Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - How Deep Will Bill Self Go Into the Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Rotation in 2024-2025?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, how deep into the rotation can we expect Bill Self to go with this year's Jayhawks? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can give me a follow on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. And you can find our show. It's called Locked on Jayhawks anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. And on today's edition of LOJ, we're talking how deep can Bill Self take this roster?

Starting point is 00:00:40 How deep will the rotation go? Because typically there are some trends about how not very deep the rotation ends up going on paper it's always easy in the offseason to discuss getting to maybe a bit of a wider rotation and all these guys that could be in competition are there maybe some past historical data elements which we're going to kind of take a look at that give us an idea of how deep it could go or how deep typically it goes so we'll get into all that on today's episode of the show which is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Make every moment more. As playoffs wind down, the sports stop sporting like we want them to.

Starting point is 00:01:12 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 slash locked on to get started all right so how deep will bill self go into the rotation and you look at you know this this ku roster and i think it's very easy to um i guess convince yourself that it can be nine guys deep right you think about uh whatever you're starting five projections going to be you think about the guys that are on the bench. I mean, I think it's pretty clear to me, DeJuan Harris, Zeke Mayo, Ryland Griffin,

Starting point is 00:01:48 A.J. Storr, K.J. Adams, Hunter Dickinson, and then whoever your backup center ends up being, that's seven spots right there. And that doesn't even get into, okay, what if you play, you know, multiple backup centers? What if Flory Badunga plays and Zach Clements plays, where maybe Clements is playing some minutes at the five and the four, right. And that would be an eighth guy.

Starting point is 00:02:07 What about Shaquille Moore, who they added in to bring in another ball handler and as a good defender. Okay. That would be a ninth guy. What about Rakees Passmore who certainly seems to be somebody who could be even better than their recruiting ranking might end up. Then all of a sudden you have 10 guys, right? So you can easily convince yourself and maybe you're fine knocking one of those guys out. It's still nine guys. How often does Bill Self even go nine guys deep? It's not as much as you might think. So I actually have

Starting point is 00:02:33 a little chart that I came up with here. I don't know how well this is going to come across on our YouTube, but we'll try to describe for our audio listeners as well. And it basically shows how deep into the rotation that Bill Self teams have gone each and every year at Kansas. So what you're looking at here is there are different ways that you can view the rotation, right? There are different ways in terms of do you view, are you a rotation player? Like, are you an everyday rotation player by total minutes played? Because that indicates that you played a lot of minutes each and every game. Do you view it by games played where it was like, okay, you were consistently, if you played all 40 games, even

Starting point is 00:03:14 if it was only five minutes per game, you were consistently in the rotation. Or do you view it by minutes per game? Meaning that like, yeah, but five minutes per game, that's nothing. You got to be playing at least, I don't know, eight minutes per game or 10 minutes per game, right? There are different ways that you can look at this. And then there's also the rotations of the difference between the regular season versus the difference of rotations in the postseason when things whittle down a little bit more. So we'll get into out of total minutes. If you were to look at the rotation as total minutes by 3% or more of the total of minutes available, then you can find some years where KU played, I mean, a decent amount of years where KU played nine or more guys. And even a couple of years, you look at 2019, you look at 2015, 2011, where they played 10 deep.

Starting point is 00:04:04 And in the cases of those, 2011, that was just an ultra deep team that had a lot of good players. Then you have the cases of 2015 and 2019, where it was more so just kind of throwing stuff at the wall and having maybe a lot of decent options, but not knowing which one is best. But on average, if you're looking at 3% plus of the minutes, you're talking about the average being almost a nine-man rotation, 8.7 guys. So it's actually closer to being a nine-man rotation if that's how you want to view it. Now, if you're wondering, like, how many minutes is that exactly? If we just viewed it as, like, let's say you did play all 40 games, you know, you're winning the national championship. Then, and let's say that none of the games go to overtime just for sake of this. There's 200 minutes to be given out per game overtime, just for sake of this, there's 200

Starting point is 00:04:45 minutes to be given out per game times 40 games, that's 8,000 minutes. And if you're multiplying that by 3%, I hope this math is making sense for you, that is 240 minutes played for a player, which divided by 40 games, again, they might've only played 30 or something like that, but if they played all 40, it would be six minutes per game, right? So that's kind of where you're at. That's not like a hefty number to get to. we raise that number to four percent though you see these drop down it goes from on average an 8.7 man rotation to an average of an 8.1 man rotation under bell self but still there are some years where 2019 2015 where it was a 10 man rotation but still some years worth a seven man rotation including most including most recently, the last three years,

Starting point is 00:05:25 it would all be a seven-man rotation. Now, I don't know if that's something of a trend for Bill Self or if that's just how it's kind of gone. I think I lean that way. I don't think Bill Self would prefer to have a less deep team. You know what I mean? He's talked about before, like using the bench is kind of a motivation tool and a teaching tool in a way.

Starting point is 00:05:46 So what if we go up to 5% or more of the minutes? Then you end up with a rotation around 7.6. So more realistically, if you're talking about guys to just be playing, right, the six-minute-per-game mark, which maybe that does apply to talking about a third center, if you're KU, right? I talked about the rotation. 100 Higgins is your starter. You'll have a backup center, and then you'll have your third center if you're KU, right? I talked about the rotation, 100 Higgins is your starter. You'll have a backup center and then you'll have your third center.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Your third center might qualify into the first pool where it's like, yeah, maybe they're playing six minutes per game or something like that or eight minutes per game, but not every game. But they're not really fully part of the rotation. Maybe that's one that you could kind of chop it off and that would get you down to nine, which even the 5% plus of minutes there are some situations of nine, which was, you know, 2019, 2015, again, 2011, which is a loaded team. 2006 went nine kind of across the board there. But overall, more often it's seven to eight men who are playing this many, which is closer to like 10 minutes per game.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Now, if we look at the games played, so this one could be a little skewed because you have certain guys who are injured, but if you view that more as being a part of the rotation, Now, if we look at the games played, so this one could be a little skewed because you have certain guys who are injured. But if you view that more as being a part of the rotation, then the guys who played 80% or more of the games, that is about an 8.3 man rotation. What about 90% or more of the games? That's only a 7.4 man rotation. And what about guys who played 95% plus of the games? On average, 6.8 under Bill Self.

Starting point is 00:07:06 So it's even less than a seven-man rotation. And there are times where it was only six guys did that. Again, some of that can be deterred by injury, but the amount of times that like Bill Self has never had a team where nine or more guys have played 95% plus of the games. And I think that might be the most telling of all, because in a specific game, it's going to tend to be eight guys. Now it might be a different eighth guy in one week.

Starting point is 00:07:40 And then a couple of weeks down the road, it's a different eighth guy. But for the most part, it ends up being eight guys. And I think that's kind of the story that that tells us. Then you move over to the minutes per game column. So guys who played eight plus minutes per game, that one ends up being around nine. So if you're viewing just to be a rotation player playing eight minutes per game, and again, I said you could easily get yourself to nine or ten guys

Starting point is 00:08:01 being a part of that as part of this year's roster. Well, okay, you could say, okay, we can have nine guys who play eight plus minutes per game when we're constructing this. And that would make sense. Maybe they just don't play each and every game. So there's that part of it. Then the 10 plus minutes per game part is a little bit shorter, but it's still 8.1, which is maybe more than I thought. And still some circumstances of 10 guys, 2019, 2015, and 2011, and then you go back to 2006 as well, that one's on there too, so those are kind of the deep years for you. What about 12 plus minutes per game? Then you end up with a rotation closer

Starting point is 00:08:34 to seven and a half, but I was surprised by this, there are a decent amount of years where, so you look at 2006, you look at 2011, you look at 2015 2015 where they played nine guys or more 12 plus minutes per game now those seasons 2011 was a great year and again that's because you were so loaded with nba talent um which maybe that's a conversation for this year's team how many guys do they have who are realistic like nba draft picks right now i don't know it's not nearly as much as 2011 i would say um but some of those other years it was more just based on trying to figure out what your rotation would be. And then you get to the NCAA tournament, which kind of tells a different story about,

Starting point is 00:09:09 or maybe more of the same story, but that, again, it just kind of gets whittled down. So what does this all mean for deciding what this year's rotation is going to have, how deep Bill Self will go in it? Let's draw some conclusions on the other side with this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, we were brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. I love sports. I love them so much, and I think you probably do too. I never want them to stop, but as the playoffs wind down, we have fewer games,

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Starting point is 00:10:23 of Major League Baseball and of the Locked On Podcast Network. I continued on how deep will Bill Self go into the rotation on this episode of Locked On Jayhawks. Well, there's a couple of ways to look at things based on kind of the chart that we put together there. So for the most part, it was between on the total minutes, depending which of the categories you wanted to go into for how strict or how loose you wanted to be between seven and a half and almost nine guys for the games played. It was between about seven to eight and a half for minutes per game.

Starting point is 00:10:55 It was between seven and a half and nine. So that gets us in the range. We're talking seven and a half to nine. I think if you think the depth is going to be good on this year's team, you can get to a nine-man rotation because there are evidence of teams that did a nine-man rotation, right? And again, it depends what bucket you want to look at here. But if we took the total minutes four plus percent, you would have the 2019 team, the 2016 team, the 2011 team, the 2008 team, the 2016 team, right? So you can get to that point, but that ninth guy's probably not playing like a ton of minutes,

Starting point is 00:11:31 might end up being like eight minutes per game. And if you think the depth on this year's team is going to be good, which I just talked about some of those guys that you can get to, and we'll finish up here with the dangers of the off season and how sometimes we overdo it a bit in the off season. So we'll finish up with that. But you can clearly get yourself to that point. And if they do end up being deep, then, yeah, I think they can play a nine-man rotation. I don't think it'll be as high as 10.

Starting point is 00:11:53 I think nine is kind of the ceiling I'd go, but that is dependent on the players having to earn that trust and earn that favor and earn those minutes with Bill Self here in the offseason. I think if you end up having average depth, it'll be eight guys. And when I say average depth, basically you have your starting five. You'll have one guy that maybe is getting like 20-plus minutes per game off the bench as a true six man. Then you'll have like a seventh guy who's maybe giving you 10 to 15,

Starting point is 00:12:18 and then you'll have your backup center. Like that would be your eight-man rotation, I think, with average depth. And that would mean that a couple guys weren't really playing. And then if they end up being thin, I mean, there's a chance you could be seven guys and in bigger games down to just six guys. Like, that is not that unthinkable here for this team. I know it's easy to go through all this. And, again, we'll talk about more of this later.

Starting point is 00:12:36 But what happens if this player you thought was going to be good just doesn't translate right away or takes, you know, this freshman more time? And then all of a sudden you end up with a situation closer to last year than you might have hoped because again last year going into the year there was thought that okay arterial morse is going to play a lot of minutes and nick timberlake is going to be the the perfect three-point shooter for this team no marco coming in as a mcdonald's all-american and then all of a sudden you end up with um not a ton of of winning production out of what you kind of got there, right? So you never really know until it all comes together.

Starting point is 00:13:09 But yeah, I mean, that's the real answer. It could be seven to nine guys, depending on what impresses. Based on what I'm going to project right now, I would have it being nine guys because I am a little bit confident in getting what you need out of these guys. But I do feel like I'm taking a leap and doing that because if we're really going back and looking at it and saying, you know, guys who are playing eight plus minutes per game, basically, I mean, it's just eight plus minutes per game and 80% plus of the games.

Starting point is 00:13:42 When you're looking at nine plus million rotations you're talking 2022 you're talking 2016 2014 I mean that's three times in the last decade you know so it doesn't happen that often but at least there is some evidence of it happening at least to a certain degree then the question becomes is Kansas deep or not? Because again, literally every offseason, we talk about how deep they are because you see the flash and the potential of every single player, every single name that's up there. And I think sometimes we do confuse, and I've been a victim of this too, or a culprit of this, I guess, confusing depth with names. This can happen for any sport. Sometimes it's, oh, wow, they have that guy

Starting point is 00:14:26 and that guy and that guy coming off the bench. And it's just like, because it's a name or it's like a lineup in the MLB. And it's like, wow, that guy's hitting seventh and that guy's hitting eighth just because it's a name we recognize, but the player is no longer good. Like they're out of their prime or they're declining or they're playing through injury or something. They're not good that year, but we recognize the name. So we give it more credit than for what it is. And I think sometimes that can be the case with Transfer Portal and McDonald's All-Americans and stuff like that. But in reality, it doesn't always add up.

Starting point is 00:14:54 So while I think on paper that this team should be deeper than last year, and my official answer would be 8 to 9 deep, leaning toward 9 deep in the regular season and getting to 8 deep in the postseason, I don't think it's like 2010, 2011 deep. But, you know, I understand there's opportunities each side. And then again, like I said, if you're going into the different conversation of the regular season versus the NCAA tournament games, I'm going to put this chart back up there. So I think in the regular season, I can see it getting to nine guys. Maybe the ninth guy is different each and every game. Maybe some games it's Zach Clements. If you want a little bit more size, maybe some games it's

Starting point is 00:15:34 Rikki's Passmore. Maybe some games it's Floyd Badunga. If Zach Clements beats out Flory and that's the case, right? I could see that kind of being the situation. But once we get to the NCAA tournament, that's out the window. And that's what I think is important here. When we are discussing rotations, I do think you have to understand there's going to be a different rotation in the pre-conference season. There's going to be a tighter rotation in the conference season, and then there's going to be the tightest rotation in the postseason. I think in the pre-conference season, it'll be probably nine guys pretty consistently. Once you get to conference season, it'll probably be some games where it's nine and some where it's eight and hell, maybe even some games where it's seven. And then once you get to the tournament time, I mean, if this ends up being a team that can play nine deep in the regular season, it probably whittles down to closer to being like eight deep in the NCAA tournament. But this is crazy to me. NCAA

Starting point is 00:16:22 tournament games with players who played 10 or more minutes in the game, 52% of the tournament games under Bill Self, they've only played seven guys, 10 or more minutes. 22%, they've played eight. 17%, they played six. They have played six guys, 10 or more minutes in an NCAA tournament game under Bill Self self almost triple the amount of times that they've played nine guys they have played only five guys 10 or more minutes in an NCAA tournament game twice they've played nine guys four times so once the tournament happens get ready to whittle it down because that conversation about oh it could be this guy this guy and this guy probably once it comes tournament time it's like it's just DeJuan Harris, Ryland Griffin, Zeke it could be this guy, this guy, and this guy. Probably once it comes tournament time, it's like, it's just DeJuan Harris, Ryland Griffin, Zeke Mayo, AJ Storr, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson,

Starting point is 00:17:08 and maybe a backup big. Maybe an eighth guy gets spot minutes like Shaquille Moore, Keith Passmore or something. I don't know. Maybe KJ just becomes your backup big for the tournament to whittle down the rotation, and that's one way to do it. But, yeah, it'll get much tighter once that's the case. But, again, going back to the idea of sometimes we play this dangerous game in the offseason,

Starting point is 00:17:28 I want to get to that next on Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for tuning in to Locked on Jayhawks. So next week, we are going to actually have our rotation predictions where we will actually give you the minute-by-minute predictions, the starting lineup predictions and everything of what I think it's going to be, at least before we get into the kind of boot camp situation and some more off-season intel of what's kind of going on that can maybe steer where that's going to be a little bit more than the last.

Starting point is 00:17:58 So we'll do that next week. This was just more of an introductory and kind of a research onto what Bill Self has done to kind of guide what past history would tell us to do. But I do think there's this dangerous game that you can play in the offseason here. And I think we do it every offseason. And, you know, some people do it more than than others. And some people do it less than others. One thing to keep in mind is how we hype up every player to hit their potential in that given season during the offseason. Right. So when we talk about, oh, they have Florida Dunga on the roster. Like last year, the example was, Oh,

Starting point is 00:18:30 they have a Marco Jackson and McDonald's all American on the roster. And, you know, I think you get enamored with the idea of this kid's a McDonald's American. He could be a future NBA draft pick, but it might be two years. Right. And for the case of some guys, like it does work out. Right. You talk about it was like Grady Dick, like that worked worked out and I think that that's a great year to look at on see with Grady Dick because you had Grady Dick where it worked out great ended up being a first round draft pick give you all sorts of production you'll set MJ Rice who just didn't really play for

Starting point is 00:18:55 you couldn't really crack the rotation you know and I think that's a good example of it's almost sometimes like a coin flip with some of these guys of what you're going to get in year one so it's easy to see it as like oh floyd badunga like he's going to be great and we we do this in reverse too when we go back and look at like past loaded rosters um that like oh my gosh they had this guy coming off the bench jeff with he is your fifth big man it's like well yes because they were loaded that is true but also maybe Jeff Withey wasn't nearly as good as as a second year player as he wasn't year four you know what I mean so it's a little bit of both but but sometimes we do that and that can kind of

Starting point is 00:19:35 taint our our vision of this because in reality it's not going to happen not every player is going to hit their their their ceiling their peak at same time. So while it's easy to look at all these players as saying, okay, Zeke Mayo is going to be a perfect fit coming right over, and Shaquille Moore is going to be perfect coming right over, and AJ Storm and Rylan Griffin are going to hit right away, and Rakeesh Passmore is going to overblow his recruiting ranking, and Floyd Padunga is going to show why he's a McDonald's All-American, and blah, blah, blah. Not all of that stuff is going to happen. And some of it's not going to happen because the competition, like somebody is going to beat out somebody else in competition. And maybe mentally

Starting point is 00:20:12 that leads you having a down year, or maybe you just don't get as many chances with Bill self because the other guy beat you out and he wants to give that guy more of a run and opportunity. So I think just assume this, like, let's pick the full group that could be coming off a bench. I think at a down year, maybe one of them hit. Like, okay, if we're talking the starting five is, just for the sake of this, like let's say DeJuan Harris, Ryland Griffin, AJ Stor, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson. At that point, your bench group would be Zeke Mayo, Shaquille Moore,

Starting point is 00:20:43 Zach Clements, Flory Badunga, and Rakeez Passmore. I feel like Jamari McDowell red shirts here. That's the reason I haven't been bringing that name up. And then obviously El Marco is taking like a medical red shirt. So that's a five-player pool. In a down year, which I would consider like last year a down year for how this all worked together, maybe only one of them hit.

Starting point is 00:21:04 And maybe only one of them hits to where you have a, a basically a six man rotation come the end of the year in a normal year, maybe two to three of them hit. And you have a seven to eight man rotation. And then in a great year, three to four do hit, but it's not realistic for everybody to hit right away or everybody to be reaching their ceiling or everybody to be playing their peak basketball at the same point in time. so as much as it's easy to list those names and be like yeah you know you have rickies pass more than zach clements and everything well what if it does take rickies pass more another year to get ready right what if it isn't a perfect transition for shaquille more right away what if uh floyd badunga does need another year to kind of work with or zach

Starting point is 00:21:39 clements you know isn't totally ready right we've heard before him being a good player in practice and all these things but then once it's come game time it hasn't you know showed up on tape or in the stats or anything like that so as much as you might be high on on all these players I would caution you and it's not that you have to pick a specific one like I don't know which one I would pick that might not live up to the potential this year I almost just view it as like you're throwing darts and of the five darts you throw off the bench maybe you only expect three of them to connect maybe you only expect one of them to hit a triple 20 and one of them to hit a 17 and then one of them to just give you like a 10 and then the rest are going to be off the board or something i don't know uh but i do think those are important lessons

Starting point is 00:22:18 to keep in mind before we get into our rotation production which we'll get to next week on locked on jayhawks to make sure you're subscribe to the show and catching us anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll see you next time with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - How Deep Will Bill Self Go Into the Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Rotation in 2024-2025?

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