Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - How Mihailo Musikic IMPACTS Kansas - From Malique Ewin to Paul Mbiya and Money Concerns for Jayhawks

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Kansas Jayhawks shake up their basketball roster with the signing of Mihailo Musikic, sparking questions about their frontcourt rotation and NIL budget. Could Kansas be shifting focus away from top transfer target Malik Ewan, or is this a strategic move to secure future international talent? Derek Johnson breaks down what Musikic's unique skillset adds on the court, from his 7-foot size and professional experience to the competition he brings for Paul Mbiya, Christian Reeves, and Davion Adkins at center. The latest updates also spotlight KU’s ongoing financial balancing act amid program upgrades and NIL realities, with speculation swirling about scholarship options and the hunt for late transfer additions as eligibility rules evolve. Plus, news on the Jayhawks’ TBT team—led by Frank Mason, Marcus Garrett, and Carlton Bragg—as well as Quentin Skinner’s move to the Buffalo Bills, round out a jam-packed episode filled with roster intrigue and future implications for Kansas athletics. Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!   Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. From the opening whistle to the final kick, Let There Be Goals on FanDuel. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started now.   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) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kansas has signed Mahilo Musich. What does this mean for the Jayhawks on the court? And from a financial perspective, does it mean Kansas is a little bit poor? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day.

What's up, Derek Johnson here with Lockdown Jhawks, and today's episodes brought to you by Fanduel, the biggest stage in world soccer's here. Let there be goals on Fandul, visit fanduel.com to get started now. Mahilo Musich is the latest Kansas. Jayhawk, according to Mike Vernon, signed with Kansas. It's just now a process of trying to get him eligible over to KU.

We're going to break down what it all means with both, you know, what does it mean from a money perspective for KU? What does it mean in their chase for Malik U.N? Is there no longer a chase or potentially other players? They still have an open scholarship. And what it potentially means on the court for KU. Let's start right there. And I guess we should again add that declarative, you know, kind of cautionary statement here of that there is no guarantee the Mahilo Musich plays for KU from two perspectives.

One, from the perspective of will he be able to get eligible? This is a dude who's 24 years old according to, you know, some of the different websites online. Now, could that be wrong? Could the birthday be off by a year or something? Absolutely it could, right? and maybe he'd be eligible that way. But he's going to turn 25 years old in March. This dude is older than KJ Adams.

As part of the new five and five that they have passed, this dude is no longer eligible to play college basketball. But is there a way to revert to maybe some old rules to get him eligible? Is the birthday potentially wrong that we're seeing online? Who knows? The other part of this, why he might never play is that what if he comes into KU and he's just not quite good enough, right? So this could be kind of a big conversation over something that ends up being, you know, making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak, right?

But from an on-court perspective, when you're talking about adding Mihailo Musich, which check out our episode, our bonus episode we did yesterday, check out our deep dive episode that we did a couple weeks ago, where we get more into the scouting report of Musa Kitch's game. And thank you every dayers who already caught that one. But when you look at Musikich's game, this is somebody who is seven feet tall. He comes in with good size, no idea what like the wingspan is. is in the years that he was hurt, the tape looks like a not athletic big man. In the years that he was healthy, he does have a little bit, you know, a decent amount of mobility to his game with the seven foot frame. So trying to say healthy is going to be, you know,

of the utmost importance for what he can bring to the table. But he's very different than what KU has from the center position right now. I almost look at KU's current center position. And it is all about the measurables, the athleticism, the brute force, the wingspan, the dunking, the rebounding. It's about some of those more raw tools. When you look at Paulumbia and Christian Reeves and Davy on Adkins, and when you look at this guy, it's very different.

He does have a face-up ability. He does have a little bit of a post game. He's a very good passer. He can shoot the three at least a little bit here. But there are questions about maybe the more physical side of the game, right? And so that can work a couple ways, right? If some of his game rubs off on Paulumbia, then that's a good thing. If some Paul Mbia's game rubs off on him, that's a good thing as well, right,

to where these guys can kind of iron sharpens iron and make themselves better at some of their deficiencies. It's also a good thing for Kansas from a perspective of a scouting report, right? If you're trying to work on, you know, playing against the team who has a stretch five, well, now for the scout team, you can use Musa Kitch in that ability where maybe you wouldn't be able to do that before. Or as of currently stands right now, the current KHA roster, you'd be asking Grant Mordini to do that. You're probably going to get a better look from the scout team when Musichich is doing it.

So that's a good thing, right? I think from a developing Paul Mbia standpoint, it's great. It's great because, you know, he's going to get reps against a dude who's been playing in a professional league and is 24, 25 years old, is seven feet tall.

It's going to help Mbia, who is more of a raw prospect, continue to develop his game and continue on an upward arrow at Kansas. It gives Kansas more, more of a, I don't know, like you don't have to rush Christian Reeves back as quickly now, right? Like that is a good thing for Christian Reeves. That's a good thing for Kansas.

You don't have to rush Davy on Adkins onto the floor if he's not ready. If Adkins is ready to play above Musicketts, that's a great sign because that means Adkins is an incoming freshman earned it. But now you don't necessarily have to do that. So there's a lot of positive here. It just adds another layer of competition to the center, you know, whether you're talking about who's going to play minutes, who's going to. going to be part of the rotation or who's going to be the starting big man now i expect paul mbia to

win the starting job for kansas over musich i think if reeves were healthy i would probably pick reeves to win the starting job for kansas but because of the extra practice time i kind of lean more umbia right now i expect both those guys to be ahead of muskich but it does add some more competition and you know at the end of the day it is hard to kind of guess what the translation is going to be that could be good or bad that could be bad in terms of you know maybe maybe you're not going to get much here. It could be good because like, what if he does come over and he's like, oh, no, like I've been averaging, you know, real production in a professional league.

I'm going to come over here and dominate or do really well. That could be the good side of this too, right? I do think if he gets on the floor, if he does end up being whether it is a rotation player or ends up, you know, coming in and just killing it. And KU's like, hey, we got to start this dude at the center position. Again, not necessarily something I'm expecting. But if that does happen, it'll be very interesting what that KU lineup looks like. Because Keanu Dawes is somebody at the four who's not the best, like, rim protecting four man.

He's a really good defensive rebounder. He's an average offensive rebounder. Musichich, average offensive rebounder, not really a shot blocker. So it becomes interesting of how KU would make that work. I almost wonder if, you know, you're almost forced to start one of Reeves or Ambia because of the pairing next to Keanu Dawes just in general, right? but I'm also, like I said, expecting those guys to outperform Musa Kitch here. But when you look at having a different option you could go to, like if you're going to, you know, an offensive first lineup,

that could be interesting because then you could space all five players. Like Musikic could shoot the three. He can pass it a little bit. It would really open up the floor for Tyron Stokes, even if you would have some questions on the defensive end of the floor. So there are certain interesting things you could do on the court. it would also add to the idea of, you know, if you have a lineup out there at any given time with Stokes,

Musa Kitchin, that's three really good passers for their position at any given moment in time. From a secondary impact perspective here, I think that you're looking at this being a nice future edition for KU, not necessarily from Musikich's perspective, but from what it could mean for KU's future with other players. Now, again, even if KU can get him eligible this year, I'd imagine he's going to be in his final year.

He's only going to have one year of college basketball. That would be my guess based on his age. Now, again, maybe there's some loophole or something we don't know that KU feels good about from that perspective. But if we just assume he's a one year guy anyway, how would this affect KU's future? Well, it's because the agent for Mahalo Musich, which by the way, I do want to make quick mention, Mahalo Musich spelled with the M-I-H-A-I-L-O is the same guy as Mahalo-M-H-A-L-O. It's just a different, it's a different carryover of the spelling of his name when it translates to English. It's the same guy.

It's just there's two ways to spell it, basically. It's like the color gray. You can spell it G-R-A-Y or G-R-E-Y, right? But anyway, point being, his agent is like one of the super agents overseas in here. I'm pretty sure it's actually the same agent that Nicole Yokic has, not 100% on that. But he is a very powerful agent overseas. And so if taking on this addition helps you to land more big name prizes from overseas down the road, that is obviously a really good thing for Kansas, right?

I mean, I just think to last year's final four. You look at Arizona and Mo Krivoss and Yvon Karchenkov, like, those are international additions in the starting lineup for Arizona, but really impactful ones at that. You go over and look at Illinois, right? You look at Markovic, is the power forward. And I guess with the Avicic brothers at the center position, technically I think they came over to the U.S. first,

but they're originally from, you know, overseas. They had some other overseas additions on that Illinois roster as well. You go back to some previous additions that have happened this offseason or some of the last couple off seasons. There are some big names that have come from internet. I mean, Aday Mara, right? He ends up going to UCLA and then transfers to Michigan, but he's originally coming over, I believe, from Spain.

Like, there's some really good players coming from overseas right now, and it doesn't feel like KU was tapping into that enough. And KU's had some good overseas players, Femakiluk, Sasha Khan, Johnny Furfee recently. You can go on with some other players. They've had some good players from overseas to where you would think in a day and age where this is becoming more popular, they'd be able to capitalize on that more. And I think this is a good opportunity to do that to potentially add some future pieces. Now, the worry is what happens if Musich ends up being buried on the bench and

doesn't enjoy his time playing with KU? Does that get back to the agent and end up harming you down the road? Or is it something where it's more of, hey, scratch my back. This guy is a free agent. We don't know where he's going to play. He'll get a better contract coming to play overseas, Kansas than he will out here. And then I'll scratch your back later in a future year. Maybe it could be, right. Now, from a negative impact, what does this mean for Malik-Ewen? What does it mean about the money standpoint of the roster. Let's get to that next. This is locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Fandual Sportsbook, which you can get all in the action during the World Cup as the biggest stage in the world.

Fanduals change in the game because sometimes your player gets subbed off and your bet goes right with them, right? Not anymore. A Fandual's super sub. If your player is subbed out, your bet stays in. That's right. If your player leaves the match, your bet continues on with the substitute. So you're still in it until the final whistle. I actually had this happen where in one of the earlier group stage games, I bet on somebody to score a goal. They didn't score. They were actually a very early sub off into the game.

And it ended up being their sub who scored a goal and I won the bet. It was great. It was awesome. So let there be goals this summer on Fandual. Visit Fandual.com slash locked on. That is Fandual.com slash locked on L-O-C-E-D-O-N to get started now. Fandul, the official sportswork partner of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Thanks to join us on Lockdown, Jayhawks.

So finishing up there, some positive impacts for adding Musichich, but I think the biggest negative one is, what does this mean for the rest of the roster? What does it mean for the money element from Kansas, right? Because we've heard all about this chase, and I guess not all about, but we've heard about this chase for Malik U.N., right? Malik U.N. put up really productive numbers of Florida State, transferred to Arkansas last year, put up solid numbers on very very good efficiency with some good team metrics for an Arkansas team that made it to the Sweet 16.

And Malik-Ewen felt like the guy that, you know, if Kansas could get him eligible, get him that extra year would come in, be the starting center right away. And, you know, you're off and running if you're Kansas. And I think on Bart Torvik, K.U. was like, last I checked, they were like 11th or something coming in. I don't know if that's changed at all. But if you added Malik-Ewen, they would go up to like sixth or something. So it would be a very impactful addition, right? does this indicate that that ain't happening? Doesn't guarantee it does because Kansas still does have one more opening after this edition of Musichich.

So theoretically, this could just be a, hey, he wants to commit, let's bring him in. And if we can make Malik U.N. work, we'll make it work, and we still have another scholarship to do so. And if it upsets this kid and he wants to transfer or, you know, I guess not come here or whatever, then that's fine, right? But this gives us insurance while we're awaiting Malik U. And maybe that's the positive way of looking at it. And maybe that is a possibility.

Or maybe you could bring in both players and just have a bunch of big depth. Like that would be great for KU. And maybe that is entirely possible. But in a world where we know the money is a little bit more limited right now for KU, as they are building this new stadium and everything, and they're building a new indoor facility for baseball, I have a hard time believing that would be the case necessarily. So to me, this is indicative that the Malikian thing.

happening, right? And whether you want to say that's because, like, is it because, I guess, again, you can view this from a positive lens. You could view it from the lens of, well, KU has found out over these last couple of weeks of summer, the Pauumbia looks like a stud. Pauumbia looks like somebody who is going to take the reins of this starting center spot. And KU, after seeing how much he's developed and how well he's playing, is like, you know what, maybe we don't need to bring in a starting center. Maybe we're better off saving the money and, you know, moving it to next year's roster or saving the money and, you know, using it on trying to reclassify Javan Bardwell or going after a guard in the portal, right? Or not having to, you know, just tap into a big money donor one more time and just be like, you know what, let's save that ask for something else. right, to where they're saying, hey, if we bring in Malik Ewan, it's going to make Paul and Bia come off the bench.

And we don't want that to upset him because we think he looks really good as the starter. And they feel comfortable with that to say, hey, let's go get musk it. That would be the positive way of looking at it. I don't know if that's true or not. The negative way of looking at it would be that they don't have the money to afford Malikian, right? The Malik U.N. bidding war while he's trying to get eligible has gone up. that some of these players, like the guys in Ohio who won the injunction against the NCAA getting eligible, has caused some of these schools to go, oh, well, if those guys got eligible, we think Malik-Ewen can get eligible.

So maybe we should make an offer for Malikian. And then the price goes up and then now all of a sudden he's out of the price range for KU. And again, this comes back to the idea that that money prevented KU from landing Dary and Williams last year at the end of the off season, which I get it. Daryon Williams was not the best rebounder, defender for NC State a season ago. But if you add one more shotmaker on this Kansas team this past year, and now Bryson Tiller's coming off the bench instead of starting,

I'd like to think KU at least gets a three seed instead of a four seed. And then maybe you have a better path to the NC, you know, to making the second weekend, which we haven't seen Kansas do in four years at this point. So there is a real tangible impact to it. And I hope that we're not looking back on. in the same way here with Malik Ewan. And it's not even really just Malik Ewan.

I mean, it is because that's the guy that KU's been connected with or there was the rumors and everything. It's also with going back to the Ohio suit that these players get the injunction to basically be grandfathered into the five and five. And now you have a big suit coming in with, I think it's 11 players in Colorado. And you have another couple handfuls of players trying to go by the same suit in Georgia. And now there's players like Don. Donovan Dent and some other guys that are trying to get eligible with that being kind of the foundation work and the precedent.

Where with the five and five, these players who would have been fifth year players this incoming year but didn't get grandfathered in, the more that these become eligible, the more that they win in court, the more that these injunctions happen, it's going to lead to more late targets in the transfer portal and not just late targets, potentially cheaper late targets, right? Because the number, you know, supply and demand, the demand, the number of open roster spots is more limited. So now the, the teams that still do have open spots have a little bit, you know, they might be able to get a better, better discount. They might be able to get a better deal because there's not as many teams bidding up the price. And these are also going to be experienced players, which in theory means they could be better players in terms of what you're

getting right away. So it's not just that you know, bringing on Musich could potentially mean you're not getting Malik You in. It means that you might not be dipping your toes in the five for five guys. Again, though, this all circles back to the idea. You still do have one other scholarship open. And if we want to, again, we've been bouncing between the negative side and the plus side of how you want to view this, right? It really is eye and the beholder. The other eye and the beholder. I in the beholder of the positive side is what if KU is seeing all these five and five guys from the legal perspective going, hey, there's going to be a lot of good players

that might get eligible here. You know, we just saw LJ Kason enter into the transfer portal, the Michigan transfer, who's a really good shooter, though he's coming off an ACL injury that he's going to miss part of the season. Maybe KU's viewing it going, man, it'd be nice to bring in one of those guys. And they're going, but we only have this amount of money.

So we got to decide right now. Would we rather bring in Maliky Kewen with all that money? Or would we rather bring in Musich, plus one of the other guys that's going to be available. And maybe they're rolling the dice and saying, we think something from the five and five is going to spring that's going to lead to a bigger addition than what we could get from Malikyuan. Again, I'm not necessarily under that belief.

I'm under the belief that I think they're going to Musichich because they don't have the money for Ewan. But if you want to play the glass half full, you want to play the positivity spin, maybe it's just that path right there. All right, let's finish up here with some of the latest news, KU Baseball, more news there. The TBT team gets ready to go off for KU and some more news there. And a former Jayhawk receiver is moving to a different NFL team. We'll get to all that next.

This is locked on Jayhawks. Don't forget to check out our deep dive episode on Mahalo Musich. We also did a commitment episode yesterday, a little bonus show that broke down more of his game. If you want to find any of our Musickch content, you know, you can go on our podcast page where you listen or you can go on our YouTube page and just go on. onto a channel and then search, you know, Mahilo Musich, just search that name and it'll pop up all the content and all the past videos or podcasts that kind of involve him. And you can get caught up

more on his game. All right, latest news for KU basketball. I mentioned the other day that, you know, some guys like Kate Baldridge announced they're coming back. Well, Manning West also announces that he's going to be back for KU. It'll be interesting to see if Manning West moves back into the rotation because with KU losing Dom vaguely, there is another potential opening. in the rotation. I assume Ryan Ritter is going to move up to the rotation. Mason Cook should stay there. What's going to happen with Mathis Nairal?

You know, or Nairal, like, is he going to sign as a 13-th round draft pick, or is he going to come back another year? And if it opens another spot, could Mani West, could one of these juke coditions, could a D-2, right? Who's going to take down that spot? That'll be very interesting for KU.

But good to see he's back because he's a good pitcher to have, whether it is his starter in the bullpen. Speaking of KU baseball, uh k u baseball's at twitter town actually tweeted this out apparently by having three draft picks in the first 10 rounds that is a school record that's the first time that k u's ever done that so uh really cool to see as you continue to see the you know it all just kind of lines up right with with the investment with dan fitz darrell with john coin the on the field results leading to more you know these guys get into the mlb it's just uh kind of really cool to see the whole cycle here right uh and then henry greenstein from the lawrence journal world

and KU Sports kind of pointed this out on Twitter about the TBT roster update, which is Jayhawks Hoops, J.HX Hoops for KU getting ready for their three-game series against the Kansas State team and that Lagerald Vic officially no longer on the roster after the murder charges that have come against him here. And since he pointed that out, they've actually made a couple other additions to the roster. So right now, here's what it's looking at. Frank Mason, your starting point guard, great there. Marcus Garrett starting at the shooting guard, which he'll be one of the best defenders in this event.

So that's a good start at the one and two. You're looking at Zeke Mayo as a player who will be really good shooter on the team. Jacob Hanna actually played pretty well as the former Washburn, Iqabod, who's been playing in Spain. He was pretty good for Kansas last year. So good with that addition as well. So I like some of the guards. Tyshaun Taylor is going to be a GM and a player.

So I'd imagine Hillmore so be kind of one of the backup point guards that can come in if they need the minutes and need the rest, which is kind of what he's, done in some of the recent years. Andrew Orr is an interesting player. I remember calling some of his games in high school. He then went to Washburn, had a lot of success. He played over in Denmark this past year, like 6-9 Center, Power Ford, who can stretch from three. Kevin Young will be on the wing. Trey Dionne Hollis, I don't know really anything about him as a six-foot-two player. DJ Burns, unfortunately not the NC State DJ Burns. This is just one who's been playing in Canada here. So we'll see what he brings to the wing. And then you have Darnell Jackson, who's like 40 years old,

but, you know, he is a, does bring some height. And then you finish up with this is an interesting one, especially after little Gerald Vic, very different off the court stuff here with his career, Kansas, but Carlton Bragg is actually going to be playing with the Kansas team here. Actually finished a good career in New Mexico. Apparently, he was playing in Rwanda, which I didn't even know they had a basketball league.

So Carlton Bragg, it'll be interesting to see him back in a KU uniform. It feels like they could use one more big addition, you know, and hopefully that ends up happening, hopefully it's a last minute commit or something like that. that right i know frank mason has mentioned he wants to get doke dope would dominate in this event i think if they had dope they could legitimately win it all with frank doke and garrett but we'll see what kind of happens there feels like there's enough guys for k u that are kind of in in the european league stage of their career and stuff that could make this a really good roster so we'll see if they can kind of

finish it out um and then the last bit of news here quentin skinner former k u receiver he was with the new york jet squad i forget if he was on the active roster i think it was the practice squad last year which still makes, you know, like six figures of money. He got dropped by the Jets, but he got scooped up off of waivers by an indivision opponent in the Buffalo bills. So, you know, if you're a chiefs fan, you're like, oh, man, it's going to stink to have to, you know, watch Quentin Skinner go up against the chiefs or something like that. But that could be a fun opportunity playing with Josh Allen for Quentin Skinner.

So wish him the best moving on over to Buffalo. All right. That'll do it for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time.