Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Lands Zeke Mayo, South Dakota State Transfer Guard, from the Portal

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Spring Bill is back. KU already has two Transfer Portal editions. Zeke Mayo, hometown kid, is coming back. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can give me a follow on Twitter at D Johnson radio, and you can check out our show here with locked on Jay Hawks, anywhere you get your podcasts,

Starting point is 00:00:34 including on our YouTube page where you can like, and subscribe to the show. Thank you to making this your first listen every day. And thank you to the everydayers out there tuning into each and every episode. We've had plenty of content talking about Riley Kug kugel ku's first edition in the transfer portal well bunch of news coming out on your tuesday we will have a bonus episode talking about kj adams deciding to come back for his senior season but on this episode we're talking zeke mayo baby former

Starting point is 00:00:58 lawrence high chesty line coming back home to play for the jayhawks after winning the summit league player of the year we're going to get into what he brings to the table, fit at KU, the effect on all this with the offseason and kind of overall offseason rehashed at this point in time for KU on today's episode of the show. Let's start right there with who is Zeke Mayo. So if you've been living under a rock right now, Zeke Mayo is a three-year player from South Dakota State with the Jackrabbits. He originally went to Lawrence High School where he was an excellent high school basketball player. He's a six-foot-four combo guard. So, you know, for South Dakota State was playing a lot of point guard, but, you know, he has a lot of off-ball skills as well. In fact, like his first year at South Dakota State, he was

Starting point is 00:01:38 actually playing with Baylor Shireman, who is the, you know, Baylor Shireman had an outstanding season at South Dakota State two years ago when Zeke May was a freshman. He won Summit League Player of the Year, transferred up to Creighton, eventually Baylor Shireman. He was really good last year too, but this year he ended up being like a third team All-American. So that shows you that the transfer up from South Dakota State for like a shooting guard who can handle it a little bit and be a secondary creator for an offense next to DeJuan Harris can work. And that's kind of the case there. So anyway, year one, he ended up winning freshman of the year in the conference, shot 47% from the field, 42, 93 at the final, and that team went to the NCAA tournament. And I think got like a 13 seed.

Starting point is 00:02:16 There's actually another world out there where South Dakota State wins that game. And then they're playing a 12 seed Richmond in the second round. And then they play, if they win that game, Kansas, the team who went on to win the national title in the sweet 16. But anyway, so they go there. Then year two, Baylor Shireman leaves. He has to do more for the team the next year.

Starting point is 00:02:32 And he gets up to over 18 points per game on 37% from three. And then this next year he did even more. Again, the point per game is pretty similar, but almost 19 points per game, five and a half rebounds, 5.7 to be exact, three and a half assists per game over a steal per game, 47% from the field, 39% from three.

Starting point is 00:02:50 And this is on high volume. He took 6.7 three-point attempts per game and 83% at the foul line, which is actually well below his career average of 87%. So he would certainly help KU in the free throw shooting as well. So in his three years at South Dakota State combined, Zeke Mayo shot 38.8% from three on 595 tries. That is more than Kansas took this season as a team. He did that individually, obviously over three seasons,

Starting point is 00:03:19 but still, the point being, this guy immediately comes in. He is your best three-point shooter. I feel confident saying that. I know the Nick Timberlake thing. That was the idea of what you brought in. I feel better about it with Zeke Mayo. Here's your analytics deep dive and part of the reason why. He was in the 90th percentile overall offensively in the half court.

Starting point is 00:03:36 And again, these are against Summit League opponents, so that's going to be a little bit easier. But he was really good in the half court, and that's something Kansas struggled in. They were not great once they got in the half court. And that included Zeke Mayo being in the 74th percentile per synergy in the last four seconds of the shot clock so he was good when the shot clock was winding down Kansas needs more of that he was in the 91st percentile against man-to-man defense Kansas needs guys who can just win one-on-one he was in the 90th percentile and pick and roll okay well DeJuan will run a lot of pick and roll but they'll run pick and roll-one. He was in the 90th percentile in pick and roll. Okay, well, DeJuan will run a lot of pick and roll,

Starting point is 00:04:06 but they'll run pick and roll with him too. He was in the 94th percentile in spot-up shooting. Well, if he's playing more off-guard this year, that works out because he shot 44% on spot-up threes. So he's playing more off-ball this year. Great. It's going to work well with DeJuan Harris. He was 73rd percentile in isolation.

Starting point is 00:04:22 Get his own bucket again. 61st percentile in handoffs. We see KU run those, so still above average there. 87th percentile in overall jump shots, just all of them together. 93rd percentile in catch and shoot, which featured 46% from three on guarded catch and shoot threes and 40% on unguarded catch and shoot threes. I mean, that's really good, right? And he was also 87th percentile in dribble jumpers.

Starting point is 00:04:50 So he's making jumpers off the dribble. Who was doing that last year for Kansas? An 80th percentile in runners. Really good floater game. Really good game around the counter when teams over-pursue him from the three-point line. You're going to see that from him. He did struggle as a transition scorer. He's not the

Starting point is 00:05:05 greatest athlete in the world. Otherwise, he probably would have been recruited out of high school to a higher level. But at 6'4", this year you're going to play as more of an off guard for KU as less of the one. I think that'll be a little bit less of a problem for Kansas. As far as where he shot well by zone, he was 68% at the rim. that was good for 85th percentile so he made shots at the rim 45 in the paint that was in the 77th percentile so still good there 38 on mid-range twos that was about above average nationally so you know if that's your weak point for shooting zone that's still above average nationally he was 36 on above the break threes 71st percentile that was a big thing for Nick Timberlake good corner three-point shooter he struggled on the above the break

Starting point is 00:05:48 threes Mayo 71st percentile nationally and this is crazy Zeke Mayo this past season shot 56 percent on corner threes 56 percent on corner threes that'll play for KU now you might be wondering what about the defense well he was only in the 45th percentile on synergy defensively. So that's like basically around average, right? That's slightly below average. Then you add in the level of competition with Summit League and you say, okay, probably below average defensively. Here's the thing. Nick Timberlake gave you whatever it was at the end of the season, 20, 25 minutes a game. Nick Timberlake came in his year at Towson, his final year at Towson. He was in the fourth percentile defensively, and they got away with playing him. Now, was he a good defender at Kansas?

Starting point is 00:06:29 No, he wasn't. But point being, if Zeke Mayo can just be a below average defender, if he can just be an average defender, that's still an upgrade from what you were getting coming in from Nick Timberlake. And you have more ball creation. You have more isolation scoring. You have more three-point shooting than you ever got with Nick Timberlake there. And this is a great addition and fit for KU.

Starting point is 00:06:47 Now, how did he do against good teams? There's some mixed results. I think last year he had like an 11, 12-point game against Alabama. This year he had an 11-point game against Kansas State, which was a really good defensive Kansas State game. He went 5 of 13, not super efficient there. He also had in the UCF game, he was fine, 12 points, three of seven. So like not bad efficiency, two of five from three. We saw UCF shut down Kansas. So that actually

Starting point is 00:07:10 probably would have been one of KU's best performers against him. It's harder though, when you're the number one guy. Now, when he goes to Kansas, like, and we'll see what else they add and everything, but he's going to be the number two, number three option, number four option when he's on the court. So it's going to be even harder for these teams to guard him since he's so good from three, but he was excellent in the NCAA tournament game. 19 points on four of six from three against Iowa State. Kansas struggled to do that against Iowa State. For his career, this will make you feel better against Ken Palm top 50 teams. Those that represents 11 games that he played over the course of his career there. He shot 37.7% from three. You would absolutely take that for Kansas career there. He shot 37.7% from three.

Starting point is 00:07:48 You would absolutely take that for Kansas this year. And here's an excerpt from the athletic Sam Vecini, who does draft coverage and some college basketball coverage for them. Him and CJ Moore combine on the transfer portal rankings. It's really good stuff. I think he was ranked at last check 12th on their available transfer options overall among all positions. And here's a little excerpt. You can read the full excerpt. Highly recommend getting a subscription to The Athletic. So I'm not going to steal that full work. But anyway, Mayo was a real pull-up threat across the court. His 35% mark on 144 three-point attempts doesn't seem wild, but he got there on insanely difficult attempts that by and large, he had to create for himself. Only 10 players in college basketball took more pull-up three-point attempts per game than Zeke Mayo. And he finished eighth among the 25 highest volume pull-up three-point shooters in percentage.

Starting point is 00:08:30 Because he's constantly probing and a threat to get a shot off from any spots, defenders have to stay attached to him, which makes him an effective driver. He was an awesome finisher in the Summit League, making 61.4% of his half-court shots at the rim and has a nice floater. So this is obviously a guy that comes in and he's going to help your spacing he's going to help your shooting he's going to help your isolation scoring he helps in so many other ways he gives you another ball handler with dewan harris out there and i'll just say this like my i i have some personal experience um covering the kid i don't really know the kid personally or anything, but I used to broadcast Lawrence High School basketball games and saw him a lot, and he was awesome.

Starting point is 00:09:08 I was always surprised why he didn't have bigger offers, to be honest, coming out of high school. And one of the coolest things that I could say, a lot of times you see at the high school level, especially at the high school level, if you have one kid who is clearly the best player on the team, and that was kind of the case for Lawrence. They had other good players.

Starting point is 00:09:23 I don't want to take away from that. But he was clearly the best player on the team, as you can kind of the case for Lawrence. Like they had other good players. I don't want to take away from that, but like he was clearly the best player on the team, as you can see what he's done in college. It's not a knock on the other kids. It's just that, you know, he was that good. And you can see sometimes those kids can get a little selfish or they can be like, it's me versus the team and I'm going to do everything. That was never Zeke Mayo. He was always lifting up his teammates, you know, early in games. A lot of times he tried to get them involved as best he could. And always was a good leader it seemed like from everything i saw from like the outside that he was somebody who was was like i don't know the teammates appreciated him and like

Starting point is 00:09:54 he was very much like a leader in a real way and the final game i got to see of him was a loss but it was it was one of the most wild high school basketball player experiences I've seen because Lawrence High was down like, it was like 15 points, 17 points, something like that, to Blue Valley North in the state tournament quarterfinal game. And Zeke Mayo ended up in the fourth quarter of that game going 10 of 11, including making his last nine field goals. He made four straight threes at one point and it was 5-5 at the free throw. He scored 29 points in the fourth quarter alone. Now Lawrence High still lost the game by eight because they couldn't stop Blue Valley North who had a good team and everything that year. But anyway, I just, I love the kid. I love the fit. And I think this is going to be outstanding for KU. Let's talk more about how he fits into KU and what it means for kind of the rest of the team

Starting point is 00:10:41 and the rest of the off season on this episode of locked on Jayhawks. Fire TV is your destination for sports from live games to highlights to in-depth analysis. Fire TV offers amazing viewing experiences with smart TVs, as well as the fire TV stick that you can plug into your existing TV that provides you with access to millions of movies and TV episodes, as well as free and live TV. Whether it's opening weekend for baseball or the continuing on college basketball tournament,

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Starting point is 00:11:47 a KJ Adams coming back senior episode as well. So we'll get to kind of all that here with locked on Jayhawks. Thanks you for making this your first listen every day. And thank you to the everydayers out there doing everything. I think Devin Neal, he was a Zeke Mayo was on like an unofficial visit today for KU. I think Devin Neal was the one showing him around, which they went to high school together.

Starting point is 00:12:06 Like I think they're friends and everything like that. So Zeke, I guess Devin Neal, like, you know, contributing in more ways than being awesome at football. You know, Devin Neal just continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for KU. Build that dude a statue. Seriously, I'm being dead serious. He's especially after he leads KU in career rushing yards.

Starting point is 00:12:24 Anyway, story for another day. So how would Zeke Mayo fit in with KU and what's the effect on kind of the rest of the team and the off season and all that sort of stuff? Well, let's talk about how he'd fit next to DeJuan Harris. First of all, I think it's kind of perfect. Zeke Mayo was a good enough passer, but he is at his best as being a scoring guard. And I think that's going to be the idea for KU. And that to me makes him perfect to play next to DeJuan Harris, because with DeJuan, you have a guy who is a really good passer and is a really good defender. I think this past year, you know,

Starting point is 00:12:54 I think he was a better defender two years ago than he was this past year. And I think part of the reason why was he had to handle the ball so much. There wasn't the other guard who, you know, you didn't get the other consistent ball handling play. Zeke Mayo will help with that. So now DeJuan will have maybe more energy to get back to being like elite level defender. And because DeJuan is not as much of a scorer, you know, with Zeke Mayo, it is kind of the perfect compliment there. And yeah, Zeke Mayo, yeah, maybe he's not, you know, the greatest defender in the world. But again, if he can just be kind of average there, then you have an elite

Starting point is 00:13:25 defender and one Harris, like that is kind of the perfect combo of one guy and the other with, with kind of playing the two and it allows them to kind of play off each other in a lot of ways, you know, and we'll see what the role ends up being like, I don't know, like on paper right now, I'd probably be projecting Zeke Mayo to be a starter. Now, I said that about Riley Kugel, too. I mean, it's kind of dependent right now. Like plans change based on, OK, what's Johnny Furphy going to do, right? Because Johnny Furphy goes to the NBA, which is kind of which way I'm leaning right now. But I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to come back.

Starting point is 00:13:58 Then that kind of changes things in how you're looking out. So maybe like right now, if I was asked for the starting lineup, well, I'd be like, OK, I'll probably go with like DeJuan Harris at the one, Zeke Mayo at the two, Riley Kugel at the three, KJ at the four, and then Hunter Dickinson at the five, I guess if he comes back, I don't know. Again, it's hard to say because you don't know who's coming back,

Starting point is 00:14:14 but Johnny Furphy comes back. What if Hunter Dickinson goes? Then you play Furphy at the four, KJ at the five, right? What if Hunter Dickinson and Furphy come back too? Then like all of a sudden, okay, maybe in that situation, Zeke Mayo is coming off the bench. And then maybe Zeke Mayo is your sixth man where he's the backup point guard and he's the backup two man to where he's playing kind of the Remy Martin role where he is getting

Starting point is 00:14:34 25 minutes a game. He's playing starter level minutes. And in a lot of games, he's closing the game, but he's coming off the bench to start the game. And he's playing either next to DeJuan or behind DeJuan or a little bit of both, or or he could be a starter the full time i think there's a lot of different things you can do with him and because he can play the point guard or the shooting guard it gives you a lot of options because riley kugel can play the shooting guard or the three it gives you a lot of options with what you want to do here and in terms of this fit but as we've talked about like the biggest things

Starting point is 00:15:00 that ku is looking to check boxes on in this offseason, athleticism, defense, scoring slash shot creation slash three point shooting. I would probably add extra ball handling into that. Well, the Riley Kugel one probably added a lot to the athleticism and the shot creation. This one adds a lot more to the shot creation and the scoring and the three point shooting and the overall shooting and the ball handling, right? So this is a huge get and a huge checkmark to a lot of the needs that Kansas had coming into the offseason. So whatever they end up doing, again, it's a bit of a foggy picture right now to say that he'll play this many minutes or he'll play in this role. And obviously everything does have to be earned. Like, you know, I could say right now, well, I expect him to be a starter, but then if not just what the Johnny Furphy decision is going to be,

Starting point is 00:15:55 what's the Hunter Dickinson decision going to be, but it's also like then, okay, well last off season, I might've thought Nick Timberlake was going to do this or that. And then we got to the, you know, practices. And that didn't turn out to be the way that things were going to go, right? So, like, things do change. On paper, it's different than what actually ends up happening. But on paper, I absolutely love this fit for KU, like everything I said.

Starting point is 00:16:15 All right, how does this affect, though, the rest of the roster and the offseason decisions that KU is going to be making on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks? The sports calendar is loaded, and FanDuel is making it even more exciting to get in on the action because right now new customers get $200 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet. That's $200 you can use to bet the tournament, MLB, NBA, NHL, and so much more. As soon as the NCAA championship ends, they're probably going to put up futures for 2025.

Starting point is 00:16:45 Maybe you're buzzing high with the additions of Riley Kugel and Zeke Mayo and KJ Adams announcing he's coming back for his senior year. And you're like, you know what? I'm in on Kansas. Fire away. We'll be on the lookout for that after next Monday. You can do that and many more. Get as custom as you want.

Starting point is 00:16:58 Just be responsible with it. Visit Fanduel.com slash Locked On and make your first bet a big win. Fanduel, America's number one sportsbook and official sportsbook partner of the Locked On Network. Okay, so how does this affect the rest of the offseason for KU? Well, from a scholarship perspective, they are technically full up right now. I think I messed that up on the episode with Riley Kugel. I think I said they had two open at the time. I was completely forgetting one of the scholarship players.

Starting point is 00:17:28 So they now are technically full up on scholarships, but that's if everybody decides to come back. So, you know, between a Marco Jackson and Jamari McDowell and Johnny Furphy and Hunter Dickinson, whoever else, Zach Clemens, he could train, right? Everybody's got to make, got a decision to make. If any of those leave, you open up scholarships or a scholarship, right? I think the expectation, like,

Starting point is 00:17:53 do you really expect all of those players to be back? Like maybe you pick and choose which ones you want to sign. You think you're going to be back or not. Maybe you just view it as like, okay, three of the five will be back. I don't know which three, but three of the five will be back. Four of the five will be back or two of the five will be back, or two of the five, whatever the number ends up being. They'll have more open scholarships. It will just work out that way. Now, maybe this makes it more likely for a guy like Elmarco Jackson or Jamari McDowell to leave, to say that, hey, now I have, okay, DeJuan Harris is going to be getting the point

Starting point is 00:18:18 card minutes. You're going to be giving a lot of two and three minutes to Zeke Mayo slash Riley Kugel. And you also have LeBaron Filon coming in. You know, Rakeesh Passmore could play some three, depending on how he kind of hits the ground running. I still do believe, though, that like in the Bill Self system, there is a lot of room for there to be like three combo guards that play a majority of the two spots. Now, Riley Kugel could eat into some of those minutes at the two, or Kugel could just play the three again part of that's dependent on what happens with you know Johnny Furphy and Liam McNeely and how many wings are you gonna have and how much are you gonna play KJ at the four versus you know being the five there are a lot

Starting point is 00:18:54 of those questions that remain to be seen but uh does this make it more likely that one of those two guys would say okay there's less minutes for me now I'm gonna transfer away I think that would be where the biggest impact could possibly come from this. But you know, if you're Bill Self and you're Kansas, like it'd be great if everybody came back and you built a team that was, you know, had all sorts of competitiveness up and down the roster and fighting for spots and everything was, was earned with, you know, just battles of these great players and who had to earn those minutes like that. That's kind of the ideal world. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to get to that now in today's day and age with the transfer portal, but it could

Starting point is 00:19:28 have one of those type of effects on KU. Moving forward on what they're going to be looking at in the offseason now, though, I mean, it's easy to say right now, I don't think they'd be looking to bring on like another combo guard or another guard at this point, because now you have DeJuan Harris, Zeke Mayo, Marco Jackson, LeBaron Phylonylon and riley coogle can even play the two right so like at that point you're like yeah we don't need another combo guard but what happens if el marco jackson transfers away and i even forgot jamari mcdowell who can play the two there right so what happens if yeah he transfers away then you try to add someone else or do you still feel confident that there's still a lot of other names on that list i think you're mostly looking at now in the trade for portal wings.

Starting point is 00:20:07 Wings is the one position where I keep going back to. And I'm like, okay, but if Murphy comes back and Liam McNeely decides to commit to KU, then maybe you're full up there. And maybe the off season is just done early for Kansas. And we don't have to stretch into the late summer months, kind of figuring out what's going to happen. And then if Hunter Dickinson decides to leave,

Starting point is 00:20:22 then maybe it's like, okay, now they're looking at centers or like top line centers. Right. But I do think this, at least for now makes it so that Kansas can feel a lot more comfortable kind of having a slow play in the off season as they kind of await for some of these other decisions. So we're going to talk about the KJ Adams one, stick around for that on a bonus episode of locked on Jayhawks. That'll do it for this episode of locked on Jayhawks. Zeke Mayo is officially a Kansas Jayhawk. Make sure you subscribe to the show anywhere you get podcasts,

Starting point is 00:20:47 including on our YouTube page. See you next time with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Lands Zeke Mayo, South Dakota State Transfer Guard, from the Portal

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