Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Giving Out Christmas Presents to Kansas Jayhawks Basketball

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Giving out Christmas gifts to the Kansas Jayhawks Men's Basketball team from Bill Self to Dajuan Harris, Zuby Ejiofor and more. Plus, some KU Women's Basketball talk after their 10-0 start and setting out exactly what they hoped for under Brandon Schneider.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at Linkedin.com/lockedoncollege Terms and conditions apply.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.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!NHTSADrive high, get a DUI. Click HERE to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to be giving out Christmas presents to the Kansas basketball team. Some KU women's basketball talk at the end as well. 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 on Rock Chalk Sports Talk on KLWN and Lawrence every Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 on KLWN. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks,

which you can get your podcast anywhere you get your podcasts, available anywhere. You can subscribe to us on YouTube as well. We're going to be giving out Christmas presents to the KU men's basketball team. We're going to finish things off with some KU women's basketball talk. They've had a great start to the season so far. Let's dive right into it with the Christmas presents. So what is the goal here?

Basically giving out Christmas presents that, you know, might help out KU players hit that next level or just continue on with their success over the course of the season. I think, number one, we're going to give out a Christmas present as a whole to KU men's basketball. A sped up IARP decision. This isn't one that the elves are working on toys in the back room of Santa's workshop, but I don't know how. So maybe the Christmas present, I guess, would be running shoes for the IARP from Adidas. That'd be pretty funny. You send them over. Speed it up, right?

Speed it up. We want to get a decision soon. Now, we've seen the decisions recently. We just saw Arizona come out last week and certainly the the punishments uh for those schools is not a ton and you compared what arizona was punished with to what kansas has already self-imposed there were some things that were basically directly like even or similar and there were a couple things that ku actually did that was a little more the one thing though that Arizona did that Kansas has not done was Arizona did the self-imposed postseason ban in gosh what was that two years ago three years ago uh when they obviously again took the the postseason ban

from the tournament but I don't know that might have been during the COVID year where they didn't have a tournament anyway I could be wrong on that um so I don't know how much that played into it but the rest of the punishments again are similar and you could even argue even harsher for kansas than what they've kind of taken on than what arizona got last week so it makes you feel good about where that decision could be going but yeah you want to sped up decision let's get out of this for ku they want to get out of this so they don't have that black cloud hanging over their head and recruiting that they can get back to you know getting the occasional josh jackson of of the world. And we can go talk ad nauseum about, well, what should they do recruiting-wise? Should they be in on all these top-tier five-star guys who are going to be one-and-dones?

Or should they try to build it more long-term? And I think most fans would say, yeah, I'd rather have it long-term. In my eyes, and I think this is probably how Bill Self operates, I think ideally you're having the core of your team is long-term, but then you add one of those type of guys or, you know, you add a couple that are obviously more long-term guys, but in terms of being an impact immediate guy, like this year's team is kind of a perfect example.

You have one of those impact freshmen with Grady Dick. The whole team isn't built to the freshmen, but you have one of them who's coming in playing great. Or like you have the Frank Mason, Josh Jackson here built on a team of veterans who have been in the rotation, who have been in the scheme, who have been in the system with Bill Self, but you add in a Josh Jackson to add that extra flavor. I think that's the ideal way of going about it. And certainly that would help you kind of land that one top tier guy. Christmas present for DeJuan Harris. He gets giant billboards all around the country.

That's what we're providing him with. Again, not really a gift that you're opening up on Christmas Day, but the point is, I mean, he just needs more attention. He is so darn good. He gets KU in the right position each and every time. He's a great point of attack defender. He creates steals, chaos on the defensive side of the ball. He's such a good facilitator.

He's had five games with eight or more assists, including 10 against Indiana. When he has to, he'll score. Southern Utah game, you're in kind of a rut in that game. He scores 14 points. The Indiana game, when it gets down to like an 8-10 point game, he scores six straight points to kind of push you back in front when you're going through a little bit of a lull.

He just knows how to operate the game. Constant gets ku in the right spots what it needs more attention though because when you look at the the overall stats at the end of the year he might be putting up eight points six seven assists per game steal and a half two steals and that's not gonna get him on like an all-american list or like an all big 12 list necessarily but it's it's hard for me not to say right now and we'll get into big 12 play when you know that that'll be a better direct but how he is not one of the top 10 players at least in the big 12 and maybe you could argue even top five that he deserves to be on the all big 12 first or second team by the end of the year. And again, there's plenty of time in conference play for that to kind of be decided, and we'll see how that goes.

But you could just see the stats leaving him off those lists, even if he should be on those lists. So we need billboards. Get the attention out there for how good he's been. Kevin McCuller. Kevin McCuller gets a big gift that he gets to unwrap. It's a cryo chamber. A cryo chamber.

I don't even know if this is the right word for it. But basically, Kansas needs Kevin McCuller to stay healthy. Kevin McCuller has gone through injuries each of his seasons in college basketball. He missed the one game for Kansas earlier this year, albeit against Texas Southern. So it wasn't really a huge deal. But obviously, the groin injury impacted him in the tennessee game and you didn't see a fully healthy or good kevin mcculler in that game which certainly hurt you against tennessee add that up to another reason why we didn't take that game you know overly seriously in terms of oh this

is a big crisis kansas lost by 14 anyway um last year he had the two like sprained ankles or I don't know what the exact terminology was for his ankle injuries, but certainly it hurt him. And he was shooting really well before the injuries. And then he tried to play through him and he is a really tough guy. So he's probably going to play through it, but you just need him to stay healthy. He is such an important player, most versatile defender. You can have great defender on the floor. He's super fun to watch, gets a handful of steals per game right now.

Great rebounder. He's scoring the ball pretty well, too, providing that extra punch there. You just need him to stay healthy. That's the big thing. So he gets a cryo chamber. Next on the list for Santa is Zach Clements, who gets a nerf gun and a target because just needs to practice the accuracy, right? And maybe, I don't know maybe maybe he's shooting well in practice so so maybe it's it's less about practice situations maybe we need

to drop him into a high pressure environment to use the nerf gun on maybe it should be like a paintball gun as you're getting fired on by other people right because we hear about him being a good shooter he was a good shooter in high school like statistically he was we hear about him being a good shooter. He was a good shooter in high school. Like statistically, he was. We hear about him being a good shooter in practice and it just hasn't carried over translated. We talked to Greg Gurley on Rock Chalk Sports Talk last week and he was like, yeah, I mean, I was a guy who was a good shooter. And, you know, I might only be asked to play a few minutes a game. So it's tough because you come out there and if you miss your first shot, you might not play two more minutes. You got to hit that first shot to earn those few minutes for, for a guy like him.

And that's a little bit different than, than what he's being asked to do. And to a certain extent, like kind of a square peg in a round hole with what he's being asked and in certain ways, but man, just need to focus in and hone in on the accuracy because for him to get more playing time and make an impact on the team,

he's going to have to start hitting shots. He's one of those few players where that's the case. Like if Kevin McCuller is not hitting shots, he's still impacting the game in other ways. You want all your players to hit shots, but you know what I mean, and that's not as much the case there. Grady Dick, this is the weirdest gift that I'm giving anyone. Gets a second face.

This is, you know, you went to the store of Game of Thrones, you went to the many-faced area, and you bought a second-faced for Grady Dick. Because everybody talks about face-guarding him and that they're going to need to face-guard him. Well, if he has a second face, how do you face-guard him? Boom. Answered there.

But certainly that'll be interesting once we get to big 12 play we saw ochag baji get face guarded at different times last year and like the texas game comes to mind and those were some of more of his struggles now did open things up in terms of driving lanes and spacing for other players to have success which could be a good thing players like jaylen wilson kevin mcculler and dewan harris can really take advantage of that but you really need his shooting and the gravity that brings out on the floor. So Kansas is going to have to overcome teams that do that. And I don't know how much the past few teams Kansas has played have done that, but if they have, it hasn't really worked because he has just absolutely gone off the past few games. Last one before we take a time out here, and then we'll get to some more.

KJ Adams, I debated between two. One of them is the tall surgery. Remember that came out a few months ago that people were getting surgery to add like two or three inches into their shins like metal rods. I would be worried about how that would affect his athleticism, but if you made KJ Adams,

what, six foot nine? There is a crossover where if he gets too tall then he's slow and now he's not as athletic anymore and you lose the switchability of him but if he's like six nine which that's still tall enough that he can be an athletic wing but now he's getting more defensive rebounds and offensive rebounds and

now he's not getting blocked as much or thwarted as much at the rim he's an all-american he is Trace Jackson Davis you know what I mean? But the real gift I want to give KJ Adams, a pop a shot. A pop a shot to work on the shooting, to work on the touch. The free throw shooting has gotten a lot better. Since he started 0 of 10, I know for the season he's shooting 40%,

but he's been a lot better since then. If he can just be up to 60%, 55% the rest of the way, I think you kind of take that. If he can just be up to 60%, 55% the rest of the way, I think you kind of take that. And if he can have at least any touch with the pop-a-shot helps on even those little floaters, the five, six-footers in the lane, that's super helpful for him. And eventually long-term, it might need him to start shooting some threes, maybe to the Marcus Garrett level to help you out with certain lineups.

So that's down the road for this year. That's what we'll do here. All right, more Christmas presents for KU basketball coming up in just a second. First, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high-stakes wager for your small business. You want to be 100% certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free.

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LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash lockedoncollege. That's linkedin.com slash lockedoncollege. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Some more Christmas gifts for kansas basketball bill self

congratulations you get a workbench you can you know in your spare time do all sorts of work and tools and everything but uh ku needs to work on its bench so ku or bill self gets a workbench get it see what i did there i'm very punny'm sorry. You're probably rolling your eyes as you're listening to this. But Kansas' bench, we saw potential in the Indiana game. Bobby Pettiford, Zuby Ejiofor provided it for you. It's not that everyone on your bench has to pick it up. It's not that each and every game, Pettiford and MJ Rice and Joey Esifu, not everybody has to do it, but you at least need one guy,

preferably two, to step up in that given game. I think for the most of the rest of the regular season, you're going to see a, you know, outside of garbage time or the last few minutes of the game, or maybe just, Hey, let's get this guy in here for two minutes. You're going to see an eight man rotation with Bobby Pettiford, one of the big men. And then one of like Joe Yessifu or MJ Rice, maybe certain games where it is a ninth game or a ninth guy where both of MJ or Joe or a third big man comes in for an extra, I don't know, five to eight minutes in a game. Once we get closer to

February and March, it'll be seven to eight as opposed to eight to nine. And then once we get to March, it'll probably be closer to just seven with the occasional eighth guy in terms of the NCAA tournament. But even if that is the case, and even if the rotation is short, you're still playing guys off the bench and they're still playing a sizable role. They're still going to be playing 15, 20, 25 minutes per game, depending on the player. So that means that's a lot of opportunity on the floor to impact things or to not impact things. And up until the Indiana game, you hadn't really seen much punch from your bench, which was fine because the starters have been playing so well for Kansas. But because these starters are so good, like this is a great starting lineup for Kansas. If you can just get a little bit of a

punch from the bench, get that extra something when somebody as a starter isn't stepping up or when somebody is injured. That's what this team needs to kind of continue to stay at this next level once we get into conference play and things get a little bit tougher, especially against all the great defenses and teams in the Big 12. Bobby Pettiford gets a bunch of fudge. Fudge, delicious, by the way. Peanut butter fudge, absolute best.

Although I have had like Oreo fudge,udge delicious by the way peanut butter fudge absolute best although i have had like oreo fudge great as well nonetheless for bobby pettiford we mentioned he was great in the indiana game 10 points like four assists he was super impactful but a lot of other games this year it's kind of felt like empty calories for bobby pettiford? He's on the floor for 20 minutes in a game, and he doesn't score. Or he's on the court for 20 minutes, and he scores two points. He has one rebound, one assist. He's one of two, one of three from the floor,

one or two turnovers. It feels like empty calories, where you keep hearing about the impact that he can provide from Bill Self and that he handles them and gets them in the right situations offensively. And, you know, for DeJuan, he does those things as well. And certainly it doesn't show up in the stat sheet as far as him being like having all American level stats, but it does at least show up in the stat sheet like a little bit, like you still get in

a handful of points and getting high assist totals and steal totals with Bobby. It's felt like it was empty calories at certain points, even if that's not fair to how much he has impacted the game. Celery would be the opposite of this. That is empty calories. And the opposite of celery is fudge. That stuff is super calorie dense. It's delicious, but it is super calorie dense.

You need more of those calorie dense games where it's not just him maintaining DeJuan being on the bench and you need a ball handler to get you in the right position. Get some real calories in there as well, and you saw that in the Indiana game, and you blew out Indiana despite Jalen Wilson going 4 of 18. Big reason why was your other four starters really stepped up and played great games, but it's also because you got bench contributions from Zuby and Bobby Pettiford so bobby gets a bunch of fudge mj rice gets the uh a alan iverson

nft to bill self basically so he's i guess he's gifting it or it's by way of him and bill self falls in love with this nit of alan i Iverson saying practice. You're talking about practice? Because MJ Rice, I would just assume he's not playing much here lately. I'm assuming, I mean, it could be injury related, right? I don't want to jump the gun and make any assumptions necessarily. But the fact that he is not playing a ton when the team has been kind of yearning for somebody to step up on the bench. And he would certainly make a lot of sense because he can kind of be a shock creator. And he's a really athletic wing who has a high potential.

Kind of tells you that a lot of times what we don't see is what happens in practice, right? So when guys are playing more or when guys are playing less, a lot of times it's because of what happened in practice. For instance, Zuby getting more playing time being the first big off the bench against Indiana and playing well. There was some talk about Zuby Ejifer playing well in practice leading up to that game. And sure enough, he ends up being the first big off the bench. I don't know again if there's injury stuff or something, but with MJ Rice, you just kind of get the sense that the first step for him isn't that he needs to go off in a game. We've seen him go off in a couple games. We saw him go off against North Dakota State.

We saw him go off against Texas Southern. Didn't lead to more playing time even directly afterwards. It's going to come down to practice. So either Bill Self's got to stop caring about practice, or that's never going to happen for any college basketball coach, nor should it, or MJ Rice needs to pick it up. Ernest Uday gets golf clubs. Golfing, great sport, super fun.

But, you know, the one thing about golf, it can really test your patience, right? It helps you practice patience, helps you hone it in. Otherwise, you're going to have a meltdown out on the course because golf is a very difficult mental sport, right? So for Ernest U due day just have patience you have a high potential and i i'm not saying he doesn't i'm just you know you add to it right because he does have that high ceiling and he's been kind of in and out of the lineup and first big off the bench sometimes other times no sometimes he's played

double digit minutes other times no just have patience because whether it's later this season or if it's next year Ernest Uday I have no doubt in my mind is going to be a really good player but might not be this year might not be for the next few months could be at the end of the year could be next year could be as a junior I don't know he's going to be a really good player just have patience Zuby Eifer, our final Christmas gift to a KU men's basketball player here. He gets flex seal. Flex seal the, I wanted to say Billy Mays, rest in peace, man. But whatever the guy who took over for him, he does the flex seal and he throws it on the, or is that, I don't know, something else. Yeah, I think that's flex seal where he throws it on the like tank of water and it doesn't come out so uh the reason zubi edge for gets flexio seals everything up right it's it's basically something that is it's almost like duct tape like you can you can seal a boat apparently according to the commercial i don't know how true all that stuff is there were a couple times in indiana game where you saw zubi edge for seal seal off. There's one main one.

I really remember this in the second half. I think it was on one of the Dwan Harris buckets where he really sealed off the Indiana defender and Trace Jackson Davis, I want to say, to give KU an easy driving lane from guard and an easy bucket. This was something that Landon Lucas did so well. I thought about making this gift like,

I don't know, free practices with Landon Lucas or something. But, you know, Landon did it so well and it opened up driving lanes for Frank Mason and Josh Jackson and the likes of KU players. And that is one way that doesn't show up on the stat sheet that will endear you to the coaching staff, to your other players, that is going to make your offense and your team run a lot more successfully. We've seen KU centers do it very, very well, and Zuby did it a couple times very well against Indiana. Just continue to build on that. Do that more and more, because if you're not a guy who has a back-to-the-basket game,

how can you impact things in other ways? Well, we already know he's a good rebounder. He's a good rim protector. He's a good dunker. Be good at the ceiling and giving guys open driving lanes and boom there you go now it's you and kj adams at those positions all right in just a second we're going to get on to uh basketball talk to finish things up but first did you know that driving high is considered driving under the influence that's right driving under the influence of marijuana is against the law in every state

even in states where marijuana is legal. That means driving high could get you a DUI. And if you think law enforcement officers can't tell when you're driving high, you're wrong. Your friends can tell, your coworkers can tell, even your parents can tell, everyone can tell. So what makes you think that law enforcement officers don't know when you're driving high? Driving under the influence of marijuana can slow your response time and change how you perceive and speed. So even if you think you're driving high. Driving under the influence of marijuana can slow your response time and change how you perceive and speed. So even if you think you're fine to drive when you're high, you're not. Because the bottom line is, if you're different, you drive different. And driving high is driving under the influence.

So remember, drive high, get a DUI. Paid for by the NHTSA. Finishing things up on this edition of Locked on Jayhawks with some KU women's basketball talk. They play Nebraska on Wednesday, road meeting in Lincoln against Nebraska ball. And they're currently sitting at 10 and 0 on the year. They have won eight or their last eight games of the season by 19 or more points. And that includes some solid opponents. I mean, at Arizona, who was ranked 12th at the

time was undefeated uh you beat a solid wichita state team you beat a solid texas a&m team you beat a solid tulsa team this past friday they're ranked in the top 25 i think they should be ranked higher by the way tyana jackson looks like a legit all-american candidate if she keeps this up and does this in the big 12 play and kansas ends up getting like a two or three seed in the ncaa tournament with the turnaround they had from two seasons ago i mean maybe she's a national player of the year candidate she's just a walking double double and influences everything on both ends of the court for kansas she sucks all the defenders in on one side but when she gets the ball because she's just been a bucket inside and she is one of the best defensive players in the conference and in the country

and blocking shots and just completely changes how teams have to play on the other end. Kansas made a tougher non-conference schedule in order to get a better tournament seed. They made it last year. I forget if they got the eight or the nine seed, but they were in the eight, nine game, beat Georgia tech, and then had the close game with Stanford at half that Stanford pulled away and won big at the end. And Kansas had a good enough season in a very tough conference that would make you think, hey, if we finished this in Big 12 play and you see all these other teams getting high seeds, that maybe they would have been a six or a seven seed. But they had kind of a weaker non-con that they rolled through pretty much, except I think they had a loss to tennessee in there so they didn't get as high of a seed and that made

sense you were coming from a point as a program where you were trying to build up and and work the winds up so you got that there this last year so now this year they went into the season and said we want to challenge ourselves in the non-con to prove how good we are uh and to possibly get a higher seed in the NCAA tournament, to where if we have the same or a slightly better finish than we did last year in Big 12 play, instead of getting an 8 or a 9 seed, we might get a 4, 5, or 6 seed. And the risk of that is that you do lose more on conference games, and then you put more pressure on conference play,

or maybe you don't wind up with the higher seed because of it. But the risk paid off because kansas is 10 and 0 so you've only seen the reward part of it and we'll see how they finish up against nebraska on the road but that means that they have set out or accomplished exactly what they've set out to do and if they have that similar big 12 season to a year ago they should be looking at getting a higher seed and if you can get into those top four seeds you host in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. And that would be quite the big deal for the KU women's basketball team. That's going to do it for this edition of Locked on Jayhawks coming up on tomorrow's show. Going now Christmas presents to the KU football.

We've also got a Harvard preview coming later in the week. If you have anything you want for the show to talk about, hit us up on Twitter at D Johnson radio or in the comment section on YouTube. That'll do it for today's episode. I'll see some of you on rock chalk sports talk later today. Have a good rest of your day. Don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever. Bye.