Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Does Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Have Enough 3-Point Shooting to Win the 2025 National Championship?

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Deep dive and examining into if Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball has overhauled the three-point shooting enough to win a National Championship and March Madness and make a Final Four in the 2024-2025 season. How does what could be projected from 3 compare nationally and to past champions and is it enough to space the floor for Bill Self's team and Hunter Dickinson down low next to KJ Adams. Plus, what happens if Shakeel Moore usurps Zeke Mayo and how does it affect this and more.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.eBay MotorsFrom brakes to exhaust kits and beyond, eBay Motors has over 122 million parts to keep your ride-or-die alive. With all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to bring home that big win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.FanDuelFanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook. As playoffs wind down, the sports stop sporting like we want them to. But this summer, FanDuel is hooking up ALL CUSTOMERS with a boost or a bonus, DAILY! That’s right, there’s something for everyone, every day, all summer long! Visit FANDUEL.COM and add a big win to your summer bucket list!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)

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, examining if KU basketball has enough three-point shooting to win a national title in 2025. 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 find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. You can tune into this show, Locked on Jayhawks, anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day.

Thank you to the everydayers catching each and every show. On today's edition of the show, we're going to deep dive, examine the range that KU basketball could shoot from three based on last year, based on career percentages of who they have and who they added in the portal. Is that good enough for this team to be successful based on the roster and to win a national title? And we'll finish up as well with an interesting kind of scenario of what happens if

something else happens and how that would impact the three-point shooting. This episode is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply with GameTime. All right, so let's start here. Let's add up based on what KU has on the roster, returning players, new players, to show a possible ceiling. Obviously, there is not a guarantee. Somebody who shot 31% last year might shoot 38% next year. Somebody who shot 38% last year might shoot 34% next year. There's no guarantee about where these numbers are going to be they're going to be exact from what they were the year before we also don't have numbers on the freshman now I don't expect Flory Badunga to be taking threes so I don't think that one will matter as much but with their keys pass more what happens if pass more ends up being really good and you know as a freshman is playing 15 minutes a night is playing 12 minutes a night he's going to be probably at that point taking a three or two per game right how well How well will he shoot? I mean, we don't have the numbers on that. So this won't be a

perfect thing, obviously, but KU was a team last season. This was a weakness for them, the three-point shooting. They were not a good enough three-point shooting team. They only shot 33.2% from three-point range. That percentage ranked 229th in the country. So you're talking about a team who was not shooting it well in terms of percentage, and we know that. Obviously, the lack of spacing that it led to on the court for KU and made it tougher for the two-big lineup, and there is a little bit of, well, because they played a two-big lineup, it hurt their three-point shooting in addition to their three-point shooting not doing well, hurting the idea of playing a two-big lineup, right? Those things kind of run hand-in-hand a little bit there.

But they also didn't take a lot of threes last season. 17.3 attempts per game a season ago. The attempts ranked 336th in the country a season ago. So it's like, it's one thing if you're, I don't know, like middle of the pack. If you're 160th in the country in three-point percentage, but you're taking a good amount of them where it's like the math game starts to add up. But Kansas was not shooting them or like on the flip side, a team who doesn't shoot them a ton, but they're at least shooting them efficiently when they do.

Like you want to kind of gun for one of those two. The ideal world is that you're great at both. You're shooting them a good amount and you're making them at a high volume. But obviously that is a little bit, I don't know, fewer and far between. So Kansas was not good at either. They did not attempt many 336. The percentage is not good, 229th. But they obviously attempted to overhaul this in the transfer portal.

So now what can we expect from this team? Like, are they just better? Are they just a better three-point shooting team than they were last year? Which, you know, where's the bar to that? Are you just a little bit better? Or, like, are you completely overhauled? Are you a much better team? And you look at, you know, past national champions.

So I haven't included this year's UConn, but I know they would clear this number. But I go back and look at teams in terms of three-point percentage. So if I do include this year's UConn team, and obviously no 2020 champion, 23 of the last 25 national champions finished top 175 in three-point percentage. And it's even more prevalent nowadays because if I go back to 2018, which is when Villanova won the title with all sorts of pace and space, these are the rankings of teams in terms of their three-point percentage. This is not volume, but three-point percentage year by year since 2018. 11th, 8th, 1st, 51st, 60th, 2nd, and 72nd. So you need to be good at it.

You don't have to be the best in the country, but you need to be basically top 100 at it. And if you go back even the years before, like 2017 North Carolina, they were 148th, but that team was great at offensive rebound and all these things. 2016 Villanova, 105. 2015 Duke, 26. 2014 Connecticut, 24. So like really over the past decade,

you basically have to be top 100 or at least top 150 and then do a bunch of other things. Well, Kansas was obviously not that. Have they gotten to at least that bar? Well, here's the KU players last year that are back. So I'm not counting obviously El Marco Jackson into this since he's not going to be playing for this year's team. He'll be out with an injury, so there's no point in adding him in to the stats. So DeJuan Harris was 28 of 73 from three-point range last season, which was a pretty good percentage, but low volume. KJ Adams was 0 for 3, which honestly, I did not remember him taking three three-pointers. I think I remember one of them. Anyway, Hunter Dickinson was 23 of 65, which ended up being a decent percentage in the mid-30s, but after the way he started and the way things kind of finished,

it wasn't great, but also weird that Hunter only took eight less threes than DeJuan Harris. Jamari McDowell then, he's back, and I don't know how much he'll be playing on this year's team. Maybe he ends up redshirting, but I'll count him in here too. He was 9 of 32 from three-point range a season ago. So total it up among your four returnees. Again, not counting Marco Jackson into this.

That's 60 of 173, which is actually a decent percentage. It's 34.7% from three. That would be much improved from last year, which based on, but here's the difference, 34 games played last year for Kansas. That means that's only 5.1 three-point attempts per game. So that's very low volume in terms of what you're adding. So what about the KU transfer additions? Okay, so Rylan Griffin shot a ton of threes.

This is crazy. So those four returnees, I mentioned 173 combined three-pointers over 34 games. Rylan Griffin took 189 last season for Alabama. He went 74 of 189, which is also 14 more makes than the KU bunch in that sample. AJ Storr took 150 of them. He went 48 of 150. Zeke Mayo took 235 of them. He went 92 of 235. And then Shaquille Moore went 29 of 80, which is on the lower end by pretty good margin among the four transfers you brought in, but it would have been the most of anybody that you returned. So literally your, your, I guess your fourth highest volume three-point shooter you brought in in the portal would still be your highest volume three-point shooter

among players coming back. So total it up among the transfers you added, 243 made threes on 654 attempts. That means 37.2% from three-point range. And on average, those four players played about 36 games played per player. So if you're totaling it up, you basically added 37% from three on 18.3 attempts per game combined from those players. Now, obviously, they have to share the ball now, right? Zeke Mayo goes from being by far the guy at South Dakota State to being, you know, possibly a starter, possibly coming off the bench for KU. AJ Storer goes from being by far the top scoring option for Wisconsin to he might be at Kansas, but he's still going to have to split it with Hunter Dickinson. Ryland Griffin, that one probably will be about the same, but you look at this still,

37% from three on 18.3 attempts per game. That's more attempts just from these four players. That's more attempts per game that they averaged between those four transfers you brought in than you did as an entire team last season. And it's a much better percentage, 4% better. So add up those two, add up the transfer additions, add up what KU has coming back on the roster. And you're starting from a point, and again, this is just based off last year's stats. We'll get into some of the career stats too to maybe give us a bigger sample size, but you're starting at a point of going 36.6% from three point range on 23.4 attempts per game. That sounds pretty overhauled for me from a season ago.

Again, that would be 36.6% from three compared to 33.2. That is a huge difference. And the attempts go from 17.3 to 23.4. I mean, that's night and day. And that 36.6% from three, if you just total up these numbers, that would have ranked top 35 in the country. That would have tied with Arizona. The attempts would have been just outside the top 100 in the country. That seems pretty darn good to me. And that's before you even factor in that you can find room for even more improvement but again we go to the to find the national champions over that list like i said basically be top 100 ish i mean they by far clear that number

in terms of what you would project based on all these players that you did at now then again like i said you can go the other way and say well zeke mayo is not going to be able to take nearly as many attempts he did last year. What if the percentage goes down? What if Rylan Griffin's percentage goes down a little bit with less space all around him than he had at Alabama than he does now playing with, you know, KJ and Hunter and what that can mean as a three-point shooter, right? Those are entirely possible. But you could also argue that these players playing with Hunter Dickinson down low and a pass first point guard in DeJuan Harris is going to help the shooters actually increase their percentages and get more open shots, right? If they double team Hunter Dickinson,

that's going to get somebody more of an open shot. So like, could AJ Storr, could Shaquille Moore, could they shoot in the mid 30% from three? Or, you know, I guess Shaquille Moore was kind of there this season. Could Shaquille Moore shoot 38% from three? Could AJ Storrs shoot 35% from three, right? Could all the players just being a year older, which applies for everybody here, lead to just stronger numbers in general? And so if that happens, what if you get up to say 37% from three on over 20 per game, you'd be talking about the best three point shooting team by percentage that Kansas has had since the 2018 team and a team that's top 25 nationally at it, including top 10 among power five schools. So the short answer here is yes,

I think Kansas does have enough three point shooting. Now, this was a real question going into last year as a question going into the off season. And it's one thing, you know, you added all these guys that you thought it would help. You could get nitpicky a little bit, though, and be like, yeah, but what if Zeke Mayo is only coming off the bench and playing this many minutes? And what if A.J. Stewart is only at 31%?

I'm telling you right now, you look at all those numbers put together, it should be good enough for Kansas to be a much better team. Let's get more into some of those career numbers and then a scenario here coming up on Locked on Jayhawks. This episode is brought to you by eBay Motors. Passion, drive, and patience. The formula for winning championships is also what keeps your ride or die alive. eBay Motors has everything you need to maintain your vehicle and level it up to peak performance.

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So continuing on, what if we go to a bigger sample size? What if we go to the career numbers from three? Because maybe that'll be a little bit more sticky, right? Somebody could have had a career year shooting from three or a bad year shooting from three. The career numbers might give us a better idea of what to truly expect, because maybe that's too high of a bar. We said 36.6% from three. If you go off last year's numbers of what you're kind of bringing in here, that'd be top 35 in the country.

It's one thing for this team to be better from three. That would be such a gigantic leap off last year's numbers of what you're kind of bringing in here, that'd be top 35 in the country. It's one thing for this team to be better from three. That would be such a gigantic leap from last year. And again, you could make the argument that because Kansas is going to be playing a lot of KJ Adams and Hunter Dickinson, what if teams, I don't know, basically are still able to say, Hey, you have KJ and Hunter on the court. We're just going to face guard Ryland Griffin. And then we're going to say who else is going to beat us, right,

from three-point range, and then we'll stack the paint. I don't know. That is possible that something like that could happen. But here's career numbers. DeJuan Harris, 87 of 223. KJ Adams, 0 of 7. Again, where are these seven three-point attempts coming from? I do not remember these.

Hunter Dickinson, 68 of 190. Jamari McDowell, 9 of 32. Zach Clements we're adding on here he is 10 of 40 um because if we're doing the career ones obviously Clements didn't play last year but if we had the career ones we had to add Clements into this uh Ryland Griffin 115 of 325 AJ Storr 86 of 244 Zeke Mayo the number here is insane 23 231 of 595. And then Shaquille Moore, 129 of 413. So total it all up among the transfer additions, among the players coming back for KU. Obviously, again, doesn't include the freshman year. That's 735 of 2069. That equates to 35.5% from three. So that is a little bit lower than the number we just went to based off last season's number,

which last season's number, again, 36.6% from three. So now you're down to 35.5% from three. But that's still an improvement off what you did last year. Again, last year, 33.2% from three. So you're over 2% better than you were from this year to last year. And that doesn't sound like a huge increase, but I'm telling you it is over the course of the season um so if this one ends up being closer to I guess the floor for where KU is at which again you could you could go through these and say okay Zach Clements career 10 of 40 that's 25 percent from

three I'm taking the over on that this year right even if it's up to 30 that's 25% from three. I'm taking the over on that this year, right? Even if it's up to 30, that's an increase. Rylan Griffin for his career based on these numbers, 35%. I'll probably take the over on that. Shaquille Moore's career, 31%. Probably taking the over on that too. Maybe you're taking under on the Dwan career percentage around the same on Hunter, but both those guys are lower volumes. It's not going to impact it as much. Maybe you're taking the under on the volume for Zeke Mayo. Maybe the store career percentage is about the same. I don't know. But that's only half a percentage off of the 2022 National Championship team. The 35.5% from three, right?

You're not that far. And that team we thought of as being good three-point shooting, Ochai was a sniper from outside Christian Brown wasn't a super high volume three-point shooter but like he was a very efficient three-point shooter uh Remy Martin hit a lot of threes DeJuan was kind of the the same thing like that he is now where it's like he'll hit some open ones if you leave them open and stuff like that um Jalen Wilson wasn't a great three-point shooter that year but overall we thought of that as being a good three-point shooting team. It's only, if you go off the career numbers here, which again maybe represents more of the floor,

it's only half a percentage off of that national title team. It's still top 90 in the country. It still clears that bar. It still clears that metric of being around top 100 in the country to win a national title. So it's good enough for sure. And if that's closer to the floor idea, if the career one as closer to the floor idea if the career

one as opposed to the other one um and the ceiling is the previous numbers that we talked about from last year's number but maybe even a tad more potential because like i said you can go individual case by case and say yeah but i think this guy could shoot higher than that and there's a reasonable argument as opposed to just saying oh but this guy should have 40 of course he'll go up to 45 that doesn't always happen but i think they're reasonable arguments for some of the players. This does have a chance to actually be like a good three-point shooting team. And I think on paper, you figured you overhauled the three-point shooting. Is it just going to go from being a bad three-point shooting team to an average three-point shooting team? And will that be

enough? But I think looking at it here through the lens of some of this stat deep dive, you could argue that it's going to go to being a good three-point shooting team, which that would be night and day and kind of figuring out the offense. And I think that's really exciting when you consider how that really does open up the court. Like I said, maybe a team does just say, hey, we're going to face guard Ryland Griffin, and then we're going to pack the paint. But I think A.J. Shore will be a little bit better from three-point range. DeJuan Harris, maybe in his final season, will be willing to take another three per game or something like that. Maybe if that starts to happen, you throw out more lineups with Zeke Mayo on the court. There are ways that you can work around that. You throw out more lineups with A.J. Storr at the four

if those sort of things start to happen. Or maybe if you do face guard Ryland Griffin, it does allow you to play more four and four to open up driving lanes for A.J. Storr and Hunter Dickinson. Or if they have to respect the three-point shooting and it is this good, you know, what does that make Hunter Dickinson? How much more efficient is he going to be? How many more points is he going to score inside? Is that going to open things up even more for K.J. Adams, right?

Is he going to be an even more effective driver of the basketball and finisher around the rim because it's more open? Will DeJuan Harris have more openings? Because we know DeJuan struggled in terms of his two-point shooting or shooting around the rim a season ago, right? Will that go back up? So I think there's a lot here that you should feel good about where KU should be at from three-point shooting for this upcoming season.

All right, interesting scenario I want to talk about next, though. What happens if you get Zeke Mayo not getting as many minutes as maybe Shaquille Moore? How does that possibly impact things? Thanks for joining us here on Locked on Jayhawks. Thank you to the everydayers tuning in to each and every episode. And don't forget, we have plenty going on in the Locked on Podcast Network. You want to see what's going on in another conference with another team, you can find that on in the Locked On Podcast Network. You want to see what's going on in another conference with another team? You can find that here with the Locked On Podcast Network.

Or if you're into trying to find your, you know, you want to listen to an NBA team or an NHL team or an NFL team. Well, you can find that here with the Locked On Podcast Network. So I think an interesting scenario here to all this three-point shooting, because part of what affects those numbers that we kind of went into was Zeke Mayo taking a high volume of threes and he hit them at a very high percentage. But what happens if, because in our rotation project and we had Zeke Mayo playing, I think it was 22 minutes and Shaquille Moore like 13, 14 minutes. What happens if Shaquille Moore actually usurps Zeke Mayo in the rotation on the depth chart? What happens if Shaquille Moore is playing 18, 20 minutes per game and Zeke Mayo is playing closer to 14, 15, 16 minutes per game? That just means that you're going to have less opportunity to get a lot of threes up. And if you're talking about Zeke Mayo being one

of the two best shooters on this team, if he's getting less opportunity to shoot less threes, that means that you as a team are getting less probably made threes at a high rate. So how does that affect things in terms of this percentage? And so does that number go down to 34 and a half percent? Does it go down to 35%? Like maybe that's still okay, but you start losing some on the margins here. And it does make me wonder, like how many minutes will Kansas be able to get away with a lineup of DeJuan Harris next to Shaquille Moore with KJ Adams next to Hunter Dickinson at the same time like it almost feels like to me if you're going to play DeJuan next to Shaquille Moore it has to be when like AJ Storr is in at the four and then you have Rylan Griffin at three or even Zeke Mayo

playing as a three with like three kind of lead ball handlers and Hunter at the five or if you're playing KJ at the four next to Hunter at the time it has to be DeJuan next to either the two has to be either Rylan Griffin or Zeke Mayo like I feel like that kind of maybe ends up being the case on the offensive side of the ball, but I guess it kind of feels like they need like two shooters on the court at all times. If Mayo isn't living up to the billing and to be clear, like I am expecting him to still shoot the basketball well for KU. Um, but it just gets a lot harder at that point. And I think the good news is Griffin and store could be on the court for 20 to 30 minutes together. But still, like that time one is on the bench is kind of perfect to have Mayo on the court to keep that going.

So how does that impact it if Shaquille Moore is playing more minutes or is able to kind of usurp him on the depth chart? I think in an ideal world, Zeke Mayo is able to kind of fend him off because of the fit of needing that three-point shooting. Not that Shaquille Moore won't be valuable and he'll very much have a role for KU and his defense will be, you know, very important for KU and you want him playing a big role in a real way, but that could certainly have a negative impact on, on how that is affected. So it's just about kind of finding the parts and how they fit and how you can

make these lineups work. But I think KU certainly has more options and flexibility than they did a season ago to try to figure that out and try to figure out how you can get away with playing KJ next to Hunter and how you can figure out with playing, you know, DeJuan next to Shaquille Moore and all these things, you have more options about how you can go about it and you have more three-point shooters to get it done.

And that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll see it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll see you on Wednesday for another show. We're going to have Nick Schwert on with us this week to talk about who's the most impactful transfer addition for KU. We're going to get to four bold predictions ahead of KU football preseason camp.

We got a football Friday episode coming up, so make sure you're subscribed anywhere you get your podcasts. See you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.