Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Is the Off-season Over? Kansas Jayhawks Seem Set with 11 Scholarship Players for 2023-2024

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Is the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team done with off-season additions for the 2023-2024 season? Why signs are pointing to yes. Pros and cons for Bill Self's squad sticking at 11 scholarship players, and what the projected starting lineup and rotation could look like for KU.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked On Jayhawks, is Kansas officially set at 11 scholarship players, pros and cons of if they decide to do that, and what would the projected lineup and rotation look like from there? You are Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Johnson, you can hear me as well. Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. You can also hear me right here with Locked on Jayhawks.

Thank you for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can also find us, like and subscribe to us on YouTube. And if you are checking us out on YouTube, new digs. We got some new graphics, new stuff up on the show that you'll want to check out. That's for sure. And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to be talking KU basketball. Seems like their roster might just indeed be set with 11 scholarship players.

Why that would be, pros and cons of that, and what that would exactly mean for the rotation and the starting lineup for this season for KU. First, though, this episode of Locked On Jayhawks is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Of the official sportsbook of Locked On, make every moment more. Visit fanduel.com slash locked on to get started today. So here's a couple of reasons why Kansas could be done

or seems content at 11, or maybe your signs that are pointing to that. First of all, there's a tweet from Jayhawk Slant with Shea Wildeboard that was pointing out that it seems as if Kansas is content, is kind of done just sticking at 11. I know Michael Swain with Fog.net, he was kind of talking about some of the same stuff on his site with 24-7 Sports. So you have a couple different insiders there kind of talking about the same stuff.

And then the proof is in the pudding here, because if KU, and I will still kind of maintain the idea that if some good player, if some good transfer who's available in the portal right now, some of these guys that I'm about to name are like, hey, KU, Bill Self, I really want to come there. I really want to play for KU. I think it'll be best for my future career in basketball. And there's a lot I can gain out of it. And I'm not even looking for some big NIL guarantee. I just want to have NIL guarantees as being what the other players have gotten for being just a part of the roster, like with the barnstorming tour and some of the little things that Kansas does

and helps get their players through their NIL funding with, with mass street NIL, right? Like I just want to have kind of the bare bones thing and anything I get on top of that, that's great, but that's not what I'm focused on. I just want to come play there. And they're like,

I am ready to commit to you at that point in time. If you have a good player who's ready to do that, I think you kind of take them and you just go, okay, we'll figure it out from there. But there doesn't seem to be a hard press at all. Like it's, it's, it's almost the, the person who goes to the bar and you just like sit back on the wall and kind of kick back

and you feel all relaxed and you're sitting back at the bar wall, like waiting for somebody to come up to you. You know, you're waiting for a girl to come up to you or, you know, vice versa, whatever it is, um, to come up to you, but you're not engaging in the conversation, right? You're not going out of your way to attack the conversation, to press forward, to go buy someone a drink or something. You are letting whatever happens happen to you at this point in time. And so the proof here becomes, well, it seems pretty apparent that with the three big names that are in the portal right now that we've heard Kansas attached to in previous weeks prior to Kevin McCullough coming back, Zion Pullen, the transfer from, I think, UC Riverside,

a really good player out of the Big West, Arthur Kaluma from Creighton, obviously really high potential and has put up some solid production at Creighton the last few years, and then Grant Nelson, who put up really big production in the Summit League at North Dakota State and has some really good athletic stuff. We just did a deep dive on what Grant Nelson, who put up really big production in the Summit League at North Dakota State and has some really good athletic stuff. We just did a deep dive on what Grant Nelson could bring to the table on yesterday's episode. Those three names are all names that had previously been kind of connected to KU.

But after Kevin McCuller decided to come back to the Jayhawks, it seems like those things have cooled a little bit and the KU has stopped attempting the full court press. And here's the proof to that. Zion Poland cut his list last night to five schools, does not include KU. And so if KU really was pressing for it, you would imagine, because again, it's KU, it would at least be in the finalist list. It would at least be one of the five finalists there. Right. So that kind of tells you that, yeah, KU has taken their foot off the gas pedal. Then, um, with Arthur Kaluma, I I've seen a couple of different national reporters, whether it's been like Jeff Goodman or, you know, Borzello, whoever, uh, mentioning these schools, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, and Texas Tech.

And maybe there are other schools involved too, but those are kind of the main ones that were popped out. Again, you would think if Kansas was really putting the foot on the gas pedal, that doesn't guarantee that they'd get him, but you'd think he'd at least be on the list, right? I mean, typically if Kansas is an offer or if Kansas is someone who is really pushing for something, it usually ends up at least on the short list because at the very least for that player, it's a good,

like this goes for any blue blood, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, right? It's good for them to have them on the list, even if they're not picking it because it drives up the hype of your recruitment. And then I saw Trilly Donovan, which that's just an interesting story of who is this guy? He's like some burner account for, I don't know, some people have estimated like a burner account for like some college coach, whatever it is. But he put out an initial shortlist for Grant Nelson that was expected to be Alabama, Baylor, Florida State and Iowa. Again, you will notice on that list, Kansas is not included. So you feel like in any of these cases, if Kansas really wants to, they could probably get back involved in any of these recruitments because you have so many resources at your disposal being at the University of Kansas. has certainly cooled on that and it goes back to those reports from fog.net from jayhawksland

talking about how ku just kind of seems content sticking with those 11 guys and that if ku was really going for a 12th scholarship player then they'd seemingly i would think at least on one of those three if not all three appear as a school that that reached out to or was on one of these players' shortlist because any of those three, hypothetically, if KU was going for a 12th scholarship player, I would think those would be the top three targets based on just their past successes, based on past reaching outs for KU, if they did really want to add that last player. And so you would think at least one of the three, if not multiple of them would have Kansas on that short list, which is not obviously the case. Now, maybe there is a situation where Kansas is saying, you know what, if we add any of those players, it's going to upset current guys on the roster.

And like we owe it to KJ Adams to let him figure out this four man stuff. And if we add Arthur Columa or Grant Nelson um that's not going to work for him if we add you know zion poland what does that do for like el marco jackson for instance and his uh development coming in what does that do for nick timberlake or arterio morris so maybe we we promise starter minutes too right like if they come in and there's another uh player who's going to split a piece of that pie in terms of the minutes pie, so to speak. And maybe they would be more interested in a player who could come in and just be depth, just be a developmental player, whether it's someone who has basically spent a year at another school and was a former, you know, highly enough recruited guy and KU could bring in. And then at that point, they'd be trying to develop him and he would have used his free transfer to come to KU so it'd be harder for him to transfer out and to where you

would actually have those years to develop him as opposed to when you bring on freshmen and then they they leave and you don't get the chance to develop them maybe that would be something more appealing to KU but it seems most likely that at this point they're just saying now 11 scholarship players we're going to be okay with that and And if you have a healthy enough season, 11 is going to be more than enough. It just becomes a question of what if this or that happens in the kind of disaster circumstance. Are those disaster circumstances worth discussing? Because if it happens, it might not matter if you have a 12th guy or not. But we'll get on to the pro and con list of staying at 11 scholarship players here in just a second.

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than America's number one sports book. Visit fanduel.com slash locked on. Get a no sweat first bet up to $2,500. That's fanduel.com slash locked on. FanDuel, an official sports betting partner of the NBA. What are the pros and cons of staying at 11 scholarship players for KU? Well, I think the pros, you don't upset anyone else. Again, if you bring in Grant Nelson or Arthur Columa, how does that how does that affect

KJ Adams? And even if KJ ends up being the starter in that situation, which if you bring in Kaluma, I think the expectation for Kaluma would be that he would start. But even if KJ did start, you're losing minutes there. And would he feel like you're over recruiting him? Right. Same with Grant Nelson. Now with the Nelson one, going back to the deep dive yesterday, there is some scuttlebutton talk about that. he won't be eligible right away, that some of the credit amounts is going to make him sit out the first semester for this first year of college. And I think that would make it even better for KU because it'd be easier to explain in these situations to be like, hey, look, he has to sit out the first semester. You're going to be the starter all the way through.

And then because he's joining late, it's going to be hard for him to start right off the bat. And on top of that, you're going to have your chance to prove what you are and stay in front of him. But you could see why that would make certain people uncomfortable. And you already saw the brunt of that. You brought in Hunter Dickinson. You lost Ernest Uday and Zuby Ejifer. Now you don't want to be doing that with your returning starters with like K.J. Adams and so forth. So a pro of staying at 11, you're not upsetting anyone else.

Same goes for, you know, you bring in a guard, you bring on Zion Pullen. How does that affect like with Arterio Morris and Nick Timberlake? Did they come in expecting to either be starters or play starter level minutes with El Marco Jackson? You're coming in from the high school ranks. Are you being expected? Did you come in expecting to play starter level minutes as a possible one and done type candidates that you can have that opportunity to showcase your skills and possibly be that one and done right like you

don't want to upset anyone else um it should give you a firm rotation too if you were to add a 12th guy um maybe there are more questions about well how are they going to narrow it down to the the eight guys in the rotation now it feels like you got a pretty firm seven and the eighth seems to be there and i think it gives you more opportunity for playing time for freshmen like right now i think it's going to be super i don't know it's there's not going to be a lot of minutes for chris johnson and jamari mcdowell at least in theory with the additions of morrison timberlake having no marco jackson duane harris those four guys are going to play a majority of the minutes at the one through two three positions and then kevin mcculler is going to eat up a ton of minutes at the three and the four kj adams going

to eat up a ton of minutes at the four there's not a lot of minutes for mcdowell and chris johnson to kind of go around which now if you add a 12th guy the opportunity in case someone gets in foul trouble somebody gets injured or now it's you know you're blowing somebody out there's another name in front of those guys that would prevent them from getting more minutes so more opportunity for the freshman i think that's especially true for marcus adams he's the one especially that i have the highest hopes for outside of like a Marco Jackson, obviously with his ranking, like that's the guy that you kind of look to as, as headlining this freshman class, but Marcus Adams might be the best long-term guy because if a Marco Jackson's a one and done or a two and done, uh, what if Marcus Adams is here

for three years? And, you know, I, I think there is very high potential there. And for Marcus Adams, if they bring on, you know, Grant Nelson, for instance, then the entirety of your four minutes are eaten up by some combination of KJ Adams, Grant Nelson, and maybe Kevin McCuller. And at that point, that means basically no minutes for Marcus Adams. I guess you could play them at the three, but then if you have Grant Nelson, KJ eating up most of the four minutes, that means even more minutes of Kevin at the three. And then if you're playing Timberlake, right, it just becomes difficult to get Marcus Adams minutes. And I, I want Marcus Adams to get minutes. And so by not adding one of those players, you can get 10, 15,

maybe even 20 minutes per game for Marcus Adams at the four, if he lives up to the hype that early on, and that could be a good developmental tool. Then again, if Marcus Adams is not quite ready as a true freshman, which we see a lot happen. I mean, again, I point back to the MJ Rice thing last year. Then that could be a little bit scary as it's like, well, who's our other four man? You have KJ. Are you going to play Parker Brown at the four? You can play Kevin McCuller at the four. So you have enough options, but you don't have that other like dynamic go to.

But you want to have that other like dynamic go-to, but you want to see that development. You want to be see, uh, I guess some of those freshmen get the chance so that you know what you have and that in future years you can decide, should they be on the roster? Should they go somewhere else to have another opportunity? Like we saw with, you know, Bobby Pettiford, Joe Yesifu, Zuby Ejifor, and all these guys that transferred out. It also lets you save a scholarship for future season as part of the self-imposed sanctions for KU, they have to lose three scholarships over three seasons starting with this year. In theory, you would have thought it would have been one every year and you would have played with 12 scholarship guys all three years. But now what this allows you to do is that

if you reduce two of those scholarships this year, you now only have to reduce one scholarship over the next two years combined, meaning that let's say you now want to for the 2024 to 2025 season, you can go up to 12 scholarship players. And then that would mean for the 2025 to 2026 season, which it sounds crazy to me even talking about 2026 right now um but then you would have a full allotment of 13 scholarship players or you could do it vice versa 13 next year and then 12 the year after so you have more to work with moving forward it also leaves you with a little bit of leeway what if the IARP comes out and says yeah you're self-imposed sanctions

we like them but they weren't quite enough we're gonna make you lose another I don't know scholarship over the next two seasons then KU is, cool. Glad we banked that one out of the way. Now, as far as cons on this list, I think the biggest thing is you're not protected in case of injury, especially in a bit of foul trouble. And I think it hits more home. Like theoretically, if I were to say, oh, if Hunter Dickinson gets injured, like you're probably screwed whether you add another guy here or not. Then again, if you added a Grant Nelson, right, like maybe you still could be that good. So it'd give you more coverage by adding a 12th scholarship player because of injury.

And I think the scary thing there is that KU fans have lived this a lot lately how many years has KU gotten a big man hurt before the NCAA tournament or unable to play due to whether it's injury or like Cliff Alexander had the uh I don't know suspension type stuff uh with Yudokazabuki having a couple injuries in there Joel Embiid being injured like think about how many years there has been a key player injured headed into the NCAA tournament heck how many games has Kevin McCuller missed because of injury over the course of his career? It's, I don't know, been what, 20 plus games, something like that. Going back to his Texas Tech days,

missed a couple of games last year. He was injured headed into the tournament, but then ended up being okay with the back injury that caused him to miss some Big 12 tournament games. So like there is real questions there about you know trying to stay healthy because if one guy all of a sudden goes down you're gonna then feel like you're even though you still have the 10 scholarship players you're gonna feel like your rotation has become uh kind of thinned down a little bit unless the freshmen really do step up and are ready to do

that so that is the worry there that is the scare that it doesn't leave you much. But that also makes it tough because if you're trying to go out and get Zion Poland and you're like, well, you know, you're going to only, we're going to only have 10, 15 minutes per game for you. But if somebody gets injured, that's when you could play 25 minutes. It's hard to sell that to another player necessarily. The other con, you're just not adding another talented player it's not that this is a bad thing because you go back to again all that

list of pros but i don't think not adding a talented player is ever like a good thing it might not be a bad thing but having more talent is always good right so that's the pros and cons list there for uh staying at 11 scholarship. Let's finish up. What does this mean for a projected KU rotation now? Is it all set in stone? What's the starting lineup? All that sort of stuff. That with Locked on Jayhawks. Finishing up here on the show, the projected rotation and starting lineup for KU.

I think I go back to the idea. DeJuan Harris at the one. Nick Timberlake at the two. You need the shooting out there. Kevin McCuller at the three. KJ at the four, DeJuan Harris at the one, Nick Timberlake at the two. You need the shooting out there. Kevin McCuller at the three, KJ at the four, and Hunter Dickinson at the five, at least to start the year. Does it evolve at some point in the season later on in the year where eventually KJ is coming off the bench, still giving you 20, 25 minutes per game as a backup four, backup

five. And then you have Kevin McCuller as the starting four. Nick Timberlake is the starting three. And Arterio Morris or Elcculler is the starting four nick timberlake is the starting three and arterio morris or el marco jackson is the starting two that would not shock me either but i think either way you you look at it the rotation goes is this dewan harris is going to play a ton of minutes at the point guard spot i will be curious who plays the backup point guard minutes like when dewan's not on the floor for those five six seven minutes per game is it Arteria Morris is it El Marco Jackson I think El Marco Jackson to me makes a little bit more sense there but maybe part of the promise you told Arteria when he came in was that he would get those backup point guard minutes for a chance to kind of showcase that so I don't know where that

exactly is going to go with with either of those guys but one of them will do it and then they'll both play a lot of minutes at the two. In the case of El Marco, because of his athleticism and I think wingspan and stuff, like you can even get away with playing him some at the three. Maybe they will for a handful of minutes. But basically with DeJuan Harris, Arturo Morris, El Marco Jackson, Nick Timberlake, that will eat up all your minutes at the one and the two position. That'll eat up some minutes at the three position.

And then you'll have Kevin McCuller playing a good amount of minutes at the three position. You'll have Kevin McCuller playing some minutes at the four. You'll have KJ Adams playing some minutes at the four. And then you'll have Hunter Dickinson playing a ton of minutes at the five. So that gives you six players right there as part of the rotation. From there, trying to figure out the seventh guy, would it be, or actually, is my math wrong there? Yeah, that would be seven guys. I'm sorry.

That would be seven guys as part of the rotation. So who would be the eighth guy? I think that over the course of the non-con, you'll see a lot of nine-man rotations. And, you know, in games where you're blowing teams out, you'll see everybody play. But for the ninth-man rotation, you'll probably see some Parker Brown,

whether it's a few minutes at the four, a few minutes at the five, and you'll see Marcus minutes at the four, a few minutes at the five, and you'll see Marcus Adams at the four. Those would be your top nine, I think, with Jamari McDowell and Chris Johnson just looking for minutes where they can find them. Once you narrow it down to eight guys, once we get into Big 12 play sort of stuff, it probably won't go down to seven to very trusted games in the Big 12

or Big 12 tournament ncaa tournament when it's at eight guys i probably lean marcus adams being that that guy but i guess it just depends because if you're going to play more minutes of kj at the four and give all the backup five minutes to parker brown then at that point it's parker brown over marcus adams so basically it's those seven guys we first named with Dickinson, Adams, McCuller, Morris, Timberlake, Jackson, and Harris. And then between Marcus Adams and Parker Brown, one of those two for the eighth guy, either depending how you want to play with KJ or just depending who's better. And then the other guys, it's either a nine-man rotation early on that gets the other one. And Chris Johnson, Jamari McDowell is kind of your reserves, extra guys for in case of emergency or if you're blowing somebody out or if you want to give a different look for some reason or another. Who knows? Maybe one of those guys will end up breaking out, right?

And maybe Jamari McDowell ends up being a great three-and-D wing. Maybe Chris Johnson fits in a certain role that they end up being a bigger surprise than we would have thought, but we haven't even heard about summer scrimmages and stuff with the players just arriving now and everything. For now, before we have any more of that other information, that's what I'm going with. That'll do it for this episode of Locked

on Jayhawks. That'll do it for this week, I believe, of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back at you next week. You can find us wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can listen to us on YouTube as well. Like and subscribe to the show, and we'll see you next time with LOJ.