Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Transfer Portal Target Deep Dive: North Florida Guard Chaz Lanier

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, a deep dive into KU basketball portal target Chaz Lanier. 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 find me as well on Twitter at D Johnson radio. You can find our show with locked on Jayhawks anywhere. You get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the action.

Starting point is 00:00:34 And on today's episode of LOJ, we're talking Chaz Lanier. He is in the transfer portal going through the NBA draft process, possible transfer portal target for KU basketball. We'll get into a deep dive on him, scouting report, how he would fit in with KU. We'll finish up with an update on the KU baseball season coming toward the end of the season and the KU softball season, which has come to the end of the season there. Let's start with Chaz Lanier, get some info on him, get into scouting report,

Starting point is 00:01:01 some synergy info as well, and then we'll get to what his fit would be like with KU and as well as some of the, I guess, where the interest is coming from being reported by. So Lanier is a combo guard from Nashville, Tennessee. Originally, he played four seasons at University of North Florida, and he has one year left of play because his first year was during the COVID year in that 2020 to 2021 season. Currently, he's testing the NBA draft water, so no guarantee that he does come back to college basketball. He's going through the, or just did, I don't know, did it wrap up, the G League Elite Combine Camp after he was first team all A-sun, which is the conference Atlantic Sun, this past season. season now I don't see him popping up

Starting point is 00:01:46 super high on on some of these big boards necessarily which I think you would assume that especially coming out of North Florida and I don't know maybe that's unfair because you know we've seen a lot of great players who come from maybe smaller schools and they're this stuff like John Morant came from like Murray State for instance right but still point being I think the expectation would be for him to come back to college and go to whatever next school he's going to be. The measurements on him, he's listed at 6'4 online. But fortunately, because he is at the G League Elite Camp, we got more real measurements. 6'3 and 3 quarters, that's without shoes.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Good news, they play basketball in shoes which actually means this is this the rare case of you know most often colleges and teams in general like list players above what they actually are like a kid might be 6'3 and they're gonna list him at 6'4 or he's 6'3 and a half they're gonna give him 6'5 right um he was 6'3 and three quarters without shoes which means if he was listed at 6'4 like with shoes he probably was actually 6'5". They might have undersold it. And he actually measured in with a really good wingspan, 6'9 wingspan and weighed 196 pounds. So he was playing kind of the one and two for them. But I mean, with the 6'9 wingspan, like it's not unheard of that he could maybe play at the three or something like that, or I don't know, maybe even a very small lineup at the four probably

Starting point is 00:03:01 wouldn't want to do that. But he also ran a top eight time among the G League people who were there is around 40, 50, I don't know, in the three quarter court sprint and had a 36 inch max vertical. So solid max vertical, solid three quarter court sprint. The shuttle agility numbers were kind of middle of the pack. So it seems like he's, he's a solid athlete, but not like an otherworldly athlete so to speak according to Isaac Trotter of 24-7 sports KU was the the

Starting point is 00:03:32 phrase he used was sniffing around him and so that doesn't necessarily imply that there's like like you would think they'd try to maybe I don't know maybe they have tried to set up a visit but he's going through the NBA draft stuff and so that's going to kind of inhibit some of that ability to do so, and maybe that's where it kind of comes from. But that kind of leans to me toward being, okay, they're interested, like maybe what is the NIL number? Maybe they're trying to make sure they have contact, just so there's been that initial contract that if Johnny Furphy stays in the draft

Starting point is 00:04:00 and they don't hit on their top target or something like that in the transfer portal still at this point, then maybe they can go to him and be able to kind of bring him on. But that clearly indicates there was some level of interest, but probably doesn't indicate that there is like an overwhelming amount of interest. He's a player who really blew up this past season. He went from just 10 games played as a true freshman, all these are at North Florida, to four and a half points per game as a sophomore on 30% from three. Then he improved again. Year three, he averages 4.7 points per game. So that's about the same, but up to 39% from three. So he was like slowly getting a little bit better, but like in a rotational

Starting point is 00:04:39 role level way. His jump from his third year to his fourth year, which technically an academic senior last year, but a fourth year junior because the COVID year was astounding. He went up to 19.7 points per game, 4.8 rebounds per game, 1.8 assists per game and 0.9 steals and 0.3 blocks. That was in 33 minutes per game. Efficiency numbers off the charts 51 from the field 44 from three that's on seven and a half three point attempts per game and he was 88 at the foul line so i mean just from every level of the court this kid was uh the i guess ultimate level of efficiency and you know north florida is not one of those teams where it's like you know sometimes you can see players who maybe they average like 22 points per game

Starting point is 00:05:25 at a lower level school. And then you find out they're like fifth in the country in tempo and they were just chucking up threes. Like you look at like Detroit, they kind of do that. North Florida was 206th in the country in tempo. So it wasn't necessarily just that, but you're talking about elite offensive efficiency really from everywhere and obviously a smaller level. He was one of just 17 guards nationally to take at least 150 two-point shots

Starting point is 00:05:50 and shoot 60% or better from two-point range. So really good at finishing at the rim. Obviously was really good at shooting the three ball and good at the foul line too. And in games against better opponents, very small sample size here, so maybe don't draw any too big conclusions, but did play well. That's better than the opposite, right? In five games against Ken Palm top 100 opponents, he shot 46% from the floor and 42% from three.

Starting point is 00:06:15 The notable power level games came against Miami. He had 12 points in that game, 4 of 10 from the field, 4 of 9 from three. At Georgia, when he had 16 points, that was on 4 of nine from three at Georgia when he had 16 points that was on four of eight from three at Florida State he had 22 points only five of 15 from three at Iowa he scored 16 points that was seven of nine overall from the field and then at LSU was his worst game there seven points on two of eight shooting so kind of a mixed bag but overall actually pretty good he also rated as the number 11 transfer recruit on the 24-7 sports rankings. They give him a 96 transfer grade, which is pretty high up there.

Starting point is 00:06:49 The synergy numbers of note, this might be why. These look very, very pretty. 98th percentile in overall offense on synergy. And he ranked in the 99th percentile against man-to-man defense. Somebody who was able to beat his man pretty consistently 97th percentile as a pick and roll ball handler he was in the 90th percentile off of handoffs 72nd percentile in transition how about this one and 96th percentile in isolation always nice to have guys who can go get a bucket you know off the dribble or when the shot clock's

Starting point is 00:07:24 winding down or you need somebody to go create something when a set play or just your movement or a post-up didn't get you a free basket. 81st percentile off screens, 87th percentile at the rim, and also 97th percentile with his jumper just on all jump shots, including 97th percentile with his jumper just on all jump shots including 97th percentile with his dribble jumper which goes into the idea of why he was able to win in isolation a lot if you can you know shoot a jumper off the dribble something that like that's one big difference between for instance like professional players versus college players that's more of a consistent shot that they're hitting he was hitting it consistently last year he was also in the 96th percentile for spot-ups. He went 34 of 75. That's good for 45% on spot-up threes. He was in the 92nd percentile on catch-and-shoot threes, going 68 of 159. That's 43% on catch-and-shoot threes,

Starting point is 00:08:19 including 44% on guarded catch-and-shoot threes, 42% on unguarded catch-and-shoot threes. And so, I mean, just the shooting numbers were electric. Obviously, smaller competition, you do have to adjust for what that would be moving up. And that is something to kind of note that, you know, you don't really know until it happens. But the big question we've kind of had here is, okay, what about the defense? Because we've had a lot of guys that we've talked about in these deep dives that they shoot the ball really, really well. But then you get to the defensive numbers and it's like yeah maybe they're an average defender he actually ranked in the 82nd percentile on defense according to synergy so that's a very good

Starting point is 00:08:52 defender and the two years prior because sometimes that's been the case too like somebody has a good year in the year before maybe they weren't as good which could just be an indication of growth and a player getting better could also be an indication that you know maybe the team context was different maybe you're more average and you're just kind of going with what the team is or it could just be that you've been inconsistent there, whatever. He's been consistently good on the defensive end. 82nd percentile this past year. The year before, he was 86th percentile in defense.

Starting point is 00:09:17 The year before that, he was 65th percentile. So that feels real to me that he's been a good defender. But again, this is in a lower league. But based on some solid athleticism and a really long wingspan, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't at least be like an above average defender at even a higher conference level and more likely a good defender with a chance to be one of the better defenders like if KU were to add him. Like you'd probably say, okay, DeJuan Harris, better defender on the team.

Starting point is 00:09:43 I don't know, KJ Adams, maybe. I think there's some things where kj is better i don't know it gets complicated there uh with the on ball versus off ball defense but um you can make that argument he would be up there for ku he also made 24 dunks last season according to bart torvik that would have ranked second on ku last year only kj adams would have made more dunks for Kansas last year. So if you're adding somebody who can shoot the ball well, who can create his own shot, who can defend well, and dunks the basketball, those are things that I'm interested in. But again, the big question becomes, you were on a bad team.

Starting point is 00:10:16 North Florida ranked 240th on Ken Palm. They went just 16 and 16. He's never been on a team that finished above 500, and that was in a bad league. The Atlantic sun ranked 26th of 33 conferences, according to Ken Palm, like clearly there's going to be a jump in competition, which maybe makes you worry because we just saw that with Nick Timberlake, the jump in competition did not work well. Then again, um, this is Nick Timberlake, but with better defense and better ball handling and better shot creation, which on its own makes it nothing like Nick Timberlake, but with better defense and better ball handling and better shot creation, which on its own makes it nothing like Nick Timberlake. But again, last year, the hopes

Starting point is 00:10:48 going into the year were that Nick Timberlake was going to be this big impact player and it didn't end up happening. Then again, also last year's team, you were kind of hoping that Timberlake could be either starter or starter level good off the bench. And on this team, if you did bring in a kid like this and take that kind of risk of them adjusting to the level of competition and it didn't work, the good news is, unlike last year's team, you have more players. You have more options than last season that make it not matter as much in the rotation because you do feel like you have more of those options and are deeper this year than maybe you were last year. So let's get into specifically what his fit would look like on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, this episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're hiring for small businesses,

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Starting point is 00:12:26 Continuing on, how would Chaz Lanier fit in with KU? And thank you for every dayers tuning in to each and every episode. I'm thinking this is part of your morning, day, afternoon, or whenever you give the show a listen. So this would probably be KU's final scholarship ad. Right now they're sitting at 11 scholarships. I know the Noah Shelby thing is still out there, at least at time of recording. Who knows? Maybe he'll have committed by the time I record this and it airs, but that one could be a walk-on. Who knows? So 11 scholarships. I think you add basically one more, I guess, impact level player, player that you think could be a part of

Starting point is 00:13:00 the rotation, which I think currently, certainly Chaz Lanier would be a part of that. And then basically you say, okay, we're going to have 12 scholarship players. If Furphy decides to come back, then we'll play with 13 and then we'll have 12 the following year. And if Furphy doesn't decide to come back, which seems like that is the more popular opinion of what's going to happen, then you knock out the final scholarship and you play with 13 the following season. So when you look at where he would slot in, what positions at North Florida last year, he mostly played minutes at the one and the two. I would imagine for Kansas, probably not going to play much at the one. I mean, DeJuan Harris is going to cannibalize a majority of those minutes, you know, 30 plus minutes at the one. I mean, even if you're on

Starting point is 00:13:44 the lower end, it's 28 minutes, right? 28 to 32 minutes probably for DeJuan at the point guard. And then the backup point guard minutes are going to go to like one of Zeke Mayo or Elmarco Jackson, or maybe a little bit both, maybe both get, you know, four minutes here. There's the backup point guard and then both play minutes at the two and maybe even the three, if you're playing all three of them together. So anyway, I think for the most part, you would see Lanier at the two and the three. And I think the fact that he is, you know, basically, like we said, six, three and three quarters without shoes, that means he's probably six, five with shoes, six, five with a six, nine wingspan means you can play the three, especially if you're a solid athlete, which he was. So, you know, being able to play him at the

Starting point is 00:14:20 two and three would put him in direct competition for minutes, I think mostly with Zeke Mayo, Elmarco Jackson, and Ryland Griffin. I guess you could say AJ Storr going to be playing minutes at the three, two. I think Storr more of like a three, four. Griffin more of a two, three. Mayo more of a one, two, three. Elmarco more of a one, two, three. Again, the three on Mayo and Jackson being dependent on we're playing a lineup with three of these guards at once. So those would be the guys you kind of look at there. And I think I continue to believe like I would have the most confidence in Ryland Griffin getting the most minutes there, but you could convince yourself of like, I would, I would choose Zeke Mayo in terms of the minutes ahead of Lanier. I think the El Marco Jackson one would certainly

Starting point is 00:15:01 be interesting. I'm kind of steadfast on his big improvement this next season, but you know that it's not a crazy conversation for the competition with, with any of those guys that any of them would win the competition, I guess, like they're all within the same range of outcomes. I think the floor outcome here for linear, if you were to join Kansas is he loses out on the competition to all those guys and the jump up in competition, probably being the biggest reason why it's too big

Starting point is 00:15:25 and he ends up being your your say your ninth man who's playing you know on some nights where he's hot or you need it or there's an injury or the foul trouble maybe he's playing more minutes but you know some nights maybe he's giving you 10 12 minutes and then there's a handful of of minutes some other nights where he's playing four or five minutes and then there's some dnps not here some games where he's not playing like that's kind of what your ninth man is in a bill self system um and that's what i've kind of defined as like the jaylen coleman lands role right like when he came in like there were certain games or yeah maybe he did play 15 20 minutes if some other thing happened for ku and then there were some nights where he just came in for five to eight

Starting point is 00:16:01 minutes and then there's some nights he just like maybe didn't even play so um or play for all intensive purposes like maybe he came in in garbage time the last two minutes when you're blowing out a team but you know what i mean like real rotation minutes um and so from that standpoint it may be the floor here is the jaylen coleman's lands role but i think what what raises that floor a little bit is that jaylen coleman lands was just a sniper off the bench lanier was a sniper last last season from North Florida and with his offense efficiency, but I think what does raise the floor a little bit is that defense. The defense was really good for him. Again, lower-level competition, but even if you knock it down a little bit,

Starting point is 00:16:40 you expect it to still be at least solid. Maybe that changes things. I think the ceiling here, that's the floor. The ceiling is maybe he's even a fifth starter should Bill Self decide to have KJ Adams come off the bench. And maybe that's just not even a negotiable that that's going to even happen to begin with. But let's say hypothetically it did.

Starting point is 00:17:00 AJ Storr starts at the four, Rylan Griffin at the three maybe, and then it's a competition between Zeke Mayo and Marco Jackson and Chaz Lanier, who's going to be the fifth starter. In that scenario, then that kind of becomes the ceiling. Again, that's dependent on a lot of things, him hitting, him playing to his top, and Bill Self being comfortable doing that with KJ Adams, which, again, you can think whatever likelihood that is on your end of things of all that happening.

Starting point is 00:17:23 But the middle ground is probably that he's coming off the bench somewhere between being your sixth, seventh, and eighth man and playing 12 to 20 minutes a night, giving you good shooting, giving you floor spacing, giving you offense, giving you defense, being a complimentary figure to a lot of these guys. And I think that would be very helpful for KU. And honestly, before I got into the information on this kid, I didn't know as much about him. Um, especially some of those defensive numbers that I kind of went into this expecting this to be like, okay, maybe this

Starting point is 00:17:54 is kind of a backup plan. Um, and, and I think, I guess it depends how you phrase this. Like, I think it's still a backup plan for like Jackson Robinson out there for instance or Wuga Poplar out there for instance like to me I would still be taking both of those guys over this because you don't have to question the jump up in competition as much if I were ranking them I'd probably have Poplar one Robinson two linear three I think if you were asking KU they would probably have Robinson one maybe Poplar two and Lanier three among those three. I like the defense that Poplar adds that maybe is a little bit more than Robinson, but Robinson may be more of a complete score than Poplar. So you can see it either way. But you don't have to question the level of competition in either. You could make the argument though,

Starting point is 00:18:38 that Lanier has the best defensive metrics, but again, it's at a lower level of competition. So it's hard to, where do you adjust that level of curve for where he is going up on there? But I would say this, if they, you know, maybe you're in a situation where you feel good about where you're at with some of the guys in the NBA draft combine, where you either feel good with one guy where they've kind of, you know, you've gotten indications that, Hey, if they don't stay in the draft, they're going to come to you. Or you feel good in the sense of, hey, between these two or three guys, we just feel good that the odds are we're going to get one of them. And if that's the case, then it makes sense not going out and get a kid. But it is risky at this point in time with the number of options that are kind of dwindling. If you don't have that confidence or certainty that

Starting point is 00:19:24 that's going to happen, I say just go out and take the kid if you can, because you don't want to be in a situation where, okay, now all of a sudden Chaz Lanier, because you were slow playing it, committed somewhere else. And then Jackson Robinson and Wuga Poplar, Jackson Robinson, one of them, Wuga Poplar stays in the NBA draft and Jackson Robinson follows Mark Pope to Kentucky. And then you're sitting there going, oh, I wish we would have just offered Chaz Lanier. So I think that's kind of dependent on you and the conversations you've had. That's something that KU coaches know. That's not something I know.

Starting point is 00:19:54 And obviously there's full reason to trust Bill Self because Bill Self is pretty good as his job and I'm sure he's on top of it, but that's kind of how I'd be feeling it. All right, let's continue on a little update on KU baseball and KU softball on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Finishing things up toward the end of the season here for the KU baseball and softball teams. So for softball, they just ended their season, ended up just on the wrong side of the bubble for the NCAA tournament,

Starting point is 00:20:25 so unfortunately missed out on things. But nice, solid steps shown. They finished above 500 on the season. It was their first time since the 2018 season in which they finished above 500, and they had their most wins in a season since the 2016 season. So good steps forward for KU softball. KU baseball is hoping that they end up on the right side of the bubble. Right now, it seems to be pretty close. They just won their series with Houston over the weekend, two games to one. But Houston has not been very good. Some people were wondering if they had to sweep them. But you take the series win and you run from it.

Starting point is 00:20:56 Week before, you had a series against K-State, which really would have helped if you had won two out of three. They had some close calls maybe go against them and some close losses go against them. And that certainly hurts to lose two out of three on the road, but not going to kill you. So now they're sitting at 29 and 18 on the year. They're sixth in the Big 12, 15 and 12 in the Big 12. They are 65th in the RPI, which that's the number that's tough because baseball does go off the RPI pretty heavily. And so that's going to make it tough. They are the bubble team.

Starting point is 00:21:25 You look at some recent NCAA baseball bracketologies, doesn't have Kansas in the field. I think a couple weeks ago they were one of the last four out or four in or something. Now they're not on either one of those. But I think they are close enough on the edge that if they can finish the season strong, they've still got a shot. So they have a three-game set at Texas this upcoming weekend.

Starting point is 00:21:46 You have to win that series, I think, pretty point blank. If you can win two out of three and then you do some damage in the Big 12 tournament, I don't know what that damage would be, right, because there's a lot that kind of goes into it with the number of games played and the double elimination and everything like that. But you need to win multiple games regardless of the Big 12 tournament. You probably need to win at least two out of three. Texas, certainly a sweep wouldn't hurt and would put you in a good position.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Good news is KU's playing their best ball right now. They've really gotten hot as the season's gone on. And the fact that they're in contention for this, it's been a while since they made the NCAA tournament, is a show of positive progress under Dan Fitzgerald in year two in a really real way for this KU baseball program. So we'll be keeping an eye on that if they can make that move into the tournament.

Starting point is 00:22:29 That's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page. We'll be back next time with another edition of LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Transfer Portal Target Deep Dive: North Florida Guard Chaz Lanier

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