. He missed a couple layups late to kind of ruin the shooting numbers. He actually started okay shooting. Well, two of four from three. He had two assists to just one turnover.

Starting point is 00:19:18 So I guess he gets the offensive MVP for this one. I mean, I don't know who else he would go with. I guess David Coyd off the bench did a couple threes, but he was just three of nine. You could go with DeJuan for scoring 15, but again, six of 21, right? He did have five assists, zero turnovers, but you know, AJ Storr, maybe in the second half, he had 10 points in the second half. That could be offensive MVP. Storr was, to his credit, I thought pretty good in transition. And again, he picked it up at least a little bit in the second half, but yeah,

Starting point is 00:19:46 I don't know. Maybe there's not really an answer for offensive MVP in this one for Kansas. When, when you have that bad of a performance, a defensive MVP for Kansas. Um, I mean,

Starting point is 00:19:56 Zach Clements had two steals in seven minutes. The per 40 numbers on that are going to be, uh, be a pretty amazing overall. When you look at, uh, Creighton in this game, uh,

Starting point is 00:20:04 pop Isaac's went 10 of 15 and I think the primary defender on him was Zeke Mayo so we're not going to give it to him uh in this one um Kalkbrenner at 17 points I mean do I go with KJ Adams Jackson McAndrew they're they're starting four man only had three points on one of four shooting um and then isaac trout had zero points in 15 minutes he's their other four man now they also have mason miller who plays on the wing a little bit too he had six points but i don't know i guess kj adams did a pretty good job limiting his guy so so he would be up there for consideration i would also give dewan harris consideration i mean stephen ashworth hit that one like insanely deep three. He was only five of 14, three of nine from three.

Starting point is 00:20:46 And if you take away that deep three, it'd be two of eight from three and four of 13 from the floor. He also had six turnovers. Yes, he had a rebound six assists, but he had six turnovers. So I actually thought DeJuan did a pretty good job on the defensive end. Obviously, it was a bit of a struggle with those shots and everything like that. But yeah, in the end, it's not great for KU. And this one's a little tougher to come up with some of these awards.

Starting point is 00:21:06 What's next for KU? We discussed that on the other side. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for joining us on Locked on Jayhawks. We're going to have an episode previewing the Missouri game coming at you on Friday because that is what is next up for Kansas men's basketball. They're going to be taking on the Missouri Tigers on the road on Sunday. And so their second straight on the road.

Starting point is 00:21:31 Obviously, Kansas did not pass their first road test. No other teams have lost before in their first road game, too, and turned out to be just fine, including Kansas. But you got to bounce back because, like we said, if all of a sudden you lose at Missouri as well on Sunday, then there are going to be real questions about the two performances put together. But if you bounce back, you beat Missouri on Sunday, then the more you string wins together after this one, the more you'll be able to point back to this one and say it was the Albatross. It was the outlier.

Starting point is 00:21:59 But you have some other bad performances. Then it becomes more evidence to just that. So how you respond from here is the big part of this. Then you're back home the following Saturday against a 2024 Final Four participant, NC State, very different team than they were a season ago. But yeah, there's only three games left for the non-con for KU. And there's also only three games left until, so your conference opener is on December 31st. That means you only have like three

Starting point is 00:22:26 games now in the next like three plus weeks so um that works both ways one it works in a way where um you're not going to have as much basketball on over the next couple of weeks but also works in a way that kansas is going to have more practice time i guess some of that you're going to have finals week some of that you're going to be traveling for christmas so it's not going to be as much as that indicates. But you'll probably have a little bit more practice time than normal to really start working on some of this stuff and figuring out roles and figuring out where everybody slots in and trying to get to the best version of yourself. I did want to do a quick update on KU Volleyball, KU Women's Basketball here before we go. KU Volleyball, 24-4, got a three seed for their NCAA tournament region. They seed the top

Starting point is 00:23:06 eight in each region. They were number 12 overall. They're going to be hosting Colgate on Friday at 6.30 in Horish. They swept them earlier this year, so trying to get by them again. And then if they win, they get either six seed Florida or NC State. Last year, they got the four seed, and they ended up having to play a really good Penn State team in the second round. So getting the three seed, Florida still got a good team, but it makes it a little bit easier for them to try to make it out to that second weekend. And then for KU women's basketball, they're sitting at 7-1. They got Wichita State on Thursday night.

Starting point is 00:23:34 They just had a big three-win stretch at the U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam. Pitt, Northern Iowa, Auburn, three wins. So they're rolling right now, early part of the season. They're rolling and recruiting. Great start for Brandon Schneider and company after losing all those seniors from last year's team. But Samaya Nichols keeps them going in a very real way. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks.

Starting point is 00:23:55 You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll be back for a KU Missouri preview on our next episode on Friday. See you then.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - An Indictment or Just a Bad Game? Recap of Kansas Jayhawks Getting Crushed at Creighton Bluejays

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