Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Transfer Portal Target Deep Dive: Oklahoma State Guard Javon Small

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, deep dive into Javon Small, a transfer target for KU. 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. Find me on Twitter at D Johnson radio. You can get our show here with locked on Jayhawks anywhere. You get your podcast and on our YouTube page where you can like, and subscribe to the show on today's edition of locked on Jayhawks. We are deep diving Javon small.

Starting point is 00:00:38 Who's a transfer portal target for KU basketball, kind of a point guard combo guard type transfer from Oklahoma state. So we'll get into his scouting report, how he'd fit in with KU, what's the likelihood of things happening, and I guess the latest in the transfer portal now that today, on Wednesday, things are officially closed for players entering into the portal. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by Monopoly Go. I admit it, I have a competitive side, and it's a big fan of Monopoly Go, the mobile hit twist on classic Monopoly Go. I admit it, I have a competitive side and it's a big fan of Monopoly Go, the mobile

Starting point is 00:01:05 hit twist on classic Monopoly. So join your friends and download Monopoly Go now free on the App Store or Google Play Store today. Let's get into our scouting report. Who is Javon Small and what would he bring to the table as a transfer portal target? Well, Javon Small is somebody that KU fans should be familiar with because you played against him two times this past season. He's a six foot three guard from South Bend, Indiana. He was actually, I believe, originally recruited by Joe Dooley at the time, who's now one of the KU assistant coaches when he was the head coach at East Carolina, which is where he spent his first two seasons then he transferred to Oklahoma State where he was last season in Stillwater he's going to be a senior this upcoming season with one final

Starting point is 00:01:50 season of play his final season in East Carolina he averaged 15.8 points per game 5.6 assists 4.8 rebounds 1.2 steals per game uh efficiency wasn't great 40 percent from the field 33 from three but 85 at the foul line, but the counting numbers are fantastic there. And then last season, obviously it was a bad Big 12 team with the Cowboys, but he averaged 15.1 points, 4.7 rebounds, 4.1 assists, one steal per game. Those are really good counting sets. Again, the efficiency was actually really good, 44% from the field, 37.5% from three. That's on 5.33 point attempts

Starting point is 00:02:26 per game. And he was also almost 87% on free throws this past season. You know, it's a little bit like, honestly, Jalen Coleman lands coming out of Iowa State where that Iowa State team was way worse than what this Oklahoma State team was, but it was like the worst team in the Big 12. You're putting up big points, but how much does it matter on kind of a losing team i think javon small probably better more complete player than that and again oklahoma state last year even though they were one of the worst teams the big 12 was still better than that iowa state team of jaylen coleman lands which like went defeated in conference play but where did javon small excel according to Synergy? Well, he was in the 60th percentile, so above average in pick and roll as a ball handler. He was in the 78th percentile, that's a good number, in spot-up shooting.

Starting point is 00:03:11 He shot 39% on spot-up threes, where he was also 37.5% on spot-up threes at East Carolina the year before. Though, that was a little bit lower volume, but still that's, you know, backpack years of solid shooting to increase the sample size. He was in the 70th percentile in transition scoring, the 72nd percentile in isolation scoring this past year. So somebody who can get his own shot off the dribble, 81st percentile in handoffs. That's something that KU likes to do. 91st percentile in all jump shots when you combine everything for the jumper and this is the big one here 98th percentile for Javon Small this past season in catch and shoot overall from three.

Starting point is 00:04:07 He was 35% on guarded catch and shoot threes. He was 58% on unguarded catch and shoot threes. So clearly, you know, somebody who did have to handle the ball a lot for Oklahoma State because he was one of the best or maybe the best player on the team this past year for the Cowboys. You go to Kansas, you're going to get some more off-the-ball shots as opposed to having to always create for yourself. And he excelled at that this past season to where it makes you think that, yeah, he could really have an even more efficient season shooting the ball

Starting point is 00:04:35 if you were to be in that type of role at a Kansas or some other school. He was also 83rd percentile in dribble jumpers, so able to, again, going back to the isolation scoring, get his own shot off the dribble. He wasst percentile runner so at least above average and hitting that little floater runner shot he did struggle shooting at the rim and scoring on two-point shots so more of a three-point shooter but it was something that you know it came at least common enough but it wasn't something that was overly efficient I think the big question here is what you would be getting from three. The numbers we just went over were really good from three point range and 37%

Starting point is 00:05:11 over 37% for three and the big 12 at Oklahoma state is awesome, especially on high volume, which it was, but his first two years at East Carolina left a little bit, something to be desired there from three, where there is a little bit of, okay, what's the true number here. He shot just 22% in his freshman year at East Carolina from three, 33% his sophomore year at East Carolina from three. If you got that three-point shooting, you wouldn't be very happy. But again, 98th percentile in catch and shoot at Oklahoma State. Okay, what if we go back to the year before? Well, he was in the 16th percentile in catch-and-shoot opportunities

Starting point is 00:05:47 his last season in East Carolina. He went just 25% from three on catch-and-shoot threes his final season at ECU. So you're seeing much differences there. But what's tough to decipher is, as we know, in college basketball and college sports, and typically sports in general, especially for guys who are 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, you're going to get better.

Starting point is 00:06:05 And one of the biggest things we see get better over the course of time in college basketball typically is the shooting and the consistency of what you're going to play with. So it would add up to say that, okay, he went from 22% to 33% to 37% from three. And his catch and shoot threes went from not very good to really good this past season. It would make sense that you would see exponential growth, and that's totally entirely possible. But do you normally see 25% on catch and shoot threes to 47% on catch and shoot threes? That feels like a bit of an outlier jump.

Starting point is 00:06:37 So where is the real numbers? The real number for catch and shoot threes may be closer to 35%, 36%. That's still valuable, but I don't know, maybe it changes things a little bit differently. So obviously the reason I mentioned this is because the three point shooting is super important for a guy who struggles shooting around the rim and on two point shots. And you know, he has a good rebounder for a guard position and is a good passer obviously, and is going to bring some other stuff to the table, but that's one of the biggest reasons you'd be bringing him in, three-point shooting and scoring ability.

Starting point is 00:07:07 So if there are some questions about one of those, it becomes kind of interesting. He did not play better in the Big 12 games. That's another thing that you could maybe hold against him. The points per game was still 15.1, which is good, but the efficiency dipped. It was down to 33% from three in Big 12 only games. So again, that goes back in line with what is the real three-point shooting. And that number was only 31.8% from three in the regular season Big 12 games for Javon Small. But then he went off in their Big 12 tournament, lost to UCF. So that number finished up at 33% between all Big 12 competition. He was also up to over three and a

Starting point is 00:07:41 half turnovers per game in Big 12 play. And in the two games against Kansas, he combined for just 10 total points over the two games. So five points per game on four of 20 shooting, only 20%. So you're talking about somebody you want to know, can they play up better against better competition? That wasn't always the case. In total for his career against Ken Palm top 100 opponents which was over 32 games he's down to 32.7 percent from three and in his 15 career games against Ken Palm top 50 opponents he's down to 28.9 percent from three uh he also hasn't played on a lot of good teams I would say Oklahoma State was 117th on Ken Palm and went just 12 and 20 at East Carolina.

Starting point is 00:08:26 He was 15 and 15 one season and 16 and 17 the other season. They were ranked 179th and 180th on Ken Palm. So you total it up. That means that collectively he went 43 and 62 over three seasons. Hasn't been on a team who finished in the top 100 on Ken Palm. You know, is part of that him is that just crap luck that he's been a good player but hasn't had supporting talent around him is a little bit of both who knows part of the reason why could be the defense he ranked in just the 13th percentile on defense according to synergy so he was not a good defender this

Starting point is 00:09:00 past year for Oklahoma State so this is an offensive first guard who can create his own shot and does that very well. Shot it extremely well last season, including from three, with some nuance in the past years, but has a year of Big 12 experience under his belt. How exactly would that all fit into KU? Is he an auto take? Let's discuss both of those things coming up in just a moment

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Starting point is 00:10:05 Visit Fanduel.com slash LockedOn. Make your first bet and automatic win. Fanduel, America's number one sportsbook. How would Javon Small fit in with KU? Is he a take? Is he an auto-take? All that. And then we'll get on to the latest in the transfer portal on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making us your first listen every day, and thank you to the everydayers tuning

Starting point is 00:10:28 in to each and every episode. We are set to have a deep dive on tomorrow's show, talking about Jackson Robinson. So that'll be a fun one as he just entered the portal from BYU. So how would Javon Small fit with KU? Well, this would be an insanely wide range of outcomes that honestly I'm having trouble nailing down more than a lot of the other guys that we've done these deep dives with. The high end is he is a starter if you were able to bring him on.

Starting point is 00:11:00 That he's starting next to DeJuan Harris as kind of a scoring guard. He's 6'3", so you feel good playing him next to a smaller next to DeJuan Harris is kind of a scoring guard he's 6'3 so you feel good playing him you know next to a smaller guard DeJuan Harris who fits really well in terms of DeJuan's the defensive guy and DeJuan Smalls the offensive guy and creating shots and can hit open threes you know playing off of DeJuan or in those catch and shoot settings working off Hunter Dickinson or something and maybe it's DeJuan starting at the one DeJuan Small at the two Rylan Griffin at three Stewart the four Hunter at the one javon small at the two uh rylan griffin at three store at the four hundred at the five and you have kj coming off the bench maybe you don't

Starting point is 00:11:28 think that's possible that kj would come off the bench and then maybe you know you're you're talking about okay maybe javon small is now a six-man type off the bench right and then it's a competition between javon small and zeke mayo and i guess guess even like Elmarco Jackson about who that first guard off the bench or who that sixth man is going to kind of be. And then there's the floor outcome where what we talked about Jalen Coleman lands, like, are you just putting up numbers on bad teams? Do you end up in that role? And you end up being the eighth man on the team where it's like, yeah, you're going to play a handful of minutes, maybe 10 minutes a game.

Starting point is 00:12:00 Some games you're going to play more if you're hitting shots. Some games you're going to play more if you're hitting shots. Some games you're going to play more if there's injuries or foul trouble. But in some of the big games, you might get reverted to a much smaller role depending on what happens. I think the most interesting competition, if you brought on Javon Small, would have to be between Small and Mayo. Because when you look at it, I think there's a lot of similarities really both ways between the two players. Mayo had the better counting stats overall and Zeke Mayo had better efficiency, but

Starting point is 00:12:30 Javon Small did it against Big 12 opponents to where you could point to and say, well, you know, if Javon Small was in the Summit League, he would have had just as good of stats, right? Then again, if you point to the Big 12 stats from Javon Small, maybe you say, okay, but his stats really did suffer once he got into Big 12 play, and so maybe that's not always the case. South Dakota State was ranked 138th on Ken Palm. Oklahoma State was ranked 117th, so you could actually say that the teams were pretty similar there.

Starting point is 00:13:00 But the two did play three common Big 12 teams, Kansas State, UCF, and Iowa State. And in those games, Zeke Mayo averaged 14 points per game. Javon Small, he played those three teams five times collectively, averaged over 14 points per game, 14.2, so very similar there. Zeke Mayo shot about 59% true shooting percentage, which calculates free throw shooting, three-point shooting, two-point shooting, a little bit of everything

Starting point is 00:13:24 to kind of give you a number of uh things that are weighted a little bit differently and javon small is at 61 true shooting percentage so actually slightly better there for javon small against common opponents still small sample size three games versus five games now zeke mayo did have better defensive grades on synergy than javon small had. And Zeke Mayo is a little bit bigger. Maybe he has another inch or two on what Javon Small is bringing to the table. I think Zeke Mayo has even more range for his three-point shooting, more gravity there, but maybe Javon Small has a little bit more quickness to him. So I do think it would be a heck of a competition is basically what I'm trying to say. And that would probably determine who wins that competition of

Starting point is 00:14:05 who is the first guard, you know, possibly off the bench. If right now you assume the starting lineup is DeJuan, Ryland Griffin, AJ store, KJ Adams, and Hunter Dickinson, but maybe there's a world where it is DeJuan Harris and, uh, Zeke Mayo, or hypothetically, if you brought in Devon small, and then back to the idea of Griffin at three store at the fourth, you're able to convince KJ to come off the bench. Who knows what's going to exactly happen there, but you know, either way there is kind of that, that wide range of outcomes, because if Zeke Mayo, if you were to bring him in, does beat him out, then all of a sudden it's now a competition between Javon small and a

Starting point is 00:14:34 Marco Jackson. And that's more of a different competition because whereas with Mayo, you're bringing on guys who, you know, small and Mayo are similar in what they'd be asked to do and what you brought them in for offense offense and shooting. El Marco more so right now would be kind of your backup point guard type, good defender type, who's a really good athlete. So kind of apples to oranges a little bit more in some ways. He is a take. I would say at the end of the day is Javon Small, a guy who, you know, has real shooting ability and has a year of Big 12 experience and put up

Starting point is 00:15:04 some big totals. He would make your team better. So he's a take. But as we've talked about, there are different levels of the take game here. There's the guys like Ryland Griffin who he said, you take them and you don't worry about anything else. You take them and you make them a top priority. I don't know that this would be top priority for me. Like I would probably have Kobe Bray a higher, and I don't know that maybe the ship has sailed there with the Kobe Bray stuff, but I would probably have him higher. I would have a guy we're going to do a deep dive on later this week with Jackson Robinson.

Starting point is 00:15:35 I would have him higher kind of on the take list, but you know, he would definitely be one where it's like, Hey, if this or this happens, we'd love to have you. And I think that would be very smart because in the specific role he would be asked to do, either a bench player or, I don't know, a guy who can come in and start or play big minutes, whatever it is, you feel like you're getting real production there. And I guess you could say, well, why would you not take Javon Small over Kobe Brea? Because Small maybe is the better overall player.

Starting point is 00:16:06 The reason why I would take Brea specifically in that position is because, you know, if you're going to be the fourth or fifth option on the court, we don't know if Javon Small would feel comfortable doing that because at Oklahoma State he was the number one option. At East Carolina he was the number one option. What are you going to do? How are you going to justify the fourth or fifth option? Now his catch-and-shoot numbers tell you that he should be okay.

Starting point is 00:16:26 But with Kobe Brea, he's been that guy before. He came off the bench. He's been, you know, fourth or fifth option on the court, a guy who, hey, I'm comfortable sitting in the corner and waiting for my three-point shot to come. And if it comes, great. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I just spaced the floor.

Starting point is 00:16:38 So you take the guy who you know what the role would specifically be. But I don't know. The ship might have sailed on both these guys anyway. And I don't know the likelihood of either ends up at Kansas but uh Devon Small good player good score his impact would depend on what you're getting from three and how much you can work out of him on the defensive end but definitely a take would make KU a better team I just think you probably kick some tires on other guys and and maybe he's not even that interested in the role specifically either too, just because, you know, from his standpoint, everything we just said about the competition, there's no guarantee he's going to be a starter. And there is a real chance that he

Starting point is 00:17:14 could come to Kansas and end up being the eighth man. And if you're Javon Small, what do you want? Do you want competition and a chance to be a starter on a team who could win a national title? If that's what you want to do, then great, tip of the cap. Or do you want to be the star of the show somewhere, which is what you've kind of been in years past, but try to be on a little bit better team? I don't know. Maybe that's what he wants.

Starting point is 00:17:33 Who knows exactly what he does want? I do find it interesting, though, that there were a lot of people kind of rumoring that, oh, he was going to go to Ole Miss, but he finished out the visit, didn't commit there. So maybe that leaves the door a little bit open for Kansas or some of these other schools who knows what exactly he wants. I don't know how likely it is that Kansas ends up with him, but it seems like at least there was some interest,

Starting point is 00:17:51 maybe at least initially. So maybe that gets reignited in some way or another, and we'll see what happens there. All right. Latest transfer portal news. Also KU women's basketball has a big time transfer portal pickup with Ellie Evans. We're going to discuss that on in a moment on Locked on Jayhawks.

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Starting point is 00:19:28 to UConn in like it was like June or July or something like that um now grad transfers are on the same sideline now the player doesn't have to commit by the hard date they just have to be in the portal by that date so uh certainly you have a better idea of who the final kind of pieces in that portal certainly are now KU women's the final kind of pieces in that portal certainly are. Now, KU Women's Basketball made a huge addition in that portal. Ellie Evans, and to me, this is their biggest pickup so far in the transfer portal, their third transfer portal pickup. She's a big guard, 6'3 guard, kind of a wing type from Edwardsville, Illinois,

Starting point is 00:20:00 who spent her last two seasons at North Dakota State. Just like the men's teams with really both the Dakota State schools, like they're good at basketball, both men's and women's. She played in the WNIT each of the last two seasons. They won a game this past year in the WNIT. And immediately she came in as a Summit League honorable mention pick, an all-defensive player and freshman of the year in her first year she averaged 13.5 points almost five rebounds on 44 32 83 shooting splits and then in year two this past season she was even better all summit league first team she notched 15.5 points five

Starting point is 00:20:36 rebounds over two assists and a steal on a block per game on 47.5 percent shooting get this one 45.7 percent from three on 4.83 point attempts per game, and 92% at the foul line. Knockdown shooter. And as far as how she performed against power conference opponents, you know, a bit of a mixed bag early, 10 points, four rebounds on three of eight against Creighton in one of their first couple of games, 11 points, just four of 15 early in the year against Minnesota. It was solid against Iowa State 10.6 rebounds on a 4 of 10 and then she played her best in her last game of the season which was a rematch against that same Minnesota team which she you know struggled a bit shooting in their first

Starting point is 00:21:15 go-around she was killer this time eight points on six of eight in their last game against Minnesota so was getting better at it now KU obviously lost three starters from last year's team, and that's going to be tough to replace. They've since added now Evans, Saniya Copeland, the transfer from Wisconsin, and Brittany Harshaw, a transfer from Creighton. I think if I was projecting the starting five right now for the KU women's team, I'd probably go with Saniya Copeland and Wyvett Mayberry as kind of your two lead guards. Samaya Nichols on the wing.

Starting point is 00:21:43 I would assume that Ellie Evans would be on the wing with her too. And then some sort of five, whether it's one of your returning players, like an Altaib who's coming off an injury, I believe, or somebody else or a portal pickup that they could still go out and add, which they still do have room for, because I believe they have two open scholarships currently with accounting for returnees, portal additions, and incoming freshmen. So obviously if you can add somebody with size to help replace Tyano Jackson,

Starting point is 00:22:10 that would be a logical step. But this is a really nice move to fit off of Samaya Nichols. And the beauty, too, of bringing in Ellie Evans, multiple years left to play to work with Samaya Nichols, but you get a good floor spacer and shooter. Samaya is so good at driving and has that great spin move at the lane. Samaya can shoot it, too. But she'll be able to playacer and shooter. Samaya is so good at driving and has that great spin move at the lane. Samaya can shoot it too, but she'll be able to play well and compliment and at six foot three gives

Starting point is 00:22:30 you good size that she can play, you know, kind of at the three, the four still give you a little bit of size down low if you need it. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back to get to a Jackson Robinson deep dive on tomorrow's show. We've got football Friday coming up.

Starting point is 00:22:43 KU football has a new commit for the class of 2025, the running back position. So we'll get to that and plenty more with our upcoming episodes of LOJ. See you next time.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Transfer Portal Target Deep Dive: Oklahoma State Guard Javon Small

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