Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Mid-Season Evaluations: Biggest Surprises to Expected Results

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

The Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball season is around the midway point for 2022-23 - what have been the biggest surprises such as KJ Adams' output, to what has hit expectations like Dajuan Harris' steady play and more for Bill Self's squad to this point in Big 12 play. Breaking down each position, from the guards to the wings and center position.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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we're about, give or take, halfway through the year for the Kansas basketball season. Let's break down what we maybe have been surprised by, what has hit our expectations, as we go through different player and position evaluations for this team, to this point in time on today's edition of the show. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day. Welcome back to this episode of Locked On Jayhawks.

I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 on KLWN in Lawrence. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get to any of your podcasts. And on today's edition of the show, we're, I don't know, give or take halfway through the year. It depends.

If you count the NCAA tournament games, Big 12 tournament games, sure, we could be about halfway through the season, but you never really know how long that season is going to go, how many tournament games you're going to play. They're past the halfway point of the regular season, but it's close enough, so it doesn't matter. We're going to do this anyway. We're going to do some player position evaluations for KU to this point in time. Maybe what's been something that we thought was going to happen and has lived up to that billing.

Maybe things that have been our biggest surprise. Maybe things that we think could change through the end of the season let's uh start with the lead guards and kind of the combo guards then we'll work into the wings we'll finish up with the centers on this edition of the show tomorrow's show we'll uh preview the kansas tcu game that's coming on saturday as ku will be looking to bounce back so starting with the lead slash combo guards which basically i define that group as either yeah they're point guards or they're basically like small two guards that could play the one in a pinch and i know kevin mcculler you could technically play him at the

one but i'm counting him as a wing so uh this group includes dewan harris bobby pettiford joe yesfu and kyle cuff uh so as as far as the whatever player evaluations would go or for everything that has gone about as expected, I think we all expected DeJuan Harris to be a starter and to be a key player for KU. That has gone about as expected to this point in time for Kansas. We heard a lot in the preseason, Bobby Pettiford being the backup. That has kind of gone according to plan to this point.

And Joe Yesfu would be battling for playing time. That has also gone according to plan. Now, we kind of thought Joe Yesfu was going to be battling playing time with MJ Rice. Seems like that has been kind of pushed to the side. It's more just how much playing time is Joe going to get that specific game based on matchup? Like, are they basically going to have a seven-man rotation or an eight-man rotation? Because the eighth guy in the rotation basically has been Joe Yesifu. The last game a little bit different.

And then we thought in the preseason, Kyle Cuff would be kind of struggling to crack the rotation behind those guys, which has kind of been the case, but it's unfortunate for him because he had that setback with an injury while he was always kind of facing an uphill battle. And maybe he'll be back at some point to play kind of a role for this team because there hasn't been a ton of bench production to make you think that it's impossible for him to be able to do that. Early in the season, he was not clearly ahead of those guys. And having the injury, you would think, puts him maybe a little further behind the schedule from where those other players are, but it wouldn't be impossible for him to, you know, when he comes back from injury, if he plays well enough to earn some more playing time pediford was out with injury that he really could have used maybe to play those extra minutes there and earn that extra playing time maybe down the road like at this point in time but all that stuff has kind of gone to expectation i think the biggest surprises to this point from that lead guard

combo guard position it's just how good dewan is we expected him to be a starter as we said we expected him to be a key player As we said, we expected him to be a key player for this team and have a big impact, whether it was with his defense or whether it was with his facilitating. But I think just how good he was going to be this year, like his ability to have games where he does have a stretch where he can score a little bit like the six straight against Indiana, the 14 points against Southern Utah in a game that you were kind of inching along and almost got upset and a big upset in Allen Fieldhouse. Having games where he has been able to kind of shoot you to a win, like the Texas Tech

game in Lubbock. I think everybody knew how important DeJuan was, but I don't think we necessarily knew he was going to be able to do that type of stuff. So that would be a bit of a surprise. And then I think maybe just how much bobby pettiford has been playing i kind of figured yeah i don't want to play 30 35 minutes a game which it kind of is so i figured that oh bobby's only going to be getting like 10 to 12 minutes a game um and a big reason why was because hey if if you only have five to ten minutes a game that dewan's coming off the bench and those are your backup point guard minutes, how much are you going to be able to play the two together if you're playing Joe at the two? And if you have all these wings, Grady Dick, Kevin McCuller, Jalen Wilson, MJ Rice, how much time are you going to be able to play him at the two position?

Turns out the MJ Rice stuff, which we'll get to here in a second, you haven't had really any playing time there. So those extra minutes that could go out to a player like Joe Yesfu or Bobby Pettiford in this case. So you could have convinced me he was only going to play 10 to 15 minutes in a game. We've seen a lot of games where Bobby, and it has been sporadic hit or missed, where, yeah, maybe on the season it is closer to that number. But, like, we've seen a lot of games where Bobby has logged a game where he has 20, 22, 24, 25 minutes in a game.

And I think that's happened a little more than I thought of how big his role was maybe going to be on this team. Obviously, last game, we saw Joe Yesifu in over Bobby. And so expected differences the rest of the way. Honestly, not really. I expect DeJuan to still be the starter. I'm still not really expecting Kyle Cuff to play a huge role on this team. I guess maybe if you do want to point to the last game with Kansas State and say, well, Joe Yesifu got a lot more run.

He played 22 minutes. Bobby Pettiford only played six. Is that a sign that Joe Yesifu is going to start playing more minutes and Bobby's going to start playing less? It could be. I'm kind of guessing it's not because Bobby still is kind of the more backup point guard role where Joe is more of the two- role and because of what you were missing against Kansas State with some of the foul trouble you needed guys who could make shots and create shots and that's more up the

alley of Joe than it is Bobby and DeJuan played 43 minutes against Kansas State so like I guess you could convince me yeah maybe Joe ends up playing more than Bobby in minutes per game if basically DeJuan is just on the floor the whole time where there's not a lot of minutes to go to the backup and to where but but in terms of being the actual backup point guard no that's still going to be Bobby over Joe Yassifu so not a ton of differences there outside of maybe like I said if you want to finagle some of the minutes with what goes to Bobby and what goes to Joe because of last game being interesting. And if Bobby can't be someone who can score buckets for you, for a team that could use that scoring punch,

and Joe, you know, he's not going to be a guy who gets 10-4 off the bench every game, but he can hit a 3-4 if he takes a couple of them. He can maybe slither to the lane and find an opening for you. There's a little more offensive punch with Joe than Bobby, so that wouldn't be totally surprising but yeah i mean to this point it's kind of gone as expected from that whole lead guard position and i'm expected to be the exact same through the rest of the season um i i guess with dewan you don't expect him to shoot like 60 per i don't know is it 71 before the k-state game he goes like one of six from or of six from three or whatever it was

one of six i think uh you don't expect him to be like a 50 three-point shooter the rest of the way 21% before the K-State game, he goes like 1 of 6 from 3 or whatever it was. 1 of 6, I think. You don't expect him to be like a 50% three-point shooter the rest of the way, but like, yeah, everything else pretty much the same. All right, we're going to get on to our wing position, and then we'll finish up with our center position for the player position evaluations. But first, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by BetOnline. BetOnline.net is your number one source for sports betting

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BetOnline, where the game starts. Let's move to the wing position. So the wings would be classified. I mean, before the season, I think I put KJ Adams as part of the wings. He won't be in that group now. So I guess that's different from now than it was before the season. But Jalen Wilson, Kevin McCuller, Grady Dick, and MJ Rice. There's fewer wings than it seems. And a big reason why is KJ Adams. But I mean, as we kind of expected in the preseason, like you expected Jalen Wilson to be the guy. Now, maybe there were

varying levels of how good you thought that Jalen would be and how much of the guy would be and what those stats would look like. But we expected him to be the go-to guy. And that has been the case. So that's been about as expected. In the preseason, you kind of figured that like Kevin McCuller was just going to be a Bill Self guy. Like he plays good defense.

He moves the ball. He rebounds. He does a lot of the little things for a team to win basketball games. And from that standpoint, it was very different than like Remy Martin, who comes over and he's this player with a bunch of pedigree in his past college basketball career to where you expect him to play a big role. But there's also this like clashing of how he plays versus how Bill Self wants him to play.

And that took some time to come over. With Kevin McCuller, you expected him to have a big role right off the bat, not just because of his previous pedigree, but because he seemed like he would be one of those Bill Self type of players and Bill Self-trusted guys. And that has kind of lived up to the billing that he is very much in that ilk. I think for some, and I'll get to this here in the biggest surprise, but Grady Dick's shooting being this good was expected. You expected him to be this much of a dominant shooter from the outside,

and he has more than lived up to the billing with his ability to knock down threes. To the biggest surprises, though, for me, I did think, like I thought Grady Dick was going to be a really good shooter, but I thought, I mean, it's so hard and so often we see freshmen come in and that's the one thing missing in their game, the three point shot that maybe it's still good, but it's low 30%, mid 30%. And if you're putting all this pressure on this freshman to come in and be your highest volume three point shooter with all those things around it, I kind of figured he'd be like high volume 35 to 36%, which would still be a good number,

especially for a freshman. So that's kind of been a biggest surprise to me that he's been able to deal with all that pressure and being the guy who's really the one big three-point shooter on this team and still shoot like in the 40s for percentage. That's been a nice little surprise to me specifically, but I know it wasn't the case for kind of everyone. I think for some, this is kind of the opposite for me. For some, Jalen being a National Player of the Year candidate was a surprise, but I kind of said before the season, like I thought as your go-to guy, he could put up 16, 17.

Now, I didn't maybe think 20 or 21, but 16, 17, 18 points per game and get you eight, nine, 10 rebounds per game. And if he's putting up even, you know, 16 and nine on a team, that's going to be expected to compete for, if not win the big 12 title, which at this point they are the big 12 title favorites. Then at that point, he's the favorite for big 12 player of the year. And if you're the favorite for big 12 player of the year, you're in contention for first or second team, all American. And if you're contention for first or second team all-american you're a national player of the year candidate like that stuff just made sense to me that that was the case i got in on jaylen wilson before the season at 18 to 1 odds to to win the

naysmith player of the year i don't know that's going to happen because zach edie is just putting up ridiculous monstrous numbers though the the game against Kansas State certainly helped. But I think for some, they thought, yeah, Jalen could be better. He could be an improved player. But I don't know that they would have thought he would have been this good that he could have put up 38 points in a game against Kansas State or 33 points in a game against Southern Utah that he would be this consistent of a scoring threat for you and would be able to kind of grind you through

some of these different plays for this team. I think overall, though, the biggest surprise of this wing group, it has to be the absence or the lack of playing time, I guess, the zero role maybe for MJ Rice. Now, as we discussed a lot in the preseason, it was hard to figure out what the rotation could look like because you only had so many minutes to go around. And for a guy like MJ rice, if you have Grady, Dick,

Kevin McCullough, Jalen Wilson in front of you at the wing position, you know, it's going to be hard to emerge into the starting lineup and it's going to be hard to play a big role, but we figured, uh, well,

he could still work his way into a 15 day, maybe even 25 minute per game role. If this happens or that happens. And none of that has really happened. Like part of it was, well, maybe those guys struggle and none of that has really happened like part of it was well maybe those guys struggle and maybe mj rice looks really good and you know we we just haven't really seen it a lot and i think part of it goes back to you know practice and uh him not being in that the the trust tree with with bill self and everything but i would have definitely

thought he would have at least been like a 10 to 15 minute per game guy and the fact that there's been zero role has certainly been the biggest surprise to me. And I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do. Like Bill Self's with him every day in practice and that stuff has to be earned. But certainly from where we were in the preseason, I mean, we had Jason Jordan on of like Sports Illustrated recruiting. And he had super high hopes for MJ Rice that he was like KU's highest rated recruit coming in on their website and that just hasn't really worked out and you kind of wonder what the role the rest of the season is going to be I'm not really expecting I mean if it hasn't gotten going now

like what would change over the final two months this isn't Remy Martin where he had that past pedigree and the reason he's missing some of that time is injury stuff yes MJ Rice has missed some time with injury stuff but like we had a press conference like a week ago with bill self it was like yeah no he's injury is not going to keep him from from playing in this next game but kind of left open to interpretation at least for my viewpoint that it was yeah but he's not going to play for other reasons you know what i mean so uh that's certainly been a big surprise that that he hasn't had any role on the team. Again, didn't expect him to be one of your starters, but like you thought you'd get some sort of punch from him off the bench.

Maybe it still changes and you hope it does because he's a very talented kid and he could add a lot to this team. But to this point, that hasn't really been the case. Expected differences the rest of the way. Like I said, I don't really expect that to change at this point in time. Like I expect Jalen Wilson to kind of stick around as your go-to guy and be the national player of the year candidate. I expect Grady Dick to hit a bunch of shots for you. The biggest question for me the rest of the way is what is Kevin McCullers offense going to look like? Because he has been an unbelievable defensive player. He's looked like one of the five best perimeter defenders in the entire country. He is so versatile what he can do for you there. He's been a good rebounder. He's been a good passer, but the shot specifically and the offense is just not working. Whether it's,

you know, turnover here, they're missing open threes, not being able to capitalize on uncertain openings that he's been getting. It's been a struggle for him shooting the basketball so far in big 12 play. And there was that really nice stretch for him in the month of december where he was scoring the basketball he was hitting shots he was getting 15 points per game and when this team is getting you know 12 to 15 points from him contribution that's enough to turn this team from like a really good team to an elite team like that's kind of the difference or him being able to hit one or two of those open threes a game because just naturally by him playing a big enough role on this team and being out there with other threats like Grady Dick and Jalen Wilson he's going to get open looks so the difference between you being like a possibly good offense to being a great offense is how well he's hitting those shots and

you need him to hit those shots but it's been really shaky so far in big 12 play I don't know if he's dealing with an injury that hasn't really been disclosed. I don't know if it's just a cold stretch. I don't know if it's a lack of confidence. I don't really think it's that. He's a veteran player, and I love his game. I love watching him on the defensive side of the ball, but for KU to maximize what they are and what they could be,

they're going to need him to start hitting some of those shots, and they're going to need him to pick up that offensive side of the ball. I think he can do it. We've seen stretches just this year. We've seen stretches at Texas Tech where he was that guy, but certainly it's been a little bit inconsistent this year. And, you know, that's the big question, I think, from this position moving forward for the rest of the year. What exactly is that offense going to look like? All right, we're going to finish things up here with the center position, and then we'll get to our KUTCU preview on tomorrow's edition of the show. This episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by Built Bar. We just got through the holidays,

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Finishing up with the center position here. What has gone about as expected? Well, I thought before the season that K.J. Adams would certainly be a trustworthy Bill Self guy. Now, this applies for both the wing and the center positions for KJ the other centers with Cam Martin Zach Clements Ernest Uday Zuby Ejifer were originally in this position at the beginning of the season and with KJ I figured yeah he could maybe play like five minutes as a small ball five maybe up to 10 minutes and then at the wing position maybe he gets five to 10 minutes on the wing maybe he's a guy who plays like 10 to 20 minutes a game I thought wing position maybe he gets five to ten minutes on the wing maybe he's

a guy who plays like 10 to 20 minutes a game i thought he would he would have a role because he was such a bills off guy and he is a trustworthy player that bills off trust because of the defense and some of the little things he does we'll get to the biggest surprise part of it but like i did think he would have a role did i think this role maybe not but you know you knew he would be the trustworthy guy and and i remember saying like leading up to the season i think within two weeks and into the regular season i kind of got to a point where i was like i think kj is going to be the starting center on this team at least right off the bat now where i was wrong is i said i think it'll be kj to start because that's the guy bill self-trust right now and i think by the time we get to conference

play maybe it's earnest due day because he has the super high ceiling. That part has been wrong, but I did think KJ would have a real role on this team. The other thing about is expected. I did expect there to be growing pains at the center position for those young centers this season. Did I realize it was going to be this much? Probably not. But a lot of the conversations was, yeah, you're just going to have to go through it with Ernest Zuday and Zuby Adjafar. You'll see some flash games, which you did in some of the non-con games. And then by the time you get to January, February, maybe even March,

sometime in Big 12 play, like one of those guys, if not a couple will have emerged and look like the guys. So I didn't realize it would be this much and there still is time. We still are in the middle of January. So I guess if one hit in February that wouldn't be impossible but uh yeah I knew there would be growing pains maybe not this much so that gets us to our biggest surprises like I said I expected KJ to play a role I expected him to be a guy who could play 10 to 20 minutes a game would maybe start the year as your starting

center and then from there would maybe work into being backup center slash backup wing and play a kind of swiss army knife role for you i did not expect it to be 25 to 30 plus minutes in a given game every single game though and he has been so good like that's part of it too that's another surprise not just maybe how big the role has been because i expected a bigger role not this big it's how good kj adams has been he keeps improving each and every game in big 12 only play you could argue he has been i don't know what k it's it's hard because jalen is at 38 against k-state and that dilutes the water a little bit but up until the k-state game jalen was shooting 35 from the field and you could make the argument that kj in just big 12 games

five games has been ku's best player in those big 12 games. At the very least, he's in the top two or three of big 12 only games for KU. He has been so, so important, so pivotal, so good for this team. He's hit some late shots for you. He has just been so efficient on the offensive end, running that short roll, the pick and rolls, which are taking advantage of the fact of Grady Dick's getting face guarded, or they have all this attention on Jalen and Grady Dick on the wings or being able to quickly pass out of it to get one of those guys an open shot he has been so unbelievable in every game he adds

something new he improves I've been so impressed with KJ Adams he's been so much fun he was he was my kind of you know everybody has that like one bench player or young player who maybe isn't playing a ton on that specific season that they're like, no, that's my guy. He's going to be really good next year. That was KJ for me last year, so I love seeing this. I didn't necessarily expect it to happen this year the senders finding any rhythm, like the true centers, I guess, behind KJ. Because like I said, I did think by Big 12 play, at least one of the centers would have emerged to some degree to be like, hey, I can play 10 to 15 minutes off the bench and I can play pretty effectively in those minutes. But Ernest Uday has been lost in the rotation at this point.

Zuby has played sparingly. Clements has played sparingly and hit a couple big shots for you, struggled on defense a couple times for you. None of those guys have established a role. None of those have established, like, hey, this is what I'm going to come in and I'm going to immediately do this. Yeah, you can say, well, for Zuby, his strengths are more rebounding and shot blocking.

For Clements, it's more of maybe the offensive end. But it's not like that has been imposed. Like, it's maybe, oh, maybe I get two rebounds maybe i get two points and part of that is they're not playing a big role but that has not been established at all i thought we'd at least be getting hints right now with where this is going but not really the case to this point in time so expected differences the rest of the way i'm not really sure any like i expect kj to still be this guy and improve as the season goes on. Like I still wouldn't be surprised if by March,

he's even better than he is now, but you expect him to play a big role. And at this point, like, I don't know that we expect anything less than musical chairs at the center spot behind him. There's nobody's been able to take that down. Now,

maybe if Cam Martin gets fully healthy, like he's still dealing with some shoulder stuff, then maybe he can emerge past those other two guys. saw some good stuff from him against like texas tech but again none of the centers have like everything we've seen from the centers outside of kj it's like oh i thought he played pretty well and it'll be like a three to five minute stretch and then it won't happen the next game but it's like oh i thought he played pretty well but it's such a small sample size and you convert it to all the practice time and all the other games and all the other centers they have it just hasn't led to any momentum and at this point i i don't know are we going to see any

change from this point on through the rest of the season probably not but the good news is kj outside of the games he you know would foul out like the kansas state game because he is more of a wing type body wise i've talked about this before you can get away with playing that guy you know 30 32 minutes in a game with without him getting as tired as maybe a big lurking center who might be exhausted playing 22 minutes in the game so i guess that's uh kind of a positive there so that's our uh mid-season kind of evaluations for how everything's gone according to plan or biggest surprises to this point in time. That'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back tomorrow to preview the KUTCU game.

You can subscribe to our show anywhere you get your podcasts or on YouTube. You can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. Have a good rest of your day. See you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later today. Until then, bye.