Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Darryn Peterson's Relentless Work Ethic IGNITES Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Championship Hopes

Starting point is 00:00:00 Another day, another Darren Peterson praise session. We hear even more from Bill Self on Darren Peterson as well as Trey White, Florida, but don't get plenty more from KU Men's Basketball Media. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's going on? Derek Johnson here. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. And thank you to the everydayers catching each and every episode of the show. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition, we're breaking down some of the comments from Bill Self at KU at Men's Basketball Media Availability. Talked about Darren Peterson. Continue to praise him. We heard a lot of good stuff about Trey White, Flory Budunga, and some other interesting notes as it pertains to I guess you would say the role. players and how that could possibly impact the KU rotation. Before we're getting into that, today's episode of the show is brought to you by Fandual

Starting point is 00:01:08 Sportsbook. And right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you'll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download FanDuel today. So Bill Self spoke to the media and, you know, we'll get into the Trey White and Florida Dung Gun, Cole Rosario, and plenty of other comments here. But, you know, let's start off with the guy that everybody's talking about. Darren Peterson, and he continued to kind of gush about Peterson.

Starting point is 00:01:34 I said this before. Every time we hear more stuff about Darren Peterson, it continues to be even more complimentary. It continues to raise the hype meter, the hype bar even more, and it just feels like everything is lining up for this kid to have a really, really special season in his one year in Lawrence. One of the things that Bill Self said, and this is in relation to Peterson, he said overall, you know, he feels like this can be a better team. than it is next year and then i forget the exact quote but it was like you know we much better

Starting point is 00:02:04 equipped to be a better team than they were season ago and you know more athletic and all these different things but one of the reasons why he said they're better equipped to be a better team this season this relates to daren peterson he said we have a guy that on any given night you can run bad offense and come up with points still and we didn't have that as much last year and i think that kind of comes down to when your go-to option when your guy is not a guard, it can be a little bit tougher. Other teams can double team more easily to take it out of that player's hands with the games on the line.

Starting point is 00:02:39 If you double team a guard, it just opens up so much spacing from a standpoint of what you're doing. So plus you can dribble out of it easier as a guard. You can split the defense. It just doesn't work as well. And I think that is something that we've kind of missed here is that I haven't had that the last couple of years. and the best bill self teams have that they have somebody who can go create that it's not always

Starting point is 00:03:03 going to be easy you're not always going to be skiing be able to scheme up every single you know point and possession do you have a dude who can go make plays he also mentioned Darren peterson and this is funny said we thought he was good but i didn't probably appreciate his maturity and commitment to trying to be good i mean he tries ridiculously hard you have this intersection of a player who is extremely talented, who has everything you could want, but he has the work ethic. He puts in the work. And it's hard for me not to see.

Starting point is 00:03:39 I know again, this might be like old man take, but you go back to like the past couple seasons, there were certainly moments where, and again, like Hunter Dickinson was a very talented player. He was a multi-time all-American, like, hey, you got what they wanted out of Hunter Dickinson from an individual perspective. There were times where it felt like, okay,

Starting point is 00:03:53 or you kind of loafing around, not grabbing that rebrand. down, just kind of standing there, maybe on the defensive end a little bit here. And maybe that's not fair. But regardless, it's hard for me not to see, like, if you're the best player on the team, for better or for worse, the other players are, I don't know, you're leading my example to a certain standpoint, right? And so that can go either way.

Starting point is 00:04:14 And when you see a guy's talented and as good as Darren Peterson and hear about the work ethics stories, what do you think that does for the other players on the team? And, like, I've only heard good things about Darren Peterson in terms of, like, you know, his interactions with people around the university, too. So, like, what do you think that does to the other players? Like, it's going to set a good example. And it's like, if Darren Peterson can do it, so can I, right? And then kind of going into that, like, self also mentioned, he's an 18-year-old

Starting point is 00:04:40 that plays like a 25-year-old, right? And that just kind of speaks to his maturity on the court and everything he does. But this might have been the most telling quote from Bill Self. He said, he's relentless at trying to get better, whatever that better looks like. And that right there, just the idea that he went into telling a story in this regard. He said, like, for example, you can tell him what he needs to do to get better and he will put a conscious effort till he masters that or at least gets close. And then he went on to tell a story, a little anecdote, did Bill's self, where he said he's a great offensive rebounder. And which, first of all, that's a good thing for KU because I already think Floribadunga is going to be.

Starting point is 00:05:22 a stud offensive rebounder, you would think that, you know, the length of, I guess, Tiller and Mbia should make them solid offensive rebounders. You would think that, I don't know, some of the guards and wings they have are, like, Trey White's going to be a good offensive rebounder. So now you had Darren Peterson. It's like, oh, okay, you might be cooking something on the offensive glass. But regardless, he said he's a great offensive rebounder, and he hadn't been doing it at practice. Like he maybe wasn't doing it as much as Bill Self wanted him to. And he said, he had an exact number on this. I'm assuming they went back and watched it in film or something.

Starting point is 00:05:52 but he said he had 24 opportunities in the next practice and he did it 24 times so like the intersection of maturity hardworking talent coachable listens to peers it's hard for me not to see all this stuff and get even more excited about what this kid can be and not just from a standpoint of everything we've heard so far but like if you have that mentality you're going to get better as the season goes on. And that's almost just as exciting, knowing how hard he's working, knowing how coachable he is in some of these stories.

Starting point is 00:06:30 What that tells me is that the Darren Peterson, you see in the first game, you might see Darren Peterson go for 20 points, five rebounds, five assists or whatever in the first game. Who knows? The Darren Peterson, you're seeing the first game, is probably going to be even better by the end of the season. And yes, you typically think that way for freshmen,

Starting point is 00:06:45 a lot of freshmen, but some don't. Some kind of are where they are. And some even, you know, actually end up like quitting Grimes, in that case, it ended up worse at the end than it was at the beginning. So all of this stuff to say that the hype, again, continues to just rise even more and more and more for Darren Peterson. But the more stories we hear, the more quotes we hear that he continues to kind of back it up and he continues to just impress in a myriad of different ways, it just like furthers the idea that we should be buying into the hype. You know, I get a little wary sometimes buying into the hype on freshmen because you never totally know how it's going to translate, right?

Starting point is 00:07:25 We've seen plenty of McDonald's Americans come in before and struggle to be in the rotation or, you know, just be in the rotation, but be inefficient. And I just don't really have that worry with Darren Peterson, which is why I think this Kansas team is underrated based on where they are kind of like ranked 19th in the AP poll or 21st on Kenpom. I definitely think they're going to finish better than that. And Darren Peterson is a big reason why, because you might just have the best player in the country who, who also is very coachable, listens, and is going to keep getting better. Bill Self also talked about Trey White, very glowingly. Flory Budunga talked about some of the role players. Let's get to those comments.

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Starting point is 00:09:07 You can even need college basketball futures. Right now I'm looking, you can get Kansas, which again, I think they're underrated. If you do, too, they're 25 to 1, which is about as low outside of like in season last year as I've ever seen them, certainly in the preseason. You can also get Darren Peterson to win the Woodward at plus 1,000. That's 10 to 1 odds. You're not going to want to beat that. We just talked about Darren Peterson.

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Starting point is 00:09:54 next week is going to be wild. We got Big 12 Media Day. We got KUK State. We have some crossover episodes. We'll have some preview episodes. We'll have some KU Louisville exhibition talk and preview episodes. So plenty coming at you. You're not going to want to miss next week.

Starting point is 00:10:06 Make sure you subscribe to the show here with Locked on Jayhawks. All right. What did Bill Self say about the other guys? Well, Trey White was a, I think, very popular player to be talked about by Bill Self today. And one of the things that he said, and I wasn't totally sure if this was in reference to guys just at his position or, like, in general, what it meant. I don't know. He said, Trey White has outplayed everybody. And I don't know if that just means from like what expectations were you played above that or just like who's been the most impressive performer so far or, you know, just at your position or maybe not counting Darren Peterson.

Starting point is 00:10:40 Maybe he has his own thing. But regardless, to say something like that obviously speaks very glowingly of him. But here's the big thing with Trey White. Bill Self said, I actually think Trey has been one of our best performers so far. So forget the context of the first one. I actually think Trey has been one of our best performers so far. And it's not necessarily that that's like a surprise or anything. You know, if we're having the conversation of who is the, because if you think Darren Peterson's

Starting point is 00:11:07 the best player on the team, which I do, you think Florida Badoong is the second best player on the team, which I do, the conversation for the third best player is relatively. relatively wide open, probably knowing that I guess El Marco and Rosario and Jaden Dawson and Bryson and Tiller and Paulumbia, you would probably assume that because those guys are more battling for rotation spots and how many minutes they're going to get, maybe you would just center it down to Melvin Council versus Trey White. So it's like not, it's not like the biggest surprise in the world or anything, but A, it's a good sign. The fact that he is performing well from a standpoint of like, hey, Kansas needs him to perform well. If,

Starting point is 00:11:45 Trey White doesn't perform well, they don't really have any other true wings on the roster. Now, Darren Peterson can play a wing defensively, and, you know, Samis Calderon technically could be a wing, but how ready is he going to be? You also don't really have any other, like, like, okay, Bryson Tiller, if he ends up being good for KU, then you have another four man you can go to, same with Smeese Calderon, but there's no guarantee on either of those guys. And so it is very important that Tray White plays well, so that is a good sign about its own. it's also important because he does a lot of things well he rebounds well um he's he's a connective

Starting point is 00:12:18 piece in a lot of ways he can hit an open shot he can score a little bit like just does a lot of little things that this team is going to need this season so all of those are great things but you look at that you look at some of the other quotes that he gave on tray white he said his skill set does complement flory in terms of like playing next to him he also said um his IQ is really high like you add all of these things together and it's It's not just that I think Trey White is an important piece for KU. It's giving me confidence that he's going to have a big season in which KU is kind of requiring that of him. So I think kind of stocks up, you would say, on where Trey White is.

Starting point is 00:13:02 He was already projected to be a starter and everything. But I guess if you were saying, like, who's going to, I know we just talked about this, but who's going to finish second and third and fourth on the team and scoring? And if Darren Peterson's number one, Florida Bedunga, Melvin Council, Trey White, I don't know, maybe you'd go Trey White as being that answer. And you think of, you know, some of the wings and what Bill Self does with wings, especially if they can cause matchup issues. And on certain nights, Trey White's going to be a matchup issue for other teams. They're playing more of a traditional power forward like Trey White's going to be able to, you would think, outmaneuver them with his speed and versatility a little bit there. So good news there for KU on itself also talked a little bit about Flory Bidunga and some of his improvement over.

Starting point is 00:13:43 the offseason, he said, quote, he's gotten better on the perimeter, not so much shooting the ball from distance, but I'm talking about his ball handling, his playmaking. And he kind of goes further into it and talking about, like, how getting to play with or behind or however you want to view it, Hunter Dickinson probably helped him progress in that area, probably helped him get better and seeing what another center could do and helped kind of hone his skills in those areas. He mentioned him being a better screener this year. That's going to be huge for KU. He mentioned him being a better short role guy, that's going to be great news for KU. Mentioned him being better at a, you know, kind of passing out of certain situations.

Starting point is 00:14:20 That's just going to open up KU's game a lot more. And it's also going to be very important from this standpoint. If KU plans on playing any too big basketball, you need as as flexible versatile bigs as possible. So having that skill is super important for Flory Bodunga there. Now, it's not that you're planning on running a pick and roll with Flory, where Florey's handling the ball and somebody else is setting him a screen. it's just that like having those guys and having as many versatile weapons and pieces as possible, it just opens up the world so much more for your team, for the players they can play with,

Starting point is 00:14:52 the coach, the scheme, everything you want to do. And this to me, though, was the biggest quote from Bill Self on Florida Bedunga. Quote, he can make a case for being as consistent a player as we've had so far, end quote. That is music to my ears. because what do we know from last year with Fulur Badunga? You saw the flashes. There already were moments that you saw where you're like, oh, this dude looks like he could be an all big 12 player.

Starting point is 00:15:20 Like there were certain moments. There were certain games where I walked away from it saying, yeah, he's KU's most talented player. He's KU's best player, even, like to go that far. Like you think of the Houston game, you think he's among the moments against the UCF game. Like there's just certain moments he had, but it wasn't consistent. There were also games where, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:37 maybe he only, I don't know, maybe he had like three fouls in a couple of minutes and going out there and didn't register like a point or a rebound or whatever. Like there were certain moments where you could tell he was a freshman out there. But there were also a lot of moments where you could tell this dude's going to be a stud. And so when I look at as players get older, one of the biggest things players get better at is they become more consistent. They stay with their craft for longer.

Starting point is 00:16:01 You continue to practice it and you become more consistent at it. And the fact that he is now as the discussion for the most consistent player on the team tells me that the jump is going to be real because I already knew that the ceiling of Flory Budunga could be as good as any center in the Big 12. But if he's consistently at that ceiling, that's where you become an All-American.

Starting point is 00:16:22 That's where you become an All-Beg12 player, right? Players all the time will have a good game. You don't get named All-Conference. You don't get named All-American by having one good game against a good opponent, two good games or five good games. You become All-Conference. You become All-American by consistently having those good games stacked together over and over and over again.

Starting point is 00:16:38 And that is why that is an important quote from Bill Self on Floribodunga. He also mentioned some of the rotation players, Melvin Council. I guess I don't know if I count him as a rotation player starter, whatever. But Marco Jackson, Bryson Tiller, G. Angala, plenty more. We get to those some interesting comments. And we just had our KU rotation projection. How would those comments affect some of that? We'll get to that next.

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Starting point is 00:17:29 Like our players, we sweat every detail because when you make every move count, impossible becomes irrelevant. Mazda move and be moved. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Again, check out some of our recent episodes talking a little KU football reaction from the Texas Tech game, talking to support KU basketball throughout the week here on Locked on Jayhawks and stick with us for Friday. We're going to be having our late night in the fog preview.

Starting point is 00:17:53 What should we be expecting to see? What are we excited to see? What to watch? What are we not going to learn from the game and plenty more coming up? And then we will have a postcast episode after late night in the fog to break down some of our instant reactions to the game. Okay, so Bill Self talking about some of the other players with Melvin Council. He said Melvin's going to be hard to beat out.

Starting point is 00:18:13 So that kind of further implies that, okay, maybe Melvin Council would be in that as we have the conversation, who are the locks in the starting lineup? We've kind of said Peterson, Badunga, and White. Maybe we would add counsel that. And maybe it's just, okay, El Marco Jackson versus Jaden Dawson, who apparently is hurt right now, has a knee injury. So I guess we can jump to that part. That's going to probably hold him back.

Starting point is 00:18:35 And then Cole Rosario. And maybe because the injury, that's going to hold you back too. I think you'd probably say the favorite right now to be the fifth starter is either going to be El Marco Jackson or Cole Rosario for KU. Now, maybe you see in the exhibition game at Louisville, maybe he goes with the more veteran player with El Marco, but maybe by the time we get to one of the first games, it's Cole Rosario. Who knows? That'll be certainly interesting.

Starting point is 00:18:55 But he did mention Bill Self did. He, Melvin Counsel and El Marco Jackson athletically, he said that's about as athletic and quick twitch as you're going to find. And they're both long. And then he also said, I envision Darren, El Marco, and Melvin sharing that 80 minutes in the back court. Well, our most recent minutes projection, we had all 80 minutes going to those three guys. So we at least think we hit on that one, hopefully, but probably a lot of other misses after that. Going back to the Trey White comment where he was talking about Trey White, one of the other things he mentioned is he said, Bryson's going to play in there a lot.

Starting point is 00:19:30 And that would be in reference to Bryson Tiller. And I think what that tells us is this, because he also goes, into talking about Samis Calderon, he says, Samis is a great prospect. But right now, he's probably a better prospect than player. So what that tells you is Calderon's going to be a little bit more raw. He's going to be somebody who's more of a long-term player, is what it tells me. With him saying, Tiller's going to play a lot there. Now, what is a lot? Is it double-digit minutes? Is it 20 minutes? You know, is it 30 minutes? I don't think it'd be 30 minutes, but you get what I'm saying. It's kind of open to interpretation what it would mean there. But it at least

Starting point is 00:20:04 tells you that in the competition of, if we're talking about, we've talked a lot about, okay, you have your, Darren Peterson, El Marco Jackson, Melvin Council, Col Rosario, possibly Jaden Dawson, we'll see how that goes, especially with the injury, Trey White, Florida Bedunga, backup center, i.e. Paul N. Bia, that's eight guys right there. So who's going to be your ninth guy, which feels like that would kind of be the cutoff for rotation that would be, you know, a lot of yourself might only be seven or eight guys. Some years it is nine. So you got to at least be in that. who would be that ninth guy?

Starting point is 00:20:35 Would it be in Gala? Would it be Mink Dowell? Would it be Calderon? Well, it sounds like to me, Tiller has the edge on that. It sounds like to me, Tiller would be that kind of ninth man. And so when we did our minutes projections, rotation projections, we left over. I think it was 10 spot minutes to be available. So that means that the first guy to probably get those and the guy who would be in the best advantage

Starting point is 00:20:53 to get those 10 spot minutes would possibly be Bryson Tiller. But it also tells UK who's going to play real two big basketball this year. The fact that Tiller would be your four means that that's how Bill Selle views him the most and that yes he would be playing um next to florrie and be yeah and i think that's that's a fun lineup you can throw out there i think we we came up with the idea that like k u was playing like seven minutes per game of of two big basketball in the years prior to like kj and hunter um in some of the recent years for bill self so uh i think that kind of makes sense for k u and allows them to be matchup dependent if you need um if you're playing more of a guard-oriented

Starting point is 00:21:34 lineup, you can basically play four guards together and have Peterson guard the four on the other end, even though Peterson would be playing the one offensively. Or Trey White, if he's in at the fourth, then he would be doing that versus if you're playing a bigger lineup, you need a match with size, Tiller at the four, and then MBA at the five, or Bidunga at the five, or will we even see Mbia next to Bidunga? That one I'm not as much of a fan of, but if you do surround it with Dawson and Rosario at the two and three, I can get a little more on board with it because there's a little more shooting there, but still, that'll certainly be interesting. And I think it tells you that, okay, if we're redoing the rotation projections, maybe we'd

Starting point is 00:22:10 be, you know, up a little bit on Bryson Tiller in that area. He also mentioned it to G Engala. He said, I think everybody likes G. His value is in practice. They in large part wanted him because they thought he could be a little guy that could play underneath Darren. But going back to the comment of envisioning Darren El Marco Melvin sharing the 80 minutes, it kind of tells you right there that Angola is more of a break class in case for

Starting point is 00:22:32 emergency, right? Then you have with the L. Marco Jackson coming off the injury, he said El Marco is remarkable. He's been a perfect patient. He kind of compared it to Brandon Rush and how they have this unbelievable comeback from the injury. He said his commitment to the rehab has been second to none. And he said he's looked great athletically. Now, if you go back and watch the quote, he starts to be like the one thing with El Mark, and then he trails off and he just gets back into he's been great athletically. And I can't help but wonder, what was he going to say there? Was he going to say like, you know, he just needs the game to slow down for him or he struggled with this or he struggled with that. I do think it's going to answer. And he remains one of those guys where

Starting point is 00:23:11 I go back and forth and I'm still trying to figure out like where exactly is El Marco Jackson going to be on the minute's rotation. But certainly him being back athletically, he's going to play a big role on this team one way or another. And then the last one, we found out, apparently the players call Corzario Steve Rogers, which Steve Rogers is the name of Captain America. I don't know if it's because they think he looks like him a little bit or if it's just because he's like this ripped dude or if it's just from the intangible side of things. But Bill Self in regards to that said, I think there's some things about him you'll find very pleasantly surprising. You're not going to believe how bouncy he is. That to me sounds like an ultimate quote of just like sneaky athletic, like coach's kid, Jim Rat type of thing.

Starting point is 00:23:55 And he's like pleasantly surprising. He says he's streaky, but he's hungry to shoot it, which kind of backs up everything we've said in the office. season. I think Cole Rosario is going to be one of the best shooters on this team, but it's going to be streaky. You're going to have some games where he can't miss, some games where he struggles to make it. But this is the big one of why I think Col Rosario has a great shot to start and play a big role on this team. When you're potentially the fifth starter, when you're potentially somebody coming off the bench to fit into a specific role, it's less about how like obviously you have to be a good individual player, obviously, and you have to do that to get to this level. But to play more, you know, as the fifth starter, it's not as much about, like, how good you are in a vacuum. It's more about how you compliment the other pieces around you, right? If you're the number one or number two on a team, it is a bit of how good you are in a vacuum. But we saw this last year, like AJ Store, you know, now that he's at Ole Miss, if he's their number one or number two, he'll probably have a much better season than he was at Kansas because he's better in that role

Starting point is 00:24:57 versus if you're asked to be the fourth or fifth man and be a complimentary piece, he didn't work like that. I think it's the opposite for Cole Rosario. Now, maybe in a year or two, Cole Rosario will be the star of a team and be able to do that too. But I think right now, freak athlete, Bill Self says in regards to the trying thing, he says he tries so hard. And then later in another quote, he said, he tries really hard. And then he says it again, he tries really hard. So three tries really hard that tells you it is on his mind, how much he gets hustle balls and how much he's diving on the floor, how much he's making those plays. You have the athleticism. You add the shooting. It's a slam dunk to me. Cole Rosario is going to play a lot of

Starting point is 00:25:33 minutes for this team. All right. That'll do it for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. We'll see you next time for another edition of LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Darryn Peterson's Relentless Work Ethic IGNITES Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Championship Hopes

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