Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Deep Dive: How Would Kansas Jayhawks Transfer Target Harrison Ingram Fit in with KU

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

A deep dive on Stanford transfer Harrison Ingram and how he would fit with the Kansas Jayhawks basketball program. Where are things at for his recruitment with a visit starting today + scouting report on his game + his fit with Bill Self and at the three/four positions for KU.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we do a deep dive into Harrison Ingram with his visit starting today at KU. 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 on Rock Chalk Sports Talk, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence. Stick around for RCST trivia coming up on Rock Chalk Sports Talk throughout the weeks. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts.

You can also find us and subscribe to us on YouTube. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, it's going to be a busy week for KU basketball. Harrison Ingram visit on Monday. Hunter Dickinson visit scheduled for Thursday. Today, specifically, we're going to do a deep dive into Harrison Ingram as we did last week with Nicholas Timberlake. But first, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks by FanDuel Sportsbook,

the official sportsbook of Locked on. Make every moment more. Visit FanDuel.com slash Locked on to get started today. So we'll start with where things seem to be at with Harrison Ingram right now, who is the transfer from Stanford, visiting KU on Monday. We'll then get to his scouting report, his strengths, his weaknesses, and then we'll finish up with the final verdict, how we think he would fit in at Kansas. So where things seem to be at right now. Obviously, Kansas is in a position where

they need wings, right? They need players who can come in and play wing minutes for them. Jalen Wilson gone. Grady Dick gone. Kevin Kohler testing probably gone. MJ Rice, even when your backup wings is gone. KJ could be moving to the wing position. You might be playing more two guard sets next season as opposed to playing more of a wing at the two, but still you need real wing minutes. Harrison Ingram, obviously somebody who sticks out there. You look at some of the different recruiting sites on three 24-7 sports, like the Athletic. The Athletic, I think, has him listed as a top 20 overall transfer right now.

On three, I think, has him listed in the top five 24-7 sports, has him in the top 25. So consistently one of the upper-tier transfers. And when you look at just the position he plays on the wing of forward, small forward, power forward, however you want to classify him, he's even further up in those lists. Where he seems to be at right now, he already had a visit with North Carolina. Obviously, the KU visit on Monday, which this is going to come out on Monday. So today, I guess other visits are set up or have been done.

I don't know totally with Baylor, Texas AM, and Xavier, some other schools in there. It's funny because at the beginning of when the portal opened up, there were some murmurs, there were some whispers about some real, I don't know, opportunities for him and KU to be a possible link. And then those kind of faded, and he had the North Carolina visit, and that seemed to be the destination that most people were expecting him to go at that point to North Carolina um they after his visit ended up bringing on Jalen Withers the transfer from Louisville like kind of a similar wing position I don't know how much that affected things or if something happened or Harrison Ingram you know had all along this interest in KU and once KU came a call a little bit more and started ramping things up as they kind of have done now, and obviously you've set up the visit.

If that became more of a thing for Harrison Ingram where he was like, no, this is what I want to be my first option. So let's explore that first. And I'm going to cool on the other places. And if I go to the visit and I don't like it or, you know, things don't go the way I expect them to, then I have those other options to go to. I don't know if that's the case or what, but it's kind of funny because that would be, you know things don't go the way i expect them to then i have those other options to go to i don't know if that's the case or what uh but it's kind of funny because that would be you know back-to-back recruits that visited ku after north carolina timberlake now harrison ingram who seemed like

there was some cooling effect from unc after they maybe weren't able to get them to commit right then on the spot so nonetheless um it almost seems like now that, you know, we're seeing a lot of the sway go to KU in terms of people are predicting Harrison Ingram to go to KU. Michael Swain from 24-7 Sports, somebody else logged crystal ball picks for KU to land Harrison Ingram with 24-7. And I think it's interesting because, you know, you look at some of the different positions in the transfer portal. Like, why would this have been the case? Why is KU so adamant about getting Harrison Ingram maybe now as opposed to maybe two, three weeks ago?

So you look at the portal options available. You look at, like, the guard options, right? There are some superstars available. There was LJ Cryer. There's Max Acemus. There's Tyler Perry. There's some really, really good guards that that could be star level players there's some star level centers available in the portal hunter dickinson jesse edwards who uh committed to west virginia um after his visit over the weekend um maybe you could throw like graham ek in there i

guess we'll see how he bounces back from his injury and stuff like there's there's legit level players that you could see in the right fit at those positions being like first team all-conference guys at their next stop or in the case of like hunter dickinson or maybe even max ace miss like all-american level candidates right depending on where their next stop is and how everything fits together but there's not a lot of those guys on the wing like there's a lot of useful players there's a lot of useful players there's a lot of good players who are available um in the portal via the wing position and later this we have my uh 10 wings flash forward transfer options and we're going to go over some good ones there there are definitely some good ones that are available but it doesn't have that

like automatic superstar player on the wing position that you come in in the same way you would with Harris or with Hunter Dickinson and go yeah he could like legitimately win national player of the year he could be a first team all-american um at his next stop like Max Aisman if he goes to I don't know Texas or Kansas State and he puts up 20 points per game he's gonna be an all-american right you don't really have that on the wing so i think ku was probably being patient as it seems their approach is being this offseason right you look back to a couple years ago and you bring in joe yes food and cam martin those are both early commitments for you and that didn't really work out for you and i think ku viewed that as you know that was one of their more early trips into this

iteration of the transfer portal to where they viewed it as, you know, maybe we don't need to be so trigger happy early in the transfer portal. Let's be patient. There's going to be more guys that enter in as the kind of portal goes on. And we don't want to be in a situation where all of a sudden some guy that enters and would have interest in KU and is a really good player. All of a sudden we don't have a scholarship because we committed two guys earlier in the portal because we weren't totally sure what's going to happen. I think they're being more patient because of what happened there a couple years ago. And so they were patient with this and they said, hey, let's wait and see. We like Harrison Ingram, but let's wait and see if there's a, you know,

Hunter Dickinson level wing or forward that enters in the portal. And that didn't really end up happening. So now it's like, okay, well, Harrison Ingram, you are one of the elite wings that did enter the portal. Let's go back to you. And it makes sense. You're talking about a player who's a former's all American, really solid player. I mean, usually those guys, former McDonald's all Americans, they come back for year three in college. We see those guys have

boosts a lot. Like I always think of like Wayne Seldon at Kansas. He had kind of an up and down first two years at Kansas really broke out his junior year, Harrison Ingram. Maybe he could break out. Although he probably had a little bit more production there in his first two years at Kansas. Let's talk about his strengths and weaknesses coming up in just a second. But first, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Grand slams, no hitters, double plays, they're all back, and there is no better place to get in on the MLB action than with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. That's because right now, new customers can step up to the plate

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slash locked on to sign up. FanDuel, an official partner of Major League Baseball. Counting report for Harrison Ingram. Let's start with the strengths. Size is a strength here. You're talking about a wing who is like six foot seven, six foot eight. So good size at the three or four 230 pounds. He's built well, he's strong. He's got a seven foot wingspan. He tested in the 2022 draft combine and he ranked tied 22nd among all players in wingspan but that's all players if you just look

at small forwards he was fifth so he's got a really good wingspan he's got really large hands he measured tied fifth in the nba combine among all positions that even includes centers um and hand length and then tied 14th and hand width and that number obviously jumps up even higher if you just look at his position on the forward he he uses his body. Well, he uses his physical strength. Well, and he's actually solid jumper too. Um, I might include this into the size part, I guess, uh, we'll get to some of the other athleticism part of it that, that might go into the weakness column, but for the jumping side of it, he's actually like, he's not, you know, uh, I don't know. He's not Kenny Gregory, right? He's not, um, Andrew Wiggins jumping,, he's actually like, he's not, you know, I don't know. He's not Kenny Gregory, right?

He's not Andrew Wiggins jumping, but he's like a solid jumper. He had a 35-inch max vertical. He had a 29-and-a-half-inch standing vertical at the 2022 Combine. Both of those ranked third among small forwards who participated and was better than, like, several even guards. So I would say he's above average, maybe at the jumping side of things with good size. So that's why you will see some highlights

where they like dunked on some guys. Didn't have a ton of dunks last season. I think he had seven, but you know, you compare it to Jalen Wilson who had zero and it's like, oh, okay. You get a little bit more there. I think also a strength here is production at a power conference level.

Two seasons at Stanford, he averaged 10 and a half points, 6.2 rebounds, 3.4 assists per game. Those are over two years. And keep in mind, Stanford does play at one of the slower paces in the country and in their conference. Among the 12 teams in the Pac-12, Stanford was just ninth in tempo. So those numbers, you boost it up into Kansas's tempo, for instance, maybe it's closer to 12, 12 and a half points per game, seven rebounds per game, four assists per game. And those numbers sound a lot better, right? Not that his numbers previously sound bad or anything, but so to account for that, if you just want to take a look at, yeah, production at power

five level, which already there are, you know you know decent numbers there look at some of the rates on ken pom he was actually top 12 in the pack 12 in offensive rebounding rate defensive rebounding rate and assist rate so when you take out the tempo and you just factor it into like rate percentage he was really good top 12 and all those things offense defensive rebounding that should. We know KU had troubles at times with rebounding last year. And then assist rate, good passer too. And that's the next strength here. Passing and feel for the game. Not only was he top 12 in the Pac-12 in conference-only games and assist rate, he was number 2 in the Pac-12 in assist rate in conference-only games. This is a

wing forward type who is the second best assist man, essentially, in Pac-12 games last season. That's a nice little combo to have with DeJuan Harrison, having a couple of high IQ players out there at the same time. He's got a great feel for the game. He's got great IQ, which also you're talking about a wing who has a good feel for the game and good passing. He's an automatic grab and go guy for Kansas.

So you play faster in the Kansas system than what you're doing at Stanford. We know Kansas loves to have a bunch of guys on the floor that can go out, grab a rebound, and go and start to break themselves. He follows into that lead, which is nice because you're losing several guys who could do that, like a Jalen Wilson. And think about some of the players who have been this, the high feel for game guys, the high IQ guys at K like marcus garrett kevin mcculler immediately come to mind and there's others too but those two immediately come to mind

recently both of those guys were really productive players and they got on the court right away and that's something that's important here right as much as we think of transfers who have been in college for a few years as being ready-made products. They still do have to learn the system. They still do have to garner the trust of Bill Self. And guess what? Remy Martin struggled with that the first couple months that he was at KU. We think of all the other transfers that came in, whether it was Joe Yesifu or Kim Martin, whoever, that maybe struggled with that at KU.

But you think of the high IQ guys. Kevin came in right away. He didn't have the same problems Remy did. He was immediately a 30-minute-per-game starter. Marcus Garrett, who came in as a non-top 40 freshman recruit who couldn't really do much offensively, still played 19 minutes a game as a true freshman at KU for a team that went to the Final Four. Because the players that have those high IQs, high feel for the games they earn bill self's trust and so i think that's a strength here too that for me i don't worry about harrison ingram

coming in and being like yeah but is he going to be a bill self guy like no he will be and those are the type of guys that earn immediately trust and if you need immediate minutes at a high impact at the wing position you feel confident you should be able to do that i think touch around the hoop is also a strength here uh he was listed as good on layups by synergy he was also 70th percentile and runners which is very good he obviously has to because he has to make up for the lack of explosion i almost view harrison ingram as being like a a little bit more athletic better jumping version but not maybe quite as tall as like dedrick Lawson or quite as skilled around the post but like kind of in that hybrid type of player and he potentially has two years left to

play that's exciting too because he could have next year too or I guess this next season and then the year after that if possible which follows the timeline of like DeJuan Harris and KJ Adams I'm sure if you asked him he'd love to have that breakout season where he could go pro afterwards. As far as I have some things in limbo, not quite strengths, not quite weaknesses. I think three-point shooting, I didn't want to quite put it in weaknesses because it's still like better than what Kevin McCuller shot last year. Or if you compare it to, so Jalen Wilson, the year KU wins the title, he was a better three-point shooter than that. But Jalen Wilson last year with another year of he was a better three-point shooter than that. But Jalen Wilson last year, with another year of improvement, was a better three-point shooter than Harrison Ingram.

So he's somewhere in the middle there. 31.6% career from three at Stanford. His spot-up shooting was solid, though. 18 for 46 in spot-up threes. That was 39% last season. Those ranked pretty well for him. You figure he'll be doing a little bit more of that than maybe creating for himself that maybe he was doing a little bit more at Stanford.

So I don't think it's like, again, like if you just view it as, oh, we're trading out Harrison Ingram for, let's say it's the Jalen Wilson replacement at the four. Okay. Well, you know, if you view it as if he can have the same uptick of threes that Jalen did, he'll actually be better off. Or if you view it as we're trading him out for Kevin Kohler, actually been a slightly better three point shooter than Kevin McCuller. Now, ideally you'd have an even better shooter than that because you still have

to account elsewhere for the loss of Grady Dick. And you weren't to begin with like an amazing three point shooting team last year. So you're looking to improve that as much as possible but there is that way of looking at it I also think defense would go in limbo here he ranked 51st percentile on synergy and man defense 54th percentile in everything so basically average slightly above average defender but I think KU will get better use out of him like I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a strength for KU because he was not good on synergy and defending in isolation he was below average

and defending spot up shooters probably played a little too much on the perimeter at stanford we'll get into more of that later but he was also 89th percentile in pick and roll defense so smart and that's good for ku switching style 94th percentile off-screen defense and 97th percentile in handoff defense. So again, good in switches and was good in post-step defense, which he might be playing the four at Kansas. So I expect him to be a solid defending four-man at KU. If they ask him to play more at the three, maybe closer to average because of the lack of foot speed.

But either way, he's far from being a negative. If anything, he's average or should be a positive in this way and has potential to move up so that's why it is the weaknesses for harrison ingram athleticism outside of jumping it like i said earlier probably about an average jumper but the rest of it he's more of like a power athlete who's not really fleet of foot i do actually think he has a nice little, I don't know. Sometimes you'll see good footwork with like a nice little spin that he has. And that allows him to get some wiggle.

But he's not going to like cross you over. He typically is not really going to run by you. Maybe if KU is able to play him at the four more. So going back to the Stanford thing, like maybe he was playing more on the wing. If he's playing more of the wing if he's playing more the four at ku maybe he's able to to have at least a little bit better of a time running by the occasional people because he'd be guarded by you know slower fours than faster threes on occasion more i don't know uh but at last year's nba draft combine he had a bottom five lane agility test with times that were actually worse

than Drew Timmy and all is only one spot better than Kofi Coburn the big center for Illinois he wasn't great in the shuttle run either he wasn't great in the three-quarter court sprint so those are real concerns and part of the concern you have is well if KJ is going to move to the wing does that mean KJ's at the four and if KJJ is at the four, then Ingram's at the three. And some of those speed issues come to light. Ideally, Ingram is playing the four for you. What does that mean for KJ? Does that mean, you know, maybe you're playing 20 minutes of Harrison Ingram at the four, 20 minutes of KJ at the four, and then you're playing KJ five, 10 more minutes at the center position. Harrison Ingram gets five, ten more minutes at the three position

to where you're not playing it as much. Maybe that's a plausible solution for you. I don't know, but that certainly would be one concern here. Also, free throw shooting, not great. 62.9% career at Stanford, under 60% last season. That goes in the weakness column as well, as well as just overall creation and scoring there. Let's finish up with how he would fit at Kansas

in the final verdict with locked on Jayhawks. So, okay, how he would fit with Kansas. Keep in mind, I've hinted this a couple times, he was probably misused at Stanford. There were times where he would be the second shortest player on the floor, that they just threw out these gargantuan lineups. And a lot of the times he was playing at the three position. So as I said, there's going to be minutes where he is going to have to play the three

because of what you lost from last year if KJ is playing the four for you. But I think ideally you're going to be playing him at the three four, whereas at Stanford he might have been, you know, a three who was a perimeter three or occasionally like essentially a two man kind of role. I don't think he was as coached as well as he'll be coached at kansas and i don't mean that as a knock to jared has i mean that more in the sense of you know bill self is the best coach in college basketball so you could be going from anywhere he could be going from i don't know bob huggins and i would still say i think he's

going to have an improvement in the coaching and how they're going to use him and everything um and i think that my biggest concern is going to be the how are they going to use him and everything. And I think that my biggest concern is going to be the, how are they going to use him? How are they going to use KJ Adams? That becomes the big crux in all this. But I think you, you figure, Hey, he's one of the best wings out there. He's a high IQ player. He does so many of these things. Well, how can we maximize doing those things? Well, and nobody's better in the country than Bill Self at being able to figure out the defensive side of the ball and being able to figure out what your strengths are and working to that.

So the verdict here, he is absolutely a take. There's definitely more pressure, I think, if you do land Harrison Ingram to land a Nicholas Timberlake type of player who can just be a flamethrower from three, because at that point, if you do have Ingram at the three and cage at the four and earnest due day at the five or you would hope hunter dickinson and duan at the one that two man better be a knockdown shooter right you better have a lot of good three-point shooters coming off the bench too but also in the case of ingram would it be crazy if a guy who was a mcdonald's all-american clearly has a lot of potential. In year three of college basketball, goes from being a 31% three-point shooter to jumping to 34%, 35%.

No, it happens all the time. And those types of players tend to take the bigger leaps, right? Like, as great as Kevin McCuller has been, he's kind of been the same guy his last three years, and there's nothing wrong with that. He's an unbelievable defender and an unbelievable player. The McDonald's All-Americans, typically typically i mentioned the wayne selden like a lot of times you see those guys really take off by kind of year three if they have been in the program for

or in college basketball for a few years and if you get up to 33 34 then you're on the line of what jaylen was last year and that should be good enough um he does enough else really well and there's not that type of hunter dickinson wing in the portal that this is a for sure take in my opinion would make ku better and then it would just add if you get 100 dickinson it would help a lot because then you would have a center who can shoot it a little bit from three point range but yeah absolutely a take and it seems like there's mutual interests both ways here all right that is our deep dive on harrison ingram we're going to get to our top 10 wing forward transfer options for ku

on tomorrow's episode of a hunter dickinson deep dive later this week so stick around right here with locked on jayhawks you can find us anywhere you get any of your podcasts you can hit me up on twitter at d johnson radio and you can subscribe to us on youtube as well have a good rest today later