Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Starting Lineup & Minutes Projections for the 2023-2024 Season

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Predicting the starting lineup for Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball in 2023-2024, including rotation and minutes projections for Bill Self's squad. Who could play more or less than expected, just how many minutes will Hunter Dickinson, Dajuan Harris, Kevin McCullar, KJ Adams and more get, and who will win the battle for the 8th spot.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, minutes projection, lineup projection, starting lineup projection, who's going to be part of the rotation projection, all that on the KU basketball team as maybe KU's done 11 scholarships, maybe not, but we're going to give you that projection, what we're thinking right now 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. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.

on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks here, your first listen every day. Thank you to all the everydayers out there listening to all the shows. And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, which you can find anywhere you get any of your podcasts, or you can find us on our YouTube page, or you can like and subscribe to the show. We're talking KU basketball minute projections, lineup projections, rotation projections. However you want to say it, we're going to give our projections for what we

think it'll be for the upcoming season. You can let us know who you think is too high, who you think is too low. We're going to start at the guard position, then we're going to move to the wings forward types, then we'll finish off with the centers so let's start with the guards uh first things first who do you have on the roster well uh as far as who i'm considering here dewan harris he's more of a point guard type arterio morris can play the one or the two nick timberlake you're gonna see him at the two and the three marco jackson uh i think you'll see him at the one two and even three he's not really a three, but like we saw last year, certain lineups where DeJuan Harris was playing next to Bobby Pettiford

and Joe Yesifu, right? So it'd be the same idea with El Marco is basically your three because he does have the length, athleticism, and long wingspan and stuff. All four of those guys will play. Jamari McDowell, do we want to consider him a wing or do we want to consider him a guard for the purposes of this? I'm going to consider him a wing, so we're just going to stick with those four players, DeJuan, Arterio, Nick, and El Marco,

as part of this. I'm not going to talk about the walk-ons. We could. Will Michael Jankovic, his three-point shooting, give him some small role on the team. We're not going to get into that. Okay, so who will start? DeJuan Harris, you feel certain, will start. He will be're not going to get into that. Okay. So who will start to Juan Harris? You feel certain we'll start. He will be the starting point guard for KU and he will play a

lot of minutes. Obviously he's a veteran returning player. I don't really need to explain why he's going to start. It's just going to happen. Okay. And then you have a competition for who is going to start. Part of this depends on what the KU starting lineup will look like. Will Kevin McCuller be at the three with KJ Adams at the four or will eventually KU play a lineup where Kevin McCuller is playing the four and now you have an opening at the two and the three. That would make it so that two of these guys would start but I think at the beginning of the season I'm expecting KJ, Bill Self going to go with the guys he trusts to start the four, Kevin at three which means you only have one other starting spot if DeJuan's getting one of the guard spots for one of these other guards.

That means whoever wins the competition between Artario Morris, Nick Timberlake, and Elmarco Jackson gets that spot. Now, in the case of Artario Morris, he might be the best overall player, right? He's a year older than Elmarco Jackson, comes in with similar recruiting rankings. He was actually a little bit higher and maybe the best combination of shooting and defense and ball handling there. But also with Arterio, you're coming into a new system. I guess all these guys are. But with Arterio, it's the idea that you missed some of the practice time for going out. I don't know. He wasn't there for one of the scrimmages. I would just assume that has something to do with the case that he's undergoing. I believe because of that case, he will be missing the trip down to Puerto Rico for KU,

so he won't be playing in those games. You add it up in a competition where everybody's trying to get to know the system, and in a new system, the guy who's not going to be there as much and not able to i don't know ease along with that you wonder how that affect him in that regard el marco jackson might be the best athlete of the group um he's also a freshman so we'll see how that goes but you know he has a very high ceiling so it wouldn't shock you and then with nick timberlake he provides probably your best option as a floor spacer with kevin mcculler, inconsistent three-point shooting KJ Adams TBD on what that's going to look

like. But I think we can assume it's not going to be a great three-point shooting option. Hunter Dickinson, good three-point shooter, but as a center, you know, he's getting up less than two per game last year.

Even if that went up to like a number like three this year, that's still not a ton. DeJuan Harris, not like a great, you know, three-point shooter off movement. He a great you know three-point shooter off movement he's a really good three-point shooter on standstill attempts and on like spot-up attempts um but how many is dewan gonna take right is he gonna take three a game you know

um so you need somebody else to space the floor and hit threes now arterial morris i do think it has been overlooked how good of a three-point shooter he can be um we're gonna have an episode later down the road about does KU have enough from a three-point shooting lens and I was actually surprised when I was looking into it I mean Ontario shot like two and a half a game in like 11 minutes which overall the sample size is not a ton of threes that he took on the season because he was playing 11 minutes per game behind all those experienced guards but when you think about it like taking like two two and a half threes per game in 11 minutes that means if you're playing you know 30 minutes you're gonna get up like six

or seven threes in a game if you're playing mid 20 minutes you might get up four or half threes per game in 11 minutes. That means if you're playing, you know, 30 minutes, you're going to get up like six or seven threes in a game. If you're playing mid 20 minutes, you might get up four or five threes in a specific game. So I do think he actually is a really good three point shooter. And if he ends up being dangerously close to Nick Timberlake, you get more ball handling. You probably get more athleticism and defense with Morris out there. So I wouldn't rule him out to start at the two,

but as of right now, I'm going to go with Nick nick timberlake to win that battle between those three again wouldn't shock me one way or another um and also with how much bill self does love the guys he can trust and play defense like what if morris is just that much better of a defender than timberlake and even timberlake's a 40 three-point shooter if morris is 35 bill self's like i'm i'm comfortable taking that just because i want to go with the guy i can trust on the defense vent but i do think comfortable taking that just because I want to go with the guy I can trust on the defense end. But I do think because of the floor spacing questions, I'm going to go with Nick Timberlake starting at the two as of right now before we get into more

practices and hear more opportunities about what's going on. Now, as far as who will play from this group, all four of these players, Harris, Morris, Timberlake, Jackson, all going to play, all going to be a part of the rotation. Feel very confident in that. Obviously, you don't know what happens with injuries and stuff like that. So, you know, that's always the caveat, but that's kind of the unspoken thing I don't really need to talk about. Who has an uphill battle for more playing time? I mean, I guess you could argue that, you know, does one of these guys end up in a situation where they're only playing 15 minutes per game, right,

as opposed to being in the low to mid-20s? That could possibly happen to whoever carves out the lowest role among all three. But realistically, all are going to be a part of the rotation. If you want to count Jamari McDowell, he would have an uphill battle. But again, we'll get to him in the wings. So as far as the minutes projection for just the guards specifically, I'm going to give 34 minutes per game to DeJuan Harris at the one. That's about what he averaged last year now it's funny because we very seldom see a player average less minutes per game

the next year than they did the year before i went back and looked and you know it was a very short list of uh bill self ku players who ended up playing less in year two or not in year two necessarily, but their next year that they did in the year before. I think some of the examples, it was like Jamari Trailer one year, Brady Morningstar one year, and the rest of them are pretty much guys who maybe they went from playing like, I don't know, 32 minutes a game to 31, and it's like, eh, that doesn't really count. But there is a lot more point guard competition where you could say well dewan harris like we want to keep him healthy

we want him to be this ultimate pest on the defensive end so will he be more energized will he be better if we play him 30 31 minutes per game and give him a few extra minutes of rest and that allows for a few extra minutes for arterio Morris, Nick Timberlake, and Marco Jackson. I can see the side to that. Then again, we know Bill Self goes with the guys he trusts. We saw those years where Devontae and Frank were getting 37, 38 minutes per game. I expect DeJuan to at least be at where he was last year, so I'm just going to go 34 minutes there, all of those at the one.

Then El Marco Jackson. I'm going to give him the six backup minutes at the one. You could convince me Artario Morris is the backup one. I'll just go with El Marco there. I like El Marco's vision. I think Arterio could be a better three-level scorer, better three-point shooter than El Marco, but I think El Marco might end up being the better passer. So El Marco will get the six minutes at the backup one,

and then we'll give him 16 minutes at the two-slash-three. Again, he could be playing some minutes where it's DeJuan, Artario, and Del Marco, right? And technically in that lineup, he's the three. And then some minutes at the two next to DeJuan Harris. So that gives him 22 minutes per game in total. And a little study we were doing on Rock Chalk Sports Talk, like guys who were top 22 recruits in Bilsop's time,

kind of the floor of minutes per game they're playing is like 18. And the upper end of things ends up being closer to like 22, 24 minutes per game. So I think that's about a good number there. Nick Timberlake, I'm going to give 25 minutes. I have him starting at two, getting some minutes at the three, getting some minutes at the two. I think with Nick Timberlake, the shooting's so valuable. Then again, if the shooting ends up being 36% and the defense isn't there, could El Marco and Arterio get more minutes? Of course. But if all goes well, you saw Isaiah Moss playing a ton for KU

at the end of his season. That's kind of the Nick Timberlake role, except I think there's even more potential there for Timberlake in being a more versatile player. Arterio Morris, I'm going to give 24 minutes to all of them at the backup, too, behind Nick Timberlake whenever he goes to three or when he's out of the game, right? So that gives you 34 for DeJuan, 22 for El Marco, 25 for Timberlake, 24 for Morris. And when you're just checking off the positions, that leaves you with zero minutes to give out at the one and the two.

So now both those positions are all the minutes are allotted. The four and the five minutes are untouched. Obviously, we haven't gotten there yet. And now there are 14 minutes left at the three for our next position, which we'll get into here is the wings. First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by FanDuel. Take your first swing at betting MLB on FanDuel and get 10 times your first bet

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So guys that I'm considering, this is going to be wing slash forward who apply for this conversation. I guess technically Nick Timberlake, if we're going to play him at some three minutes, Kevin McCuller, obviously, KJ Adams, he'll apply for the center one too, but we'll put him in here for his sake of playing the four. Jamari McDowell, Marcus Adams as well. So that gives you kind of five players

who you could see at the three and the four position, right? And I guess, like I said, if you're going to play that three-guard lineup with El Marco, I guess you could consider him here. But who's going to start? Kevin McCuller will start. Now, KJ Adams, I expect to start at the beginning of the year. Bill Self going to go with the guys he trusts.

What happens if we get to mid-January, KU loses, you know, three out of four games, and there's some talk about, ah, this isn't working, they don't have a space on offense, whatever. Could you see a lineup where Kevin McCuller switches to the four and now you move Nick Timberlake to the three, or Terry O'Morris or Marco Jackson starting at the two? Absolutely you could. But to start the year, I'm going to go with KJ Adams as the starter.

Either way, KJ is going to play a big role on this team and will make a big impact on the team. That's just the one thing that remains to be seen. We just don't know how it's going to go. And that's not a negative. That's just, you just don't know. So there's nothing wrong with that. So Kevin McCuller, KJ Adams to start there. Who else is going to play as part of that? Well, Nick Timberlake, technically, if we're talking about him as a three, like I said, and then that leaves you with who is in a position battle. There's probably not enough minutes to go around for both Marcus Adams and Jamari McDowell to be a part of the rotation.

And when I say when I mean be a part of the rotation, I'm not just saying, oh, you played today. You're a part of the rotation. Now, if you came in for two minutes, whether that was the end of the game or if you came in for three minutes just because someone got in foul trouble, Or if you're coming in for five minutes one game and then you're not playing again for two weeks and then you're coming in five minutes again. That's not part of the consistent rotation. Realistically, probably only one of those guys is going to get there. And we talked about this on a previous episode a week ago

that it could determine how KU plays or vice versa, how KU wants to play could determine who gets that spot. Marcus Adams, you could play him as a small ball four. Jamari McDowell, you could play him at the two and the three. It's going to impact other players' minutes with, are you playing too big basketball? Are you not? Obviously, Parker Brown could be a part of the position battle too in terms of one of those three could play, and that could have an effect here.

But specifically for just the wing players, who's going to work out in front of Marcus Adams versus Jamari McDowell? Adams, maybe the more gifted scorer, has multiple ways of scoring a really good three-point shooter. Jamari McDowell looks to be a pretty good set three-point shooter as well, though, and maybe more of a wing-type defender. So you have the talent and the scoring and the athleticism of Marcus Adams. You have the defense, the 3-and-D opportunity for Jamari McDowell.

Who's going to win out on that? Either way, there's not going to be a ton of minutes for that guy to go around but it is an interesting battle so as far as the minutes projection uh kevin mcculler i'm giving 30 minutes to now i i think there is a case to be made in the same way that i mentioned with duan harris what if you got to one down to 30 32 minutes per game because you have the depth and you want to keep him healthy and you want to keep him energized on the defensive end of court well what if kevin mcculler a guy who has had injuries the past couple years what if you wanted to keep him healthy and you want to keep him energized on the defensive end of court well what if kevin mcculler a guy who has had injuries the past couple years what if you wanted to limit him to 27 28 minutes per game right i'm just going to go with 30 it's a nice

easy round number as you noticed when we were talking about the minutes of the guard positions all the minutes at the point guard all the minutes at the the two position were filled up. We had 14 minutes left over after the minutes we gave out to DeJuan, El Marco, Arterio, and Nick to give out to the three. So we're going to start Kevin McCuller at the three. He's going to get 14 of his minutes at the three. The other 16 of his minutes are coming at the four, right? So at different points through the game, he's going to basically be the small ball four. KJ Adams, we're giving 24 minutes to. So he's going to basically be the small ball four. KJ Adams, we're giving 24 minutes to. So he's going to get 14 minutes at the four.

And then once we get to the center talk, that'll be his other minutes with 10 minutes per game. Right. So that gets him to 24 minutes per game. Then you have 10 minutes left over at the four position, which I'm going to give to Marcus Adams here. Again, you could have Kevin play more four minutes and maybe carve out a role for Jamari McDowell. I think it does make some sense, even positionally here. We're going to give Marcus Adams 10 minutes per game. And who knows, maybe it ends up being a split.

Maybe it's five and five to both, but typically we don't really see that. So that would use up the rest of the three minutes. That would use up the rest of the four minutes. Let's finish up here with Locked On Jayhawks talking about the center position, how that could be divvied out with the minutes rotation finishing things up with locked on jay hawks with the center position uh very obvious who's going to start play a lot of minutes that's hunter dickinson and then you get to the next category

which is who's going to play kj adams will play where we gave him 10 minutes at the five who has an uphill battle that would be parker brown now in theory if parker brown or k you just want to play kj on the wing right instead of marcus adams getting those 10 minutes as a backup four maybe kj gets those 10 minutes so now all his 24 minutes are at the four and now parker brown's playing 10 minutes as a backup at the five and he's the other guy's part of the rotation very plausible obviously a possibility I guess technically you could put a position battle between Parker Brown and Zach Clements the idea is to redshirt Zach Clements I think that's the plan and I expect that to happen but I've said this many times I'll say

it again if Zach Clements comes out during fall practice and he just looks like a new man and is having a breakout type season it's like man he's our second best center right now then who knows maybe they change out the plan and maybe it changes something up um but yeah so that would be the guy with the uphill battle it really is parker brown versus marcus adams versus demarie mcdowell just not necessarily position against each other, but which of them profiles best into the role that you're like, we have to get this guy minutes, right? And then that's going to determine how you play. So as far as how the minutes work out there,

we got Hunter Dickinson getting 30 minutes per game, which if you convince me that'll be 32, right? You could also convince me if Parker Brown and KJ Adams are that good and you want to get them minutes for sure. What if Dickinson goes down to 28, you keep him a little bit more rested. I know he's done a good job avoiding foul trouble, but you, you add a little few extra minutes to help with that just a little bit more just in case, cause it is still a center. Um, and then the other 10 minutes KJ Adams. And, uh, so if you're watching on our YouTube page, we'll explain this. If you're

listening on our podcast side of things, I have a breakdown of how this all works, basically. So subscribe to our YouTube page if you could. Basically what that means, we have our starting five, DeJuan Harris, Nicholas Timberlake, Kevin McCuller, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson. Then the rotation players, you have Artario Morris, Elmarco Jackson, and Marcus Adams. Parker Brown and Jamari McDowell in this situation are reserves. Again, wouldn't shock you if either of those scooped ahead of Marcus Adams or vice versa. And then you're red shirting Zach Clemens and having that extra practice body. And in total, you're getting 34 minutes per game for DeJuan Harris,

25 for Nick Timberlake, 30 for Kevin McCuller, 24 for KJ Adams, 30 for Hunter Dickinson. And then off the bench, Artario Morris is getting 24. Marco Jackson's getting 22. Marcus Adams is getting 10. Now, obviously this is not the be all end all and things will change over the course of the practices during the off season. Certain players will step up. Certain players might not fit into the system or be having as good of practices to earn that more opportunity. How much will, you know will you know nick timberlake will he be able to defend how much will it matter how much will they just need his three-point shooting how good

will arterio morris and el marco jackson be right like these are all very flexible um to where you could easily shave off you know whatever your pick is like if you're a big el marco jackson guy and you want to shave off you know five minutes per game off nicholas timberlake and give those to el marco jackson i think that's reasonable if you want to say that no you know, five minutes per game off Nicholas Timberlake and give those to Marco Jackson. I think that's reasonable. If you want to say that, no, they're going to need the shooting even more than is already there at 25 minutes. And you want to shave off a couple minutes of arterio and a couple of Marco Jackson and get Timberlake up to 29. Like, I think that's feasible too. What's going to happen with, uh, how the KJ Adams moving to the more wing position affects it, right? What if, what if he if it's just clogging up the floor for you

and you decide at the end that, you know, you're going to actually be given 12 minutes per game for KJ as a backup five. You're playing Dickinson 28. KJ is only going to get eight minutes at the four and still play 20 a game. And now you have more minutes for Kevin McCuller, Nick. Right?

Like there are a lot here that you could shave off minutes one way or another, give it to somebody else, or you can pick your favorite of the role players with Marcus Adams or Parker Brown, Jamar McDowell, where it is enough flexibility, but I do feel good overall and that these are good, like at least roundabout numbers,

close enough numbers. And we'll have to revisit this and see how dumb I am because, you know, I make stupid predictions all the time. Don't we all? We're all human. So, and see how dumb this is looking back but also we'll see if we uh nailed anything looking forward we'll do another one of these

once we get closer to the season and maybe we have more intel on how those practices have gone but that's just at least one man's take uh let us know if you think somebody should be playing more should be playing less on the uh comments in our youtube page that's gonna do it for this episode of locked on jayhawks you can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio as long as you don't use your Twitter rate and exceed past that. You can find us wherever you get any of your podcasts with Locked

on Jayhawks.