Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Are They Good? Can Kansas Jayhawks Overcome Their Current Identity Crisis?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Is Kansas a good basketball team? We discussed that. Some fun hypothetical questions for Badunga back next season. Maybe, maybe not. And plenty more on today's episode of 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. catching all the shows. We're free and available anywhere you get your podcasts and find us on YouTube where you can like and subscribe to the show. We're going to get into a very simple question on today's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Is Kansas a good basketball team? I think that'll be an interesting discussion. Some fun hypotheticals that we're going to go over for KU Hoops and a little who's stat line is it anyway. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, great and count, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, great and count, and use code LOCKEDONCOLEGE for $20 off your first purchase

Starting point is 00:01:07 with GameTime. Okay, so having talked in a little bit, KU's been playing a bunch of, you know, night games when we typically record. So very simple question to lead off the show here. Is Kansas good?

Starting point is 00:01:20 Um, you know, that's such a, such an ugly word. It's such a subjective question what's your definition of good i think here's here's really what it comes down to is that a kansas basketball fans definition of good is much different than 99 of college basketball fans across the country so since this is a kansas basketball show and I'm playing by those rules, I guess the answer would be no. Like good.

Starting point is 00:01:51 And that's the irony in this, Derek, is that good, if we're going on this KU basketball scale, good is like, are you going to go to a Final Four? Then you're good. Did you make it to the Elite Eight? You were okay. Right? That's kind of the scale we're operating on. fourth then you're good did you make it to the elite eight you were okay right right that that's kind of the scale we're operating on and so like kansas doesn't feel like a final four team to me

Starting point is 00:02:13 right now but i mean you look at advanced metrics predictive measures kin palm like art torvik wherever you want to look they're top 10 team in the country right so there's 350 some odd programs being top 10 that's pretty good so yeah most of the teams would kill for this most of the teams would kill for this year right um but you're right i i view it i judge it from the lens that i think you have to which is i mean this is a kansas podcast these are kansas people listening to this show most assumedly i think you judge it from the kansas perspective what i do think is interesting like you said they're ranked ninth on ken palm right now do you know where the 2022 national championship team was on ken palm entering the big 12 tournament which is pretty late in the year

Starting point is 00:02:58 well i know they lost back-to-back road games at the end of the year. Yeah, Baylor-TCU. Right. So I'm guessing, and then they won like two close games, which if you're going up. TCU and Texas. Ken Palm, you get added points for margin of victory. I know those were close wins. So I'm going to say like 16th, maybe 13th. No, they were 10th going into that Texas game, won that.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Going to the Big 12 tournament, they were 9th, which is exactly where they are right now. And that team won a title. So if we're judging it based on that, it's quite lame. And here's the other part too. Even if we're saying, okay, it's different at Kansas, expectations are higher here. At the end of the day, your ability to win games in March

Starting point is 00:03:43 and go to a Final Four is based on who else is there are there are there other teams that are going to stand in your way that are better than you that you just can't line up against and beat and I would remind anyone who is just Hulk smashing the panic button right now that this is still a team that within the past four days five days has proven that they can hang with one of the best teams in the country should they beat yeah yeah they should have won should have beaten one of the best teams in the country uh they beat duke earlier in the season i know it seems like that doesn't matter and it was a long time ago how about that michigan state win it did happen michigan state's won like what a million games in a row so uh i don't care if you think that this is worse than

Starting point is 00:04:31 most kansas teams that's not really the point we're not asking will this go down as one of the best well that 2022 team like beyond the rankings does anybody think that was a championship team did anybody think that was a team that could reel off six straight in March? Of course not. Especially if you asked him after that Kentucky game, right? Right. So I think,

Starting point is 00:04:51 I think reminding yourself that you don't lock into the other 350 teams in college basketball, you don't, you lock into the Hawks and maybe a few other big 12 teams. So it's really easy to have this narrow focus on your team. Everything they do is another reason why they can't win it all. Another reason why this isn't a great Kansas team. But, you know, other teams got problems too.

Starting point is 00:05:15 Yeah. And a lot of them are worse than what KU's dealing with. Yeah, I think the answer is they are good. Now, if you were to elevate that and say, are they great? Like, no, I don't think that would be the answer to that. But the one thing I see a lot on social media, i think this is more so just like a you know you're just reacting in the moment you're just upset you're you're right that happens i i see a lot and i don't know if you see this a lot too people saying this team is worse than last year how did they get worse than last year i don't think i agree with that i could maybe buy it if you were saying a fully healthy version

Starting point is 00:05:45 of last year, like when they had a fully healthy Kevin, when they had a fully healthy Hunter, but like they didn't. And by the end of the year, they didn't and they didn't have Kevin McCuller. And so I think this team to me is definitely better than last year's team. Like, do we not remember like they couldn't find a fifth starter that nobody was giving them anything on the bench? Did 29 bench points against UCF. So again, is this a great team among Bill Self teams? No, it's not. But I don't think it's a conversation to me

Starting point is 00:06:13 whether it's better than last year's team. No, it's not. I haven't seen people saying that. I'm kind of surprised. Out of all the opinions that you could have about this team, the one that I wouldn't go so far as to say is that they're worse than they were a year no they are better they are deeper Nick Timberlake was getting serious run this time of year you had Hunter Dickinson you had Kevin McCuller and then like

Starting point is 00:06:37 Johnny Furphy like hey maybe he'll have a good game once every couple of weeks but this team's significantly better I think we just, again, we just have this narrow focus. We are prisoners of the moment. Yeah. I can't think of one thing that team was better at than this team. Yeah. Okay. So if we saw the three big lineup in the UCF game, KJ Adams playing the three, Flory at the four, Hunter 400 at the five how does that affect this question like if I told you that Kansas is going to start going with that moving forward like that's going to be their new starting lineup which who knows it might be it might not be against Baylor and that that is going to occupy a big chunk of minutes in the rotation for Bill Self because

Starting point is 00:07:19 that's just the guys he trusts would that change your answer to any of this with thinking if they can be good? No, no. The biggest issue I've had with, and this is all Twitter. Like, I don't really hear people saying this when I talk to my friends in the group chat. This is very much like an online thing where one person says something and another person realizes, oh, that's the new thing to say. and then all of a sudden everyone's saying it but nobody really actually can explain it all season all season long everything has just been what is bill doing i see this on twitter all the time what is bill self doing why isn't this guy playing more why

Starting point is 00:08:00 isn't that guy playing more why is this this guy playing so much? What's with these rotations? Why is he screwing around? Let them play through their mistakes. They're just all the cliches that everybody says over and over again. The problem at this point, where you now have, what, 12 games or something like that left in the season, is that there's no one, I mean, one, who's like not playing enough. If only Rylan Griffin was playing 26 minutes, how long do we hear that? How long do we hear KJ needs to play less, Rylan needs to play more, AJ needs to play more?

Starting point is 00:08:37 Rylan Griffin played 26 minutes versus UCF. How many buckets did he get? Zero. Zero. I think he hit like five free throws, but he disappears. AJ Stewart is the opposite of disappear, but I don't think it's any better. It's like, you notice when AJ's out there, but not always for good reasons. So the idea that I, or frankly, anyone else is going to sit there still, still after months of this and say that like, Bill doesn't have the answers for the lineups, but I do. No, you don't because

Starting point is 00:09:17 they've tried them all and varying degrees of success, but it's not like there's this magical lineup that we've seen that we just need to see more of. So at this point, my only hope and wish for this team is that Bill is going to look at a rotation, five guys, and then three other guys and say, this is it. This is the lineup. You're getting about this many minutes a night. You're getting this many minutes a night. You'll come in. Somebody gets in foul trouble. You're going to get seven or eight. Like that's it done. And I don't even care who it is. Just go with something because you have to, at this point, develop some identity. We thought it was going to be defense like three weeks ago. Now, all of a sudden we've seen the defense look

Starting point is 00:09:59 as bad as it's looked in years. So I don't really know what the identity is, but they got to figure it out. And you're not going to figure it out doing what you did against UCF, which is throwing the kitchen sink at it. I think I saw Kevin Flaherty tweet that they had 11 different lineups in the first half. Maybe it's because DeJuan's out. Maybe it's because they're trying to,

Starting point is 00:10:18 they are trying to whittle it down, but you're not learning anything by going with this lineup for two minutes, going with this other lineup for the, for the next two minutes. I know everybody's saying, yeah, whittle it down,

Starting point is 00:10:29 but whittle it down to the guys I want to play. If you were saying that, I have to assume that you are one of the people who doesn't want to see KJ Adams play anymore. So you have two options, either accept that he's going to play or stop watching this team, because I promise you he's going to play. He may play at the four.

Starting point is 00:10:44 He may play at the three. He's going to play. And the guys you want to play, Rylan, AJ, I hate to break it to you. It's not working out for whatever reason, but like this is the way it's going to go. So if it's three bigs, I know this is a long answer. I'm fine with it. Just give me something night in night out that like, I know I can expect to see from this team all right let's get some fun hypotheticals including over uh flory badunga this is locked on jayhawks episode of the show is brought to you by game time and this year game time makes it even easier to create those unforgettable moments with their new feature game time picks it filters out the fluff and shows you only a best deals on great seats you can focus on what matters which is being at the game i love game time you can see the seed views of what

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Starting point is 00:11:53 Again, create an account and redeem code LOCKEDONCOllege, L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N-C-O-L-L-E-G-E, for $20 off. Download GameTime today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, thanks for joining us here on Locked on Jayhawks. And we'll have a KU Baylor preview coming at you on Friday. All right, some dumb KU basketball hypotheticals. Two-part question here.

Starting point is 00:12:19 Floyd Badunga, are you getting to a point where you would be worried that he's going to come back for another year and the the dumb hypothetical part of this would you take Kansas losing every game the rest of the season if it meant you get four years of flory no to your second question, absolutely not. Do you realize there's still... I mean, if they lost every game in the regular season, what would their record be? Forks would burn down. Do you have their current record? It's 15-5, right?

Starting point is 00:12:55 15, 14, 15. 15-5, and I think they have... So I think they have 10... 13... What is it, just 10 games left in the regular season? No, 11 in the regular season. And then big 12 turn. So if they lost every game remaining,

Starting point is 00:13:08 there'd be 15 and 17. Yeah. They're not getting into the tournament. No. So the tournament streak would end. I mean, but it's fun in a hypothetical. We can worry in your feet.

Starting point is 00:13:20 I mean, how good would that be? Yeah. But who would the coach be? Because if they lose out, Bill's not coming back. No way way you just feel like i'm out well no because you have to think about realistically what would come about if a team not just missed the tournament but to be in the top 10 and then lose for a straight month it would be like oh he he's totally he's totally lost it he lost the locker room we've never seen this before he what things weren't going great before the losing

Starting point is 00:13:52 streak so like maybe this dude's just checked out maybe he doesn't have it anymore he can't adapt yeah you get fired you either get fired or it would be a mutual party no dude you think we think you think we'd all just be like, oh, okay, whatever. Didn't get him next time. I think that's what Ken Ufeo would be thinking. No, but like John Kilopari had that like nine win season. Okay, what if I change it? What if I said Kansas loses in the first round,

Starting point is 00:14:16 but you get Flory for three years? Would you take that? Oh, yeah, I would take that. I would take that deal. Do you think he'll be back next year? But then I have to imagine, Derek, if I get him for four years, does that mean he's not good? Because at this point, the only thing we – I mean, the guys –

Starting point is 00:14:34 I mean, with the exception of Hunter Dickinson, if a guy's sticking around for four years and he's that athletic, it's like, what happened? He pulls an Eric Genoweth. He just gets worse as the seasons go. He follows Dave Matthews' band around the country for an entire summer. That's what Eric Genoweth did, by the way. Am I worried that he's going to go pro?

Starting point is 00:14:55 I don't think so. I mean, he's basically just getting rebounds and dunks. It's not high-level basketball. It's super explosive. It's athletic. I think he shows good characteristics. Like, fairly high basketball IQ. I think for a freshman big,

Starting point is 00:15:11 a lot of times they look like this, you know, baby deer, kind of skating all over the place. It's never, the moments never really look too big for him, and there really haven't been a ton of moments where you say, ah, he's so raw. He is, but it's not in a way that's where you say, ah, he's so raw. He is, but it's not in a way that's screwing the team over.

Starting point is 00:15:31 It's just that he knows what he does well, and he does it pretty well. I don't know where the mock drafts have him. I would imagine like maybe late first round, but I just, I don't see it quite yet because the bag doesn't seem to be very deep for, for, for Flory. He's not doing a bunch of different things, but the things he does, boy, does he do them? He does them very, very well, which is, uh, I guess a little bit like Johnny Furphy in

Starting point is 00:15:56 a way. I mean, obviously very different positions and stuff, but it's like Furphy didn't do much, but like he had threes pretty well. And you know, he was, he was an athlete in transition. Okay. Uh, next dumb hypothetical here if you could mush two of the current ku players together to make one super player who would you go with um wow that's a great question so you can merge like whatever attributes you want from the two players right so like i could do dewan harris's passing and i don't know whatever floater game with

Starting point is 00:16:27 kj adams because he's taking i got it oh oh i got it rylan griffin and aj store no no no no no no double the doghouse i better rylan griffin Diggy Coit give me a shooter who wants to launch 10 15 times a game like Diggy he doesn't give it I don't know if I can cuss on him he doesn't care like he's out there just like yo I'm Dave Lillard oh the five feet behind the arc 10 seconds left on the clock yapper Rylan's like I'm gonna play 26 minutes I may shoot it twice you think Diggy Coit would ever ever log 26 minutes can take two shots now you're giving Ryland's what six five six six you're giving that to Diggy Coit like that's the big thing yet Diggy Coit he's too small well now if he's 6'6". Yeah, now you have a 6'6", dude.

Starting point is 00:17:25 I mean, I think their shooting abilities are about the same, but you're giving a guy who doesn't give it. You know, he don't care. And if you combine Coyt with Coyt, David Coyt shooting, Flory Badunga's size, is that even, like, possible to think of? So you're telling me Flory? I've got a six,

Starting point is 00:17:46 10 dude. Who's just floating on the perimeter, jacking threes. I'm like, Hey man, you were like, go to the bench. You ain't doing that.

Starting point is 00:17:54 Yeah. So no more Flory dunks. You know, that's the problem. You can't, can't have it both ways. A guy who wants to shoot 33s and dude who wants to dunk everything. All right. Last one here.

Starting point is 00:18:04 Um, you get to give one player on this team, unlimited eligibility. They can play till their legs fall off or whenever they want to retire. But if they go to the NBA, then they're just gone. So like, if they're good enough at some point to go to the NBA,

Starting point is 00:18:21 they're gone. So you want somebody who is going to have to use the unlimited eligibility, but i don't know maybe you do maybe you don't because they would never they would never go to the nba basically they're never well it's like in florida's case if you gave him the unlimited eligibility chances are in a couple years he's going to go to the nba and you gifting that to him is not going to give you an advantage long term. I think the answer is Zeke, right? That's a good one. Because I don't think Zeke is on the NBA radar. He's not as explosive.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And also you think about it, you know, when if in this world of unlimited eligibility, you have a 38 year old Zeke Mayo, you know, he might not be playing high minutes every night, but he can still come in and hit a shot for you. Yeah, exactly. Like he's the perfect college basketball player and he already plays at such a high level. It's the perfect medium between really good college player, probably never going to be an NBA player.

Starting point is 00:19:16 But if you just told me every single year I had a Zeke Mayo and going back in history, every single Kansas team over the past 10-15 years he may not start he may not be averaging 17 a game on all those teams but he's getting run this Zeke Mayo is getting run on every Kansas team in the Bill Self era so if you could just lock me in with that for the next 10 years I'd love it imagine if you had Zeke Mayo and or like in the isaiah moss role on the 2020 team and you had zeke and devon dot that would have been fun yeah and if you give me zeke the next 10 years you know he's gonna enter his basketball prime here in like as many national

Starting point is 00:19:55 player of the year one of those years right no i think i think two i said the over under one and a half and i'm taking the over that like he gets hot for a couple years he's six years older than everybody else yeah like yeah for sure all right all right let's finish up little who's stat line is it anyway all right thanks for joining us here on locked on jayhawks again love a ku baylor preview tomorrow ku baylor recap coming at you on saturday on the show all right little who's stat line is it anyway I need you to guess this player these are going to be conference only numbers so only in the big 12 games um this player leads kansas with 3.1 mid-range attempts per game so mid-range two attempts per game leading the team

Starting point is 00:20:37 they have zero made three pointers in big 12 play and then in combined at the rim plus three point shooting effective field goal percentage they're in the 47th percentile nationally so basically average at those shooting which player am i referring to so the the thing that's hanging me up is no made threes but they have shot them they have okay that was kind of my question i'm like was it flory like is it kj well it wouldn't be flory because his numbers are so good at there i don't think kj's taking a three but it would be it would be like you to pick kj because he's taking a full court shot was in there yeah like at the buzzer took one. Gosh, who has not made a three? Is it Hunter?

Starting point is 00:21:27 It is Hunter Dickinson. Also like, okay, I should also add in defensive rating, in on-off defensive rating and conference play, he ranks in the second percentile nationally right now. Now that is a little bit unfair to him after the game that was the UCcf game which everybody was struggling and that lowered his rating a good amount but i i don't know it's really weird so if you're looking at hunter dickinson's game game logs so far in big 12 play let's see one two three four games of the nine that ku has played where he's even shot 50 or better from the floor and i know that you know you know, the media reaction would be, okay, well,

Starting point is 00:22:06 is KJ Adams playing next to him? You know, is that clogging up the paint? Is that creating a situation where, you know, he just doesn't have as much room to operate, but that can't be an excuse anymore because KJ was out for a certain amount of games. So like, I guess, I don't know. A question here is, is, is there something going on with Hunter? Okay, you've been cutting in and out. I think my internet connection's spotty,

Starting point is 00:22:34 so I didn't hear anything other than the last, very last thing you said. Is something going on with Hunter? That's basically the gist of it. I just like, like, he's still producing, he's still putting up points and rebounds, but the efficiency is not there. I don't know. Like I, I want, did the Duke game like spook him in some weird way?

Starting point is 00:22:50 I, I just don't know. I feel like he is still, like I said, producing, but it hasn't been as productive as last year. Yeah. I really don't know what to make because even if you want to blame it on the lack of spacing and how hard it is for him to operate down low, it's not any worse than it was last year when, you're right, he was better. And sometimes I just wonder if it's like, is he just not making as many shots? Like, is it that simple? Is there really nothing to it?

Starting point is 00:23:21 And he's just not as efficient as he was a season ago. Because in terms of the opportunities that are presented, it's exactly the same, if not better. Like you can shoot a little bit more. They can space the floor a little bit more. But you've also got, you know, another year now of seeing what it looks like to play against Kansas. Maybe the book's out.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Like teams know, hey, if it's going to be two bigs or if it's going to be Hunter and KJ, then we know how to defend that. I would say, though, Hunter still has the element of his bad is not that bad and his okay is actually good. You look at the games where he doesn't feel like he played great and then you look at the box score and you're like he still had 16 and 10 you know we do grade him on a little bit of a curve but you're right it does look it just looks clunkier than it did

Starting point is 00:24:16 a season ago but i don't know maybe maybe that's a path for ku being better like as as weird as this season has been as much as they haven't felt like they figured out the rotations and everything what if just everything stays the same but Hunter does get back to the level he was playing last year like I don't know maybe that is the difference of just being a top five team versus top you know 12 team or whatever they are right now yeah because I think if you just look at like the 12 play he's still and has been one of the five six best players in conference play Zeke has been probably one of the top 10 players in conference play and you may even have Zeke ahead of Hunter I probably would but yeah if one of those guys just became the best

Starting point is 00:24:57 player in the big 12 not one of the best but the best one of those guys their efficiency goes up you go from averaging 17 points a game in conference play to 21 get points a game. Like, yeah, that, that will have a pretty sizable impact on the rest of the season. He's Nick Schwert ball.

Starting point is 00:25:16 No, or at Nick underscore Schwert, where can you find some of your stuff going on right now? The show is could be wrong. You can check it out on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm Derek Johnson at D Johnson radio. This has been locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for joining us again.

Starting point is 00:25:30 You can find this show anywhere you get your podcast on YouTube as well. And we'll see you next time. KU Baylor preview coming out on Friday. See you then with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Are They Good? Can Kansas Jayhawks Overcome Their Current Identity Crisis?

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