Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Frontcourt of Hunter Dickinson + KJ Adams Leads to Win Over Bahamas

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Kansas wins their second exhibition game in Puerto Rico. We're breaking down what happened, who stood out in the game for the Jayhawks, and also some interesting comments from Bill Self on Johnny Furphy and his future role with the team after he reclassified from 2024. All that and more on today's 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. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.

Starting point is 00:00:41 on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawawks, your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can find us on our YouTube page, too. If you have any questions or comments, hit me up at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. We're going to be talking KU winning their second exhibition game in Puerto Rico, this time over the Bahamian national team on today's show. First, though, before we get into more of the show these days, every new potential hire

Starting point is 00:01:08 can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business. That's why LinkedIn jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free. Post your job for free at LinkedIn dot com slash locked on college terms and conditions apply. OK, so we'll have an episode coming out, I think, later on Monday, too, detailing the third game of the series. But this was KU's second exhibition game,

Starting point is 00:01:32 and it was their first against the Bahamian national team. They're going to be playing again on Monday. Kansas won 92-87, and honestly, the score could have been even more in favor of Kansas. It was a game that they were kind of in control of. At halftime, they were up a little bit with Buddy Heald playing. Buddy Heald comes out of the game in the second half. They kind of pull to a comfortable margin toward the third quarter,

Starting point is 00:01:54 beginning of the fourth. And then the Bahamian national team kind of got hot in the fourth quarter and tightened things up, made it a close game down the finish. Nonetheless, important, or I guess nice victory for KU in how they looked against a team of professionals. Even though it wasn't the full, you know, the Bahamas, I think the starting center was like 6'7", because DeAndre Ayton didn't play.

Starting point is 00:02:15 Ty Jones didn't play. Eric Gordon didn't play. Thompson brothers didn't play. But you still had guys who were professionals. Like you'd hear, oh, this guy averaged 12 points per game in the French League, right? That still is difficult and hard to do that. It still makes it impressive what they did. Now that said, Monday's game sounds like Aiton is a maybe. Kai Jones sounds like he's a go.

Starting point is 00:02:35 Eric Gordon sounds like he's a go. So it'll be much more difficult on Monday, but maybe he'll play the whole game as opposed to just one half. KU came into the game. They started DeJuan Harris, Kevin McCuller, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson. Those four were the same. The one difference was the two guard. You started Nick Timberlake in game one. You started Artario Morris in game two. Now, remember about the Thursday game.

Starting point is 00:02:59 Do not read into this with the starters. You know, Bill Self mentioned before this happened that to Brian Haney, the voice of the Jayhawks, that he was planning on rotating through that spot. So kind of to that estimation, I'm kind of guessing El Marco Jackson is going to start the third game and it becomes even more apparent. Arterio Morris got a bone bruise. He's not even going to play in the third game. So it'd have to be a different starter anyway. I'm just assuming he wants to get a different look from all those guys. I think it is a very tight competition for who's going to be the starting two between Arterio, El Marco, and Nick Timberlake.

Starting point is 00:03:36 And so he's just trying to get a different look from everyone. So I don't read into much about, oh, well, Arterio scored 20 points in the first game. He earned the starting spot in game two. I think the plan all along was to start Timberlake game one, Arterio game two, and we'll see if it's El Marco game three. But yeah, I'm not reading too much into that, to be completely honest. Now, you can just tell in this game, the athletic difference from KU playing this game

Starting point is 00:03:57 versus their game on Thursday was so stark. In the game on Thursday, they were just out-athleting the opposition. They were getting wide-open threes. It was easier to slide past guys. They were getting all sorts of steals, and you could just see the athletic difference. In this game, you could see it was a bunch of adults, professionals, and more athletic players while they were on a national team, and everything was a little bit tougher. It was a little tougher to gain separation off the bounce or off the ball, a little bit tougher to defend, right? You could just see some of those athletic differences that the margins were a little

Starting point is 00:04:29 bit smaller in a game like this. But nonetheless, that's a nice win for KU again against that team of professionals. The shooting was not great. Four of 17 from three, just 14 of 27 from the free throw line. That's the number that honestly would scare me more because the free throw stuff to me can be a little bit more sticky maybe than the three point shooting. But then again, you shot so well in game one.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Now I did say this after game one, how many of those shots did they make? Cause I think they shot 42% from three in game one and 15 of 17 at the foul line. How many of those shots were just wide open in that game? Because you out athlete or the opposition that ball handlers were able to easily get into the paint and it opened up people on the outside and that this game was going to be more of a true test about how you did with with maybe a little bit tighter contested even the open shots were still maybe slightly contested in this game as

Starting point is 00:05:18 opposed to last game how would you do in that you didn't do as well but you total it up between the two games you're shooting like 35 from from three, which will get it done. It still is such a small sample that I don't really read much into the shooting in either direction. I didn't really read much into them shooting really well Thursday. I'm not going to read too much into them shooting poorly in this game. You did shoot extremely well from two. That is something that maybe is a little bit more translatable in a shorter sample size.

Starting point is 00:05:46 Probably there still are going to be games where if you're a good two-point shooting team, you're going to have a bad two-point shooting game. Or if you're an average two-point shooting team, you're going to shoot great from two. There just are some of those games. It's scheme dependent. It's dependent who's having a good game. But going 33 of 47, that is 70%. KU shot 70% from two in this game against a team of professionals.

Starting point is 00:06:04 Again, no DeAndre Ayton, Kai Jones, some of these guys that will make it more interesting Monday. That's still really impressive. What KU was able to put together, a big part of that was Hunter Dickinson, obviously, KJ Adams inside. The other thing was turnovers, 22 of them. You might look at that and go, ah, 22 turnovers, man, that's a really scary number, especially for a team that's supposed to have a lot of ball handlers, which they do with Harris, Morris, Jackson, McCuller can ball handle a little bit. KJ and Dickinson are good passers, especially for their position. That's not a concerning number at all. That's one of those numbers, turnovers, where that's just going to rear its ugly head early in a season. And this isn't even the season. This is two, three months before the season.

Starting point is 00:06:42 Obviously, you're going to have certain turnover issues as you're working the kinks out leaning into a season. So that's something I have zero concern about, even though it is a number that kind of jumps off the page. And I don't know, it might be a little bit long, alarming in that regard. All right, we're going to get on to what individual players really stood out in this game for me for Kansas. And I want to finish up because there have been some interesting comments about Johnny Furphy from Bill Self over the last couple of days, KU's newest commit. We'll get to that in a moment. First though, this episode of the show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business. You want to be a hundred percent certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available.

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Starting point is 00:08:33 Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash locked on college. That's linkedin.com slash locked on college. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. All right. On to players that really stood out for me in this game for KU. Buddy Heald. That guy might have a future in professional basketball. Ooh, is that guy pretty good. 18 points in the first half. In all honesty, it was kind of cool to see KU get to go up against Buddy Heald. It was cool to see Kevin McCuller match up with him. And you can just see, because think about this.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Buddy Heald was the National Player of the Year in college basketball in 2016. So it would have been the, I guess actually, yeah, yeah. It was the 2015, 2016 season, right? So that means he has been in the pros for seven, it'll be eight years, I guess, technically later this year. He was the best player in college basketball seven or eight years ago. And now he has honed his craft for another seven or eight years against professionals in the NBA. If he came back to school, which basically in this regard, you're playing against college kids. You were already the best player before. I mean, like it's just leaps and bounds how much better you are then.

Starting point is 00:09:36 And you got to see that like there were times when he almost treated it like an all-star game. He was just like kind of launching up shots. But like there was the one play where Kevin McCuller actually defended him, I thought very well. And he just kind of spin through, spins through the lane and he hits this like, I don't know, step back, contested mid-range jump shot. And it was just like, yeah,

Starting point is 00:09:55 that's kind of the difference there when you have some of the NBA. Like in college, it's like a big deal if you can consistently, or if you hit like a few contested, really tough shots, where it's like in the NBA, that's why these guys are professionals they consistently hit contested tough shots but I thought Kevin McCuller did pretty good on him overall and that's where I want to start with KU players that really impressed me because I thought he did play pretty good defense on Heald sure

Starting point is 00:10:17 there were a few times where yeah Heald made a good shot or where Heald maybe shook him off the ball again that's a guy who's been in the NBA for seven years at this point. Kevin McCullough a lot of time did stick with him, and some of those times, buddy, Heald just made a good shot. That's what you're looking for. Can you just consistently stick with the process of playing good defense? Because over the long haul, a good NBA shooter is going to make a fair amount of contested shots, but the more that are contested,

Starting point is 00:10:42 the more that number, that percentage, that efficiency is going to go down. I think that was good for Kevin. I think that was good for his confidence. I think that was good for his NBA status and everything like that. I don't know how many NBA scouts were watching Buddy Healdwin on the broadcast during the second half and said he was talking a lot of bleep to him, which is kind of funny. My co-host and producer with Rock Chalk Sports Talk, Nick Springer, was telling me that Kevin was talking so much trash to like the Arkansas fans during the second round of the NCAA tournament when he was down there. So I think that's just Kevin, which is funny because Kevin is this like super well-mannered, super nice kid. When you meet with him in the media, I guess he's just one of those guys. Like I, you always heard this about

Starting point is 00:11:21 like Troy Polamalu, the former Pittsburgh Steelersers all pro safety that he was like this gentle giant off the field but once he got on the field he was just a monster and that's kind of with Kevin McCuller that you like to see that ability to have that on off switch and know when to go or when not to go too far but overall I thought besides the defense uh that first quarter of play for Kevin was phenomenal he hit a three from the right wing looked like a very pure stroke nothing but net he scored two and ones in the first quarter he finished the game with 13 points five assists four rebounds um you could see his intensity level was up when Buddy Heald was in second half I don't know if the intensity level was as high without Buddy Heald that's still a good stat line especially when especially when you add the defense and how much energy you're having to

Starting point is 00:12:07 put into the defensive side of the ball. So I really liked what we saw from Kevin McCuller, and that's the funny part of it. I liked what we saw, and he still put up 18 points in the first half. And maybe it could have even been more. Hunter Dickinson, obviously, how could you not go without Hunter Dickinson? He was a bit up and down in the first game. It ended up being a good game. He had 13 points. It was a fine game. But for his standards, where you're expecting, what, 18 points,

Starting point is 00:12:31 nine rebounds a game or something, you're like, that's not quite there. Bill Self said that he was a little nervous in the first game, which Bill Self said was good because that means that he cares so much, and that is obviously a positive thing. This game, though, he was amazing. This is the guy that, you know, we've kind of been hyping up as, yeah, he's going to be a national player of the year candidate. He's going to be an all American candidate. He goes 11 for 13 in the game, starting with the first bucket of the game. Kansas was running some sets. They get him the,

Starting point is 00:12:59 the kind of opening on the pin down and get the angle inside. We know Bill Self is so good at creating angles for their big men, especially if they can seal off. Hunter Dickinson showed he can do just that, but you saw the wide arsenal of the game, him hitting a 12-footer, him hitting a hook shot, him hitting different things around the post that make him so successful and will make him lethal in this offense. He finished 11 of 13, including making a three-pointer on a pick-and-pop play,

Starting point is 00:13:23 had 28 points for the game, six rebounds. He also had four assists, so good passing still, and three steals to go with it. He is a very cerebral player out there too in addition to all the feel and touch that he has on the offensive end. He's just going to be an amazing player for this team. We all want to see the matchup with Hunter Dickinson versus DeAndre Ayton. Maybe we'll see that on Monday. At the very least, if you get to see it against Kai Jones,

Starting point is 00:13:47 that's another NBA guy who I think he was a first round pick. I can't remember if he was early second or first for the Hornets coming out of Texas. But either way, you want to see some of that pumped up talent that will make it even more meaningful if he puts up a stat line even near what he did in this game. KJ Adams impressed again. He had a really impressive first game. He had a really impressive second game. Just continues to pair well with Hunter Dickinson, right? That was the biggest storyline to me coming into this week. How would the two of them mesh together? So far, so good. Big check marks. And it's one thing to do in the first game when you're just bigger than them. You're athletically, you know, have a big jump

Starting point is 00:14:23 on them. It was another to do it in this game. so that was nice to see KJ was uh seven of nine from the floor he had 17 points how about six assists I mean the two of those guys make this for a pretty perfect high low situation from what KU wants because you have two really good passers that are going to be able to bounce it back and forth with each other also had three rebounds and maybe most importantly of all he hit a corner three for a second straight game. He's two for three from three in these games. If you get him at shooting one three a game over the course of the season, but he can even shoot, you know, 35%, I think you take that if you're KU and that's going to be enough maybe to keep defenses honest enough. You do want more rebounds from both

Starting point is 00:15:03 KJ Adams and Hunter Dickinson, something that Bill Self said in the postgame, right? You're going to want more than nine from those two guys, but everything else, the scoring, you got 45 points from your two starters in the front line on a combined 18 of 22 from two point range and 10 assists. That's just incredible production from that front line. So again, if you can just bounce the rebounds up, then it's pretty perfect. I also would add flashes of El Marco Jackson. Bilsa said postgame that both El Marco and Arterio were kind of inconsistent, especially on the defensive end,

Starting point is 00:15:35 that there's flashes that you see it there, but it's just not the consistency and maybe too many mistakes overall. But you see some of the flashes of El Marco Jackson. And I don't know if the stats are going to be great over the course of the year, every game, like he could end up averaging six, seven points per game where it doesn't jump off the page. He might, you know, hit a two where, you know, it just looks like two points. He also had five fouls, like in this game, he had 13 points on the first game, 12 points in this game on six of 10.

Starting point is 00:16:02 So that does kind of jump off, but there are just things that he does that even, you know, he makes look easy. Like there was one play in the second game where he caught a I forget if it was Kevin McCuller, Hunter Dickinson threw it down court. He made a really tough grab on the full court play to grab it and kind of go up with it all in one motion. It's a harder play than you think. You might remember it was KU at West Virginia. I want to say it was Perry Ellis' sophomore, no, it would have been his junior season, I think, either junior or senior year. And they lost on a play

Starting point is 00:16:35 where Perry Ellis got open behind the defense where Kansas was down like a point at the end of the game. Perry Ellis caught it and tried to go up with it and missed the layup. And then the buzzer runs out because he shot it too strong because it's hard to catch it as you're right under the hoop, running full speed, slow your momentum, and then lay it still in. Marco did that perfectly. It's those little plays that you don't totally always notice that he just makes look easy until you don't realize how difficult they can be.

Starting point is 00:16:59 But it's also the hard plays too. I mean, well, I guess not hard plays, just athletic things that other people can't do. You saw the like cockback two-handed dunk that he threw down, just the speed, the athleticism, the quickness. It's not always going to be perfect. He's a true freshman. There are things that he's trying to work on in his game, but you can see those flashes even this early on.

Starting point is 00:17:18 And I'm really excited to see what he develops into by the time we get to January, February, March of the season. I don't want to finish up with some interesting comments by Bill Self on Johnny Furphy, the newest player joining the roster for KU basketball after they get back from Puerto Rico. First though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks, we'll take a quick timeout. All right. So Bill Self made some interesting comments on Johnny Furphy,

Starting point is 00:17:41 both in the post game or pregame talking to Christian Brown and some mentions that he, you know, relayed over to the pregame and also in a story from Gary Bedore for the Kansas city star, who's down there covering the team and has been getting, you know, a lot of great information. So he talked to Christian Brown and Christian Brown actually said, you know, from watching what he saw, he thinks he's a better athlete than him. Now, Furphy maybe has like an inch, inch and a half on Christian Brown. And this is something Bill Self mentioned, that Christian Brown is one of the most confident people you will meet. So for him to say that speaks volumes because he won't, you know, say you're better than me at anything.

Starting point is 00:18:19 But he said he's a better athlete. Bill Self said he maybe is a better shooter right away. It doesn't mean he'll be as good of a shooter as Christian Brown was to finish, but right away coming in as a freshman, which Christian Brown shot like 40 something percent from three. Now it was more of just a set shooter, open shooter. Maybe he has more versatility for his three point game, but I don't expect him to shoot that high of percentage. He did say, you know, you have to question, is he as tough as him? Not to say that Furphy isn't tough, but Christian Brown is, you know, as tough as they come. Right. But if he's a better athlete and he's a better shooter than Christian Brown was to start his career, again, this is not saying he's a better athlete and a

Starting point is 00:18:52 better shooter than Christian Brown right now. This is saying when Christian Brown came in as a true freshman back in the 2020 to 21 season, Christian Brown is a true freshman, started five games and played 18 and a half minutes per game, over 30 games played for a Jayhawk team that was the best team in the country. So if Johnny Furphy is has some attributes that are better than that, there's a lot more to basketball than just athleticism and shooting the basketball. But those are two very important things that that, you know, turns out if you're athletic, and you shoot the basketball, well, you tend to be pretty good at basketball. So maybe that is a pretty high floor on what Johnny Furphy can provide in his level of play and hitting the rotation now we also talked to Gary Bedore from the Kansas City Star and mentioned him that he's he's definitely

Starting point is 00:19:32 a rotation player and that becomes an interesting conversation because it's like where does he become a rotation player as we mentioned before DeJuan Harris, Artario Morris, Elmarco Jackson, Nick Timberlake, Kevin McCuller, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson. You're probably getting tired of me listing these players episode after episode, but that's seven guys in your rotation. Pilsoft sometimes only uses a seven-man rotation once we get to March, but maybe it's eight. Well, it doesn't seem like Parker Brown's the eighth.

Starting point is 00:19:58 He's your backup big man. You've heard really good reviews so far about him from practices. Now, he hasn't necessarily jumped out either game. I thought he made some really good hustle plays in the first game. So maybe there is an opening there. Maybe there is an opening that KJ Adams plays the backup five minutes and Johnny Furphy becomes your eighth man and he can get 10 to 15 minutes a game. If he's that good, it's going to be hard to keep him off the court.

Starting point is 00:20:18 Or does that mean that Bill Self is envisioning playing a nine-man rotation? Does it mean Parker Brown's out of the rotation? Or is that just a comment you would generally say about a new player that you just recruited because you don't want to just have a new player who just signed with you and joined the team and be like, yeah, but he's never going to play, right? That's just so demoralizing for the player. And then day one of practice, you're kind of showing up a little laggy because you're like, eh, you know, what do I have to play for? I'm not even going to play. My coach doesn't think I can play, right? So is that just a, I don't know, a motivational type of thing, right? Or does in Bill South's

Starting point is 00:20:49 mind, if you're even playing spot minutes where you might only play once every other game or once every three games, but in that game, you're going to come in for five to 10 minutes. Is that part of the rotation in his eyes? I don't know what the answer to that is, but certainly some of those comments make me think that Johnny Furphy will be a part of that rotation. And this certainly increases the likelihood Jamari McDowell will not be a part of the rotation and maybe even red shirts along with Zach Clements. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can hit me up with any questions you got at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. You can find us wherever you get any of your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:21:21 You can also like and subscribe to the show on our YouTube page. Have a good rest of your day. We're going to have game three takeaways later this week. Nick Schwert will join us later this week. We got more KU football positional previews later this week too. See you next time.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Frontcourt of Hunter Dickinson + KJ Adams Leads to Win Over Bahamas

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