Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Bidunga Dunks: Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Lands Class of 2024 Five-Star Center Flory Bidunga

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Kansas lands a five-star recruit, the number one center in the class of 2024, Flory Badunga. We going with Flory Flush or are we going Badunga Dunks? We're going to talk about that and plenty more on today's edition 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. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.

Starting point is 00:00:39 on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. We've got a new website with Locked on, just our overall network where you can catch everything, including Locked on Jayhawks. I highly recommend you can watch everything. You can find stories, articles, other podcasts.

Starting point is 00:01:02 So that's really cool that we have that up. Now, thank you to all the everydayers out there tuning into this thing every day. I was just on vacation. I just got back. So I'm actually recording this Tuesday night. We're going to put this thing up. I wish I could have brought this to you after the Florida Dunga news happened on Saturday night, but we'll get into the KU football renovation stuff because that's big today too on tomorrow morning's episodes.

Starting point is 00:01:20 You'll have a lot to catch up on here with locked on Jayhawks. We're going to start here. Floridaory Badunga picks KU. I mean, the name is just great. You have a center named Badunga. That's kind of been a fun conversation. Saying the word Flory flush, like when he has a dunk, that's just clean. It's sharp. It sounds cool.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Badunga Dunk is amazing. Please, somebody in Lawrence who does like apparel, there's some sort of apparel company, please make t-shirts that say Badunga Dunk on it with him dunking. NIL deal, please. I will buy all the t-shirts, all the t-shirts possible. So he's a five-star recruit and he's the number one center in the class. Everywhere you look, at least, you know, rivals, he's number five.

Starting point is 00:02:02 On three, he's number five. 24-7, he's number five in the class overall. Obviously, the 2024 class is not being seen as that great of class overall, but still this is a five-star kid who is going to come in with obvious expectations or potential to be a possible one-and-done level player. The recruitment was an interesting one. This kid who didn't start playing basketball till more recently and he kind of blew up summer in the summer of 2022 highly recommend checking out there's a

Starting point is 00:02:31 really good piece from cj moore in the athletic kind of detailing how this all happened and how he blew up and um talking to you know some of his his coaches and stuff and how everything went to that so he basically rose up the rankings and then this off season, you know, his, his final four eventually came down to Duke, Auburn, Michigan, and Kansas. And I love the recruitments where you don't actually know what's going to happen. You know, we're, we're in a day and age now where you really will see a lot of times the recruitment, you know, what's going to happen because you see these crystal ball picks are on three predictions or, you know, rivals forecast predictions about where the kid's going to go. And a lot of times those end up being true, whether it's, you know, the insider information has gotten there, or you have certain insiders who know, and they don't put the info out

Starting point is 00:03:19 there until they fully know. And they put it right. Like very rarely nowadays, do we actually get, are those predictions more so guesses? A lot of times it is like they know the information. And so a lot of times you end up with like, I love back in the day when you wouldn't know what's going to happen and you'd watch the kid's recruitment and he'd put on the hat or he'd put on the t-shirt or whatever it was. And there was that level of surprise. It made recruiting, I think even more fun when you got the kid. Cause it was a real celebration thing as opposed to just, okay, it looks like he's going to pick them. We'll just, I'll just wait for the notification to come across my phone or the, you know, something to come across the ticker on sports center.

Starting point is 00:03:52 You didn't know where this one was going to go. Nobody knew it was a very quiet recruitment and you heard all along that KU was really pressing on it. You would hear that Bill Self was out to see him again and that, you know, it was clear that they were putting a lot of attention into him and that they really liked the kid. It was also interesting that Kansas was the only Adidas school here, right? Maybe that gave you an edge up. But then again, there were a lot of people being like,

Starting point is 00:04:13 I don't know, I feel like this is a Duke thing. I feel like Duke is the heavy favorite in this race. Maybe not heavy favorite, but it was them and Kansas and maybe they had the slight edge. Then kind of leading into his decision day between Friday to Saturday, it like the Auburn hype really picked up that people were saying he's going to pick Auburn and you also had the fact that it was at the Under Armour like All-American or not All-American whatever some sort of Under Armour basketball event and Auburn was the one Under Armour school of the schools Michigan's Jordan brand Duke's Jordan brand or Nike whatever

Starting point is 00:04:43 Kansas is adidas and then auburn was under armor so it's like oh well maybe that just makes sense ends up picking kansas and i think that only adds the recruitment and makes this even more fun he's the center in the class 2024 six foot eight uh 215 pounds of 24 seven he's six foot nine 220 on rivals six nine 215 with on three so six eight six nine 21 6'9", 215, 220, somewhere in that range. Five star number five in all those rankings, number five on the 24-7 sports composite. He began playing basketball back in 2019.

Starting point is 00:05:12 So this is only four years, at least of organized basketball. And he really broke out last summer. He was the Indiana State Gatorade Player of the Year this season. He averaged 20 points, 14 rebounds, four and a half blocks, and he shot, this is my favorite, 81% from the field. Very different body type than Yudoka Azebuki. Azebuki was seven feet. He was a mammoth of a man, 270 pounds maybe.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Flory is only 215, 220, only 6'8", 6'9". But the efficiency, he is just a dunking behemoth, and he has all sorts of athleticism, which you can see why that would happen, especially when you're playing against maybe a lot of smaller kids. You're not going up against 6'10 every game. So this is the scouting report from On3. Jamie Shaw wrote this. He's a physical specimen. He has long arms, broad shoulders, and a lot of burst.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Excellent shot blocker, both on ball and from the weak side. He's got good timing there. He also runs the floor quickly and purposely. He can push the break with his handle, but does not get too deep and out of control. You'll actually, if you watch some of the video highlights, you'll see times where he gets steals and he handles it. He puts it between his legs or behind his back and takes it all the way to the rim. Now, Bilsop's not going to ask of him to do that or want him to do that because you're going to have other better options to do that on the floor.

Starting point is 00:06:30 But having just another player when you want to be a fast athletic team and run the floor hard and play in transition play, to have that ability at all, that's just a plus that you have with the center, obviously. More from the scouting report. The jump shot extends out to about 10 feet, so we'd like to see him working on stretching that out some.

Starting point is 00:06:50 But he has touches a roll man to finish with floaters and short corner jumpers. He needs to improve his free throws as he gets the line a lot. I think his free throw percentage is around 56%. Offensively, Badunga has a good IQ. He's smart in dribble handoffs, can post wide and deep on the block. If help comes, he finds the open man, delivers a good pass. He's a good offensive rebounder. He is left-hand reliant, but his IQ and explosion allow him to get away with that. For now, physically, he is

Starting point is 00:07:13 like a college upperclassman and is already one of the premier explosive athletes in high school basketball, which is interesting because it's 6'8", 6'9", 215. For him to be explosive already and be like an upperclassman in that way, that means that if you can add 10, 15, 20 pounds to him, imagine what that's going to do. He's going to be a terror on opposing teams where he can bring to the table. Overall, though, you look through that scouting report, I'm going to say two names of guys that went to KU that were five-star centers

Starting point is 00:07:39 that is going to scare you a little bit, and I don't mean that to be the intention because I do want to get more into this conversation here. But KU has had over the last decade with Bill Self, a couple of other five-star centers who were both not just five-star centers. They were top 10 recruits. They were, gosh, I don't remember where one of these was. He might've just been just outside the top five.

Starting point is 00:08:00 He might've been like six or seven, but both like top seven recruits in the country. Shaq Diallo, Cliff Alexander, both a little more undersized centers. Cliff was like 6'8", Sheck was like 6'9", Badunga 6'8", or 6'9". Very athletic, springy players who can get up there, throw down dunks, bring a physical ability to the game, but are still working on refining their game and having touch around the rim and shooting the basketball and some of the little things now with sheck it didn't work out there was the awesome first game that he played after his quick ncaa dumb suspension and he threw down

Starting point is 00:08:35 like the one dunk in transition i think it was like a it'd have the hand behind his head or something like that um but that obviously didn't work out with With Cliff, when you have the number two or number three, whatever he was coming in, you expect more than being a 16, 17-minute-per-game guy who averages seven and five, but he was a pretty good player, seven points, five rebounds. He's a good shot blocker. Obviously, they didn't have him for the NCAA tournament for other stuff.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Obviously, you would have liked to get even more than that or more years out of Cliff Alexander where he could have developed into something more, and that's kind of the common theme there. Both those guys left after for all we know if Sheck Diallo or if Cliff Alexander stayed for year two or year three they might have turned into all-American level bigs in their time in Kansas now will Kansas be afforded that option with Flory Badunga maybe not I don't know there is some interesting conversation here that I want to get into because it also relates with Hunter Dickinson here coming up. But I don't say those names to say, you know, this isn't going to work out. I mean, there is a chance that it follows the same path. I'm just saying that that's the

Starting point is 00:09:33 type of center he is, but maybe he's going to end up being a much more productive version of it, right? You keep taking shots at it. Not every freshman recruit is going to come in and hit the ground running. But if you have three of them who are all five stars who have similar body types and this and that, maybe one of the three hits, and maybe that means you're due for Flory Badunga. So a really exciting pickup for KU. I want to get into what this possibly could mean with Hunter Dickinson and what is the long-term, what is the longevity possibly of Flory Badunga here?

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Starting point is 00:10:54 and enter promo code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. That's Nutrafol.com slash men promo code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. So tomorrow's episode, like I said, I'm trying to jam-pack these in. I took a quick vacation and turns out KU was announcing their stadium plans and Flory Badunga committed. So we're getting to what we can,

Starting point is 00:11:12 and then we'll get to some more KU football previews later. Make sure you're subscribed here with Locked on Jayhawks. What does this mean for 2024? That is the class that Flory Badunga is a part of. Hunter Dickinson can come back for a second year, and that was one thing that I was curious on about you know if Flory Badunga was committing this early in the process does that imply that it's not Kansas because Hunter Dickinson could have the option to come

Starting point is 00:11:37 back and if you're Flory Badunga and you fast forward to next offseason and Hunter Dickinson does decide to come back if your thoughts thoughts are, I'm going to be a one and done big man, that gets pretty pushed down a little because, oh, now all of a sudden this guy's coming back. Who's going to play 28 to 32 minutes at the center position. And we go back to the scouting report. He's not somebody who can really shoot the basketball. You're not going to play him at the four. So it's like, oh, I'm only going to play eight to 12 minutes a game. Would you really want to commit to that? Right? So that made me think that, well, you know, maybe KU would have a better shot if you were committed in the spring or something. So this

Starting point is 00:12:11 could tell you a couple of things, right? Maybe this tells you that Hunter Dickinson is gone at the end of the year. That's the expectation from the staff, right? Maybe this tells you that the staff told Flory Bodunga, yeah, he could come back for another year, but we're expecting him to be gone. Most likely he is going to be gone. And so you're going to be fine if you want to come here. Maybe this is a situation where, you know, Flory Bodunga says, this is what's right for me. I'm going to assume he's gone. If he does happen to maybe surprise us a little bit and come back, then I'll do what like Mackenzie Mbako did. You know, Mackenzie Mbako committed to Duke. Then Kyle Filipowski, Mark Mitchell,

Starting point is 00:12:51 all these guys decided to come back to Duke for another year. And he said, well, going to be a little tougher to get minutes in the front court. Decommit, ask out of my national letter of intent. And then he ends up going to Indiana. Maybe for Floyd Badunga, you say, yeah, Kansas is the school. And if Hunter Dickinson's gone, I can come in next year. I'll be the starting center. Boom.

Starting point is 00:13:06 Perfect. But if Hunter Dickinson comes back, he says, I'll just ask out of my national letter of intent, reset the recruitment. There'll be a lot of it in the spring, right? That could be a possibility. And maybe that would even something be that Kansas told him that, yeah, if he does decide to come back, we're not expecting it. We'll even help you out through that process because we understand that again, maybe from

Starting point is 00:13:24 Flory Badunga's perspective, there is more to it than just that. He gave an interview recently with 24-7 Sports, and he kind of talked about how it was very important to him and his family to get a college degree. Now, and that he wants to go to school that sets him up for that. I will say that does not mean that don't freak out just yet. He's staying for four years at Kansas. There are a lot of schools that offer programs where it's, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:48 if they leave to go to the NBA draft or something, pursue professional basketball before their degree is done, they will help them get the degree over the course of, you know, a few years. I had drew good in, in one of my online, like, I don't know, it was like a calm communications class or something when I was in school, you know, like they can still get their degree while they're gone so it could just be do you have a program does your school have that sort of thing or does that kind of entail that you know he would be comfortable being in school for two years or three years and if that is the case right then then maybe you view it as okay if I come in and Hunter Dickinson's gone then I can be the starter but the way I view it like I'm kind of an undersized center

Starting point is 00:14:26 who can't really shoot the ball. What is my draft stock going to be, right? Like if you're Flory Badunga, even though he's the number five rated prospect, we saw Cliff Alexander come in as a top five prospect. And again, the production wasn't great. He ended up going undrafted. So what if for Flory Badunga, he's a top five prospect, but from an NBA potential, he's not being seen as a first round pick. And from that standpoint, what if he is more of a

Starting point is 00:14:48 two or three year guy and he has an understanding of that and he goes, well, you know, worst case, if I am behind Hunter Dickinson for a year, my plan is to be in school for two or three years. So it could tell you one of those two things that either Hunter Dickinson, the staff is thinking that he's going to be gone at the end of the year, or it could tell you that Flory Badunga has plans of being in school longer than maybe just that one year for the one and done. Now, of course, it could be a situation. We just saw UConn do this this past year. Adama Sunogo, if it got to this point where Hunter Dickinson did come back for year two, and he had Flory Badunga as his backup, Adama Sunogo is playing 26, 27, 28 minutes game to game, right, for UConn. And he was arguably the best player on the

Starting point is 00:15:25 team. Won final four MOP, all that sort of stuff. He was still giving up 12, 13, 14 minutes a game to Donovan Klingin because Klingin was that good. And Klingin ended up coming back this year and now he's, you know, one of the five or 10 favorites for national player of the year for this year. He's already being picked to be like a top 10 pick in 2024 mock drafts. Maybe that's the path for Badunga. He says, I could follow that path. But if Klingin would have even gone pro after this past year that UConn won the title, he probably still would have been a first round pick,

Starting point is 00:15:57 probably like a back end of the first round pick. So there even is a world where if Flory Badunga and Hunter Dickinson coexist, that's still like you could end up being if you're the backup big, but you play that well in those 12 to 13 minutes a game, you can be a first round pick and you can fulfill your dreams if you do want to be a one and done, because that's something else he did mention in that interview that he wants to get to the NBA, didn't clarify if it was one and done or not. But I think there's a lot of interesting things you could read into this about the timing of all this and him committing and what it means for that center position. I want to talk with about this means for big picture, both in

Starting point is 00:16:29 terms of the roster in 2024 and just some other kind of big picture things about why this recruitment could be so important for Kansas and Bill Self here with Locked on Jayhawks. So what this means possibly big picture, right? Obviously from a roster perspective, you look ahead to 2024 and you say, well, if Hunter Dickinson goes after this one year, okay, great. We have center coverage, a guy you can come in, and it takes a lot of time to learn that center position. So it's not going to be a guarantee you'd come in and start right away, but clearly has the talent to do so.

Starting point is 00:16:59 And you're also going to be losing Parker Brown at the end of this year. Zach Clemens could transfer at the end of this year, or he could be back. So you need that center coverage. You have that. And whether you get one year, multiple years, whatever. Right. Okay. But I think this means a lot more big picture. Does this kind of signal that KU is officially back to landing consistent top five guys since the NCAA stuff? The KU recruiting has not really taken a huge dip since the NCAA stuff happened. They just won a title two years ago. They've still brought in a bunch of McDonald's All-Americans. They brought in top 20 recruits. They brought in even top 10 recruits with guys like Quentin Grimes. What they have not had though, since the NCAA stuff is the top three,

Starting point is 00:17:43 top five level recruits. This is KU's highest rated recruit, I believe, since Josh Jackson. You look at Andrew Wiggins. You look at Joel Embiid. You look at Josh Jackson. Those guys who are not just one and dones, but are one and dones that are going to have a huge impact on the collegiate level, right? You've had other top 10 recruits. You've had other top 20 recruits.

Starting point is 00:18:03 Devon Dodson, near top 20s. Elmarco Jackson. I don't think the NCAA stuff has affected that. What it has affected to me is getting those top three to five guys, which you haven't gotten since then. And honestly, in my mind, like when I think of the perfect roster construction nowadays in college basketball, you can have a couple of returning starters. If you can have a couple of transfers, if you can have some returning bench players, mix in some freshmen and transfers, and then you bring it like that 2016-2017 Kansas team where you had all those returning starters,

Starting point is 00:18:32 you had experienced players, and nowadays maybe the equivalent would be bring back three starters, bring in one transfer, and then that fifth kind of element is your Josh Jackson type. If that can be what Flory Badunga brings, right? You look to 2024, DeJuan Harris could be back for another year. KJ Adams could be back for another year.

Starting point is 00:18:50 We'll see what happens with any of the current freshmen they have on the roster, right? Or any of the current players they have that you can kind of have that as a last piece as opposed to like if Andrew Wiggins were added to that or or the 1617 team it would have been a lot different than the 1314 team where he had to be a leader on the team if you can make him a supplemental piece that's a lot of fun so that's that's what I think you're ideally going for here but I think this officially marks KU being back to that level again it's not that different of a level of where they've been recruiting and they've been more than successful enough doing what they're doing now so it's not a huge deal but it is nice to be able to every now and then be like,

Starting point is 00:19:26 yeah, we are going to get that top three or top five guy. And this is the first one in a handful of years, which is obviously possibly representing a big thing for KU. So a very big get for the Jayhawks. Obviously, I'm sure we'll have plenty more content on Flory Badunga. Let us know, Flory Flush or Badunga Dunk. All right, we're going to have another episode coming up on the KU Football Stadium renovations released shortly here

Starting point is 00:19:49 with Locked on Jayhawks. So you can find our show anywhere you get any of your podcasts. You can find it on our new Locked on website, or you can like and subscribe to the show on our YouTube page. Thanks for joining us tonight, and we'll see you shortly for another episode of LOJ.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Bidunga Dunks: Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Lands Class of 2024 Five-Star Center Flory Bidunga

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