Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Jalen Wilson Could Win NPOTY for the Kansas Jayhawks, But Is He KU's Most Valuable Player?

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Jalen Wilson is the Kansas Jayhawk's Men's Basketball team's best player and a National Player of the Year candidate in College Basketball, but could you argue Dajuan Harris or Gradey Dick is more valuable? Fun with KenPom player comparisons and a What-If-Wednesday.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!SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnCollege to learn more.Omaha SteaksOmaha Steaks is a gift from the heart – a gift that will be remembered with every unforgettable bite. Order with complete confidence today knowing you’re ordering the very best. Visit OmahaSteaks.com use promo code LOCKEDON at checkout to get that EXTRA $30 OFF your order.NHTSADrive sober or get pulled over. 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 discuss Jalen Wilson as a National Player of the Year candidate. And we're going to even discuss, even though he is that, is he even the most important player on the team? Plus some fun with Ken Palm comparisons for the players and a What If Wednesday on this edition of Locked on 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. Thanks 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 on YouTube. You can also hear me on Rock Chalk Sports Talk Monday through Friday, three to six on KLWN in Lawrence. And on today's Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to talk about Jalen Wilson as a national player of the year candidate. We're going to discuss if he even is the most important

player on the team, even despite that. We're going to get to some Ken Palm player comparisons. Those are always fun. And then we're going to finish to some Ken Palm player comparisons. Those are always fun. And then we're going to finish things out with a what if Wednesday. But first, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by Omaha Steaks. Omaha Steaks is a gift from the heart, a gift that will be remembered with every unforgettable bite. Order with complete confidence today, knowing you're ordering the very best. Visit OmahaSteaks.com.

Use promo code LOCKEDON at checkout to get an extra $30 off your order. Jalen Wilson has been putting up remarkable numbers so far this season. Over 20 points per game, nearly 10 rebounds per game, and when you do those things on a Kansas team that has a lot of national attention, that is a top 10 team in the country, you are obviously going to be vaulted into the national player of the year candidacy. And so much so that certain places have him number two right now in terms of that. So Ken Palm has a player of the year race. He's actually set on that right now. He is seventh on Evan Miyakawa's

website. He is 10th on Bart Torvik's website. So no matter where you look, he is top 10. I think if you polled a bunch of the writers, he'd be more consensusly top five, but that's pretty much what those say. Now, what about betting sites? Because that's maybe a good indication of where the market's at here. He is second on some different betting sites. Zach Eadie is actually right now kind of been the runaway favorite for Purdue. He's just been a monster. Seems like he just puts up 20 and 10, 20 and 15 every game. And he's just kind of unstoppable in the post, like shooting super high efficiency. He is the center, a Purdue offense that is just built around him with shooters around him

because of the gravity he creates in the middle of the offense, and it opens everything up for them, and Purdue has been pretty unstoppable so far this season. They've been one of the two or three best teams in the country, so it makes sense. He is.50, though, which shows how, I guess, great of a start he's had, and I don't get that being this early in the season. Like, I understand Zach Eadie being the favorite right now gosh we still

have three months to go you know what I mean or I guess even four months to go before we get to the NCAA tournament being a plus 150 I mean that that tells you that he is like by far the favorite because then you drop down all the way to Jalen Wilson Wilson and Oscar Shibu and again I'm not saying Eadie should not be the favorite, but that much of a favorite with still this much ball to go? I don't know. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of good odds if you wanted to place a bet there.

But Jalen is at 10-1 right now. Oscar Shibuye is also at 10-1. So they're tied for second in the odds list, which shows you how good of a season Jalen's been. By the way, Trace Jackson Davis is at 11-1. He's the next player behind him. Certainly that'll be interesting on Saturday and actually makes it so that you have a national spotlight matchup between two top 15 ranked teams, two historically great

programs in Kansas and Indiana, and you have two national player of the year candidates who play similar-ish positions. I think Jackson Davis more so is going to be guarded maybe by like KJ Adams. I don't know who Jackson Davis will guard at the other end. Maybe he'll be guarding KJ as well, but you could have some certain matchups between those two players and whoever comes out on top, both individually and team-wise, could get a nice little boost in this national player of the year race. The point is, everywhere you look, you can make a very good case that Jalen Wilson is one of the top two or three candidates, and you can even make a case that he should and could win the national player of the year so far this season. And I would say he is

KU's best player, right? That's not a hard argument. You are a national player of the year candidate. You are an All-American candidate, a big 12 player of the year candidate. You're leading the team in scoring. You're leading the team in rebounding. You're second on the team in assists per game. You're the guy that they go to when they need a tough bucket. You can grind out buckets for a team that sometimes in the half court gets a little stuck in that regard.

You've improved your defense. You know, he's not Kevin McCuller, DeJuan Harris there, but I don't think he's like a minus there he's average maybe even at times a plus defender so like yes jalen wilson is the best player on this team i don't want to get that confused uh with the topic of this conversation at the same point in time though with all those things being said and true about him being a national player of the year candidate and being right up there with anybody in the country you can make the argument that while he's KU's best player he's actually maybe the second or third most important player on the team you might be rolling your eyes you might be

sitting there going oh gosh what are we doing here and maybe that's the case and honestly by the end of this I might you know tie a bow on this and and that might not be the case but just entertain the discussion here for a second dewan harris puts ku in every single best possible position every time he is out on the floor offensively it seems like i mean things just run so much smoother and you look to the Tennessee game and nothing was working for the team overall so I don't know how much it would have helped but certainly it's easy to point to the time that KU has looked literally worse than any other time this season that Tennessee game and be like oh what was a common denominator there well DeJuan Harris only played 17, 18 minutes

because he was in foul trouble all game and he fouled out, right? Jalen Wilson played that full game. He struggled. Now it's just one game. So it could just be a matchup thing and you shouldn't take every lesson from just one individual game. But if you just look at the full body work with what DeJuan Harris has done, man, he just constantly gets KU into the right spot. Everything is in control when he is on the floor. It's like a calming presence out there. And he's also a pesky defender who really keys the point of attack defense for KU on the other end of the ball.

We always say guards win in March. Well, KU has one of the best point guards in the country with DeJuan Harris. So Jalen might be the best player on the team. You can make an argument DeJuan is more important, more valuable to this specific team with what positions he gets the team into. This one might be a little more of a stretch, but I think you could make an argument for it. Could you make an argument that Grady Dick is more important, right?

Again, Jalen Wilson, better player than Grady Dick. Could you make the argument Grady Dick is a more important player to the team than Jalen in terms of value? Because his shooting is absolutely elite. And so, first of all, just having that shooter out there, having somebody who the defense might have to face guard or having the gravity of a player who, even if he's holding the ball 25 feet away from the rim, three to five feet behind the three point line, and they have to come out and get as close to him as they can. That creates so much spacing and just the gravity of having a player like that on the

floor where, yeah, if they are face guarding him, it basically opens up spacing in terms of being four on four, which a player like Jalen Wilson thrives on getting open driving lanes to the rim. So having a player like that is so crucial and important for this team. And then on top of that, you look at the rest of the team, Jalen Wilson, Kevin McCuller have actually been really, really good and solid as three point shooters this season. But if it's one thing, like if they're your second and third best three point shooters and they're shooting around 35, 36, 37 percent, that's more than good enough to get it done. But now all of a sudden, if you're losing out on a 40 percent three point shooter and Grady Dick and you're losing out on the high volume and all of a sudden Jalen and Kevin McCuller are your leaders, it just slots everything down. And then on top of that, you're probably getting less open shots for those guys because Grady Dick's not out on the floor.

So a team that's not filled with, you you know they've been solid as a shooting team so far that was a worry coming into the year I think so far they've dispelled some of that but still if you get rid of your by far best shooter on a team of guys who have been shooting well but are not known to be great shooters that has a big impact on the team. So you could make the argument that DeJuan and Grady Dick maybe are the most important players on the team, but that Jalen is the best player on the team. Now, all that said, wrapping up kind of a bow on this, show my cards.

I personally would still say Jalen is the most important player on the team just because I don't know where they'd be offensively without a high high go-to or high usage like go-to option because sometimes they get stuck in the half court and he's you know their best consistent tough game tough moment score and you need that guy and so I think as important as DeJuan is right if you have DeJuan and KJ on the floor and you don't have a go-to scoring option with Jalen that could hurt your spacing a little bit or if you don't have Grady Dick like yes that would very much hurt your shooting but again like what you

would lose without Jalen not to mention he's your best defensive rebounder on a team that needs to defensive rebound to to finish off defensive possessions and has a bit of an issue at times there. I think sometimes we undersell how important the top player is. It's just like we just see them being consistently good and we almost take it for granted. And so I'm definitely willing to listen to the argument of why DeJuan or Grady could be more important to the team and that Jalen is the best player, which I think that is bar none. But I think I would still lean that Jalen is the most important player, though the DeJuan one certainly would be neck and neck for me. All right, in just a second, I want to get to some fun Ken Palm player comparisons.

They have these like player comps. If you click on the player profiles based on the statistic outputs that they've had and just gives you some fun insight and fun to kind of cross compare some of the different players on KU's team. that they've had and just gives you some fun insight and fun to kind of cross-compare some of the different players on KU's team. But first, this episode of Locked on Hawks is brought to you by Omaha Steaks. Omaha Steaks has cut prices 50% site-wide to make you the gift-giving hero that you always wanted to be.

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part of the process with Omaha Steaks. They have put together a delicious selection of various gift packages to make shopping for the ones you love nice and easy. Go to omahasteaks.com. Take advantage of 50% off site-wide. Plus, use code LOCKEDON at checkout to get an additional $40 off your order. So it's already 50% off. An additional $40 off with promo code LOCKEDON. Minimum order may be required. Some fun with Ken Palm player comparisons here.

So if you go to Ken Palm's website, you can click on the different players among the teams and it shows you different player comps based on the statistics they're putting up, whether it's field goal rate, rebound rate, and it has correlations to how close they are. We'll start with Jalen Wilson. His most accurate or close player comparison this is interesting because first of all this is a great player season but it's also not at all what you would think of with Jalen Wilson 2014 Doug McDermott right you don't think of like when I think of Doug McDermott I think of this big shooting power forward who could hit shots from every level of the floor very skilled on the block in the post whereas Jalen is more of like a straight line drive driver

who can bully ball you and like, I don't know, a good shooter, but he's not Doug McDermott shooting. But that's kind of funny that that's the comparison so far, which does tell you how much he has improved and worked on his shooting. But something else that was interesting, back to tie it into the beginning conversation, Doug McDermott that year won National Player of the Year. That's the comparison right now for Jalen Wilson on Ken Palm.

Some of the other ones that pop up in there are certainly interesting too. 2016, George Niang for Iowa State. 2012, Kata Bates Diop for, I think, Ohio State. And then Robbie Hummel in 2012. I think the Kata Bates Diop was 2018. I think the K-Debate's D-Up was 2018. I think I wrote the year wrong then. But Robbie Hummel, who we remember from that 2012 season nearly torching KU into a second-round upset,

but KU coming through on top. And again, I guess all those guys I view as like, the way to put it would be finesse-skilled power forwards who could really stretch it. And yes, Jalen is a finesse-skilled power forward in terms of being able to be a power forward who can shoot the ball and dribble and stuff but he is a lot more like bully ball again being able to physical contact then I think a lot of those other guys which I think is kind of funny Kevin McCuller 2011 Kent Bazemore who he might not have remembered Kent Bazemore much from his college days I think he's kind of funny. Kevin McCuller, 2011 Kent Bazemore, who you might not have remembered Kent Bazemore much from his college days.

I think he played at Old Dominion. But he spent a while in the NBA as being like a really good defensive stopper, being kind of a 3 and D guy. So I think that's interesting. And then 2016 Abdel Nader from Iowa State. I think he's better than both those players. He had a bit of a slow start to the season, especially scoring wise, which is why those would be the case but both those guys were excellent defenders which kind

of adds up to what he's done here's Grady Dix 2018 Gary Trent Jr. from Duke that was uh he was on the Duke team that Kansas beat in the Elite Eight to go to the Final Four um that one I don't know I'm having my hard time a hard time wrapping my head around that one uh 2017 jacob evans that one is just wild from cincinnati he was like a i don't know really good defensive player bit of a swiss army knife in certain regards so that's interesting this one is is very well 2013 auto porter which like guy who is just great in the post great passer great feel for the game could shoot it pretty well but it's just you don't really see the Grady Dick comparison there this is the one that I found really fun uh one of his

player comparisons 2017 Sviatoslav Mikhailuk so first of all it wasn't the 2018 version which I thought was interesting but the 2017 version which we've heard that comparison before with Grady Dick to Svi in terms of just being shooters how about about DeJuan Harris? These are ones that don't really pop off the page. 2015 Shannon Scott with Ohio State, 2014 David Stockton, the son of John Stockton with Gonzaga, just being a really good facilitator. The thing is with DeJuan, you're going to have a hard time comparing him to other players as far as the statistical profile, because it doesn't tell the whole story with him um you almost get a mix of like david i know people probably don't like this next guy i'm gonna name but uh david stockton and aaron craft like from the defensive side of the ball from the facilitating side from david stockton and then kj adams 2014 akil mitchell who was a really good

defender on a virginia team that was uh that's when they kind of started to get really good. And, uh, I think tells you a little bit about him. And then, uh, I, you know, I went through some of the other players, the bench players and players who are maybe role players, not playing as much. It wasn't a ton, super interesting when you're not playing that way or that I wanted to share out, but this is my, I don't know if it's my favorite one, but it's one that makes you scratch your head and, you know, just be like, oh, really? MJ Rice,

his fifth most conclusive player comparison. 2015, Grayson Allen. MJ Rice is Grayson Allen. What? Yeah. That's a little funny there. All right. We're going to finish things off here with a What If Wednesday with

Locked on Jayhawks. But first, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline.net is your number one source for sports betting information, stats, news, and analysis. Get the latest odds of BetOnline and trends for every professional and amateur league out there, from pro football to college bowl season to basketball to the World Cup. They've got it all at BetOnline.net. If you love sports podcasts, you can even find those at BetOnline as well. They are the fastest and easiest way to get your betting information. Head to the website today or use your mobile device to learn more.

You can bet on Kansas in the Liberty Bowl. Whenever the line comes out for Kansas, Indiana, you can bet on that. Bowl season starts in just a few days. That's super exciting. You'll have plenty to bet on. Bet online where the game starts. Finishing things out on this edition of Locked on Jayhawks, as coming up on tomorrow's show, by the way,

we're going to dive into Lance Leipold's bowl game past and some other things heading into the bowl in the long layoff for KU. And then on Friday's show, we'll get to a KU Indiana preview ahead of the game on Saturday. But our what if Wednesday for today's edition of the show? What if DeJuan Harris stayed committed to Missouri State and qualified? Because I don't know the whole process there of if he just decommitted from Missouri State because of the Kansas offer or if he didn't qualify so that allowed him to decommit. Certainly he had to redshirt his first year with KU,

which I think was a bit academically, but it might have been because of the beyond the qualification stuff just because you were committed to a school and then you got out at a late point of time so it was like transferring and that was before the free transfer rule i don't know why but regardless led to a cool story because if you didn't see this there was a story last year and i'm blanking on which beat writer had it um on the beat for for ku basketball so i'm apologies here because there's a really good story about DeJuan Harris becoming like the, you know, like the team leader in GPA and academics even after that. So it was a really cool story of, of a guy kind of turning things around, but nonetheless,

what if he does stay committed for Missouri state and qualify? So, first of all, I guess the quick side of it, this is a podcast based about Kansas. So I'm not going to spend too much time on the Missouri state side, but Missouri state might be like very good right I mean at that point you have DeJuan Harris who has been excellent so far he's been one of the best point guards in the country statistically um it's nothing that pops up the page and so to a certain standpoint like DeJuan does rely on having other good players around him because he's not someone who's going to carry a team himself just by scoring 25 points like being a Jimmer for debt but he would put you in all the right situations and Missouri State had Isaiah Mosley who was just an unbelievable scorer he ended up transferring

to Missouri and was kind of MIA from the game against Kansas on Saturday but really good score I would imagine him and DeJuan are like best friends. If they're both there, maybe he never transfers and he stays. And they have quite a squad. And that could be like a potential NCAA tournament darling if those two guys are still there. But if he never comes to Kansas, it'd certainly be interesting where KU would be at right now. So you look a couple years ago and, mean shoot i don't know you're just giving point card minutes to a bunch of other players and you know i guess marcus garrett is having to to handle even a bigger load at the point guard position that would have been his uh redshirt

freshman year during the covet year when he played a little bit i don't know maybe you don't beat eastern washington in the first round of the n NCAA tournament, which I'm sure some people are like, you know what? That's fine because we just got smoked by USC. We wouldn't have had to endure the USC loss because DeJuan was great in that NCAA tournament game against Eastern Washington. Less of an impact though, that first year. Last year though, I mean, you don't win the title, right? You don't. I mean, it's easy to say, well, we had Remy Martin. Remy could have just filled in for his role, and Remy could have provided you more scoring.

But a lot of what we saw, like Remy basically carried you at the end there before David McCormick did. Like he had the step-back three kind of from the right. He hits the corner three off the big kind of momentum run. He hits that insane like left-handed layup over Armando Baycott. He kind of wins you the game at the end there. But over the course of time, the consistency and the defense that was keyed by DeJuan to start that second half were the biggest differences there.

But that's just to begin with, like, do they even get to that point? Now, Remy Martin clearly would have had a bigger role on the team, but what would they have done with the minutes that, you know, when Remy Martin was injured, right? Because remember, Bobby Pettiford was injured too who the heck would have played point guard the majority of the time for kansas last season that would have been certainly interesting to try to figure out last year i think it's pretty safe to say i mean whenever you win a title a lot of times the margins can be so tight if you just take one thing away it means you're not winning title and that goes for like any team in the country very seldom do you have a situation where you can say ah if we got rid of

that like it because things are close enough together um but it would be a lot different season to say that like it might honestly be the difference between kansas getting like a three or four seed last year i know that sounds crazy but think about it like you wouldn't really have a point guard for most of the season with Pettiford and Remy injured. Now, obviously if you don't have him, you're recruiting somebody else. And who knows what KU would do with that scholarship at that point. And that makes it for another interesting score story. But again, this year, like you're a way worse team without him.

We just had the argument. Like you could argue he is the most valuable player, most important player on the team. And certainly if he's not number one, he is number two behind Jalen Wilson. Just kind of crazy to think when you add him to the list of KU point guards who were committed to a small school, Frank Mason to Towson, Devontae Graham to Appalachian State, and how they wound up at Kansas. In the case of Mason, he won National Player of the Year.

In the case of Devontae Graham, he was the first team All-American. And in the case of DeJuan Harris, I don't know if he's going to get those lofty awards because the points and some of the stats don't feed as much into that as those guys do. But certainly he is going to go down as a very valuable all-time KU player who has won a national championship and is searching for another. And at the very least, he's Aaron Miles with a national championship, which Aaron Miles with the national championship, which Aaron Miles is a player who's been debated. Should he have his jersey retired or not? You had a national championship to that?

Maybe he would be. Just saying. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. If you have anything you want for the show to talk about, hit us up. You can hit us up in the comment section at YouTube or at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. And don't forget to subscribe to the show so you can get all the latest with locked on Jayhawks, wherever your podcasts or on YouTube.

That'll do it for today's episode. Have a good rest of your day. I mean, on Rockshot Sports Talk later today. Adios.