Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Blow Out Texas Southern + Recap of the Past Three KU Basketball Games

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball team blew out Texas Southern last night in Allen Fieldhouse. Analysis from MJ Rice and Joe Yesufu's strong performances. Plus, a full recap of the past three KU games against Wisconsin, Tennessee and the Tigers. How much is the center position and bench a cause for concern for Bill Self's squad?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!SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnCollege to learn more.UpsideDownload the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/locked to get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more.Omaha SteaksOmaha Steaks is a gift from the heart – a gift that will be remembered with every unforgettable bite. Order with complete confidence today knowing you’re ordering the very best. Visit OmahaSteaks.com use promo code LOCKEDON at checkout to get that EXTRA $30 OFF your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we recap the last about week or so of Kansas basketball. We'll go a little bit over the Wisconsin and Tennessee games that we never really got around to from the battle for Atlantis and then the game last night against Texas Southern. 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. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find us on YouTube. And you can also hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 on KLWN. If you have anything you want the show to talk about, hit us up in the comments section on YouTube or at D Johnson Radio on Twitter. And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to recap the last week or so of Kansas basketball. Didn't have an episode after the Wisconsin or Tennessee games. Yesterday's episode, we talked KU football against K-State. So I wanted to go into those a little bit more, but also we'll talk about the game last night against Texas Southern. And then we'll finish things off with just kind of overall takeaways from what we've seen over the last week and a half or so. But first, today's episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by Omaha Steaks.

Omaha Steaks, great stuff. You can get it. It's super easy to ship with the box and everything, and then it arrives at your door, and you have all this great stuff. You just think of steaks, but they have great sides as well, so check out Omaha Steaks. Kansas beats Wisconsin, loses to Tennessee, beats Texas Southern last night. Let's start with the Wisconsin game first.

It was a game that went to overtime, probably had no business getting there. Kansas had several times where they, I don't know, maybe got up 6, 8, 10 points. I mean, you're up double digits. You're up 14, 15 points. It felt kind of similar to the Dayton game last year, where you're in the semifinal round of your conference tournament, and you have this big lead, and you're looking great, and then things kind of start to disappear for you in the second half,

and you kind of blow the lead, and they have all the momentum. It felt like that was going to be the case, but Kansas was actually the one who hit the crazy buzzer beater. If you remember from that Dayton game, they hit a buzzer beater that hit off the side of the rim and bounced in and whatnot. This time, Kansas gets the crazy buzzer beater off the Zach Clemens missed three and Bobby Pettiford crazy hang in the air shot. They had to hit heroics at the end of regulation, though, too. Zach Clemens misses the corner three, saves it off the rebound from kind of the baseline area and gets it into Kevin McCuller, who gets an open three and knocks it down.

It was a game that looked like you were going to run away with early. Wisconsin, especially with their offensive struggles, like they scored 43 the day before against Dayton. They put up 43 against you in the second half. So that wasn't great. Your defense kind of fell apart in the second half. It was really one guy, Tyler Wall, just went off in the second half in an overtime against you, and you couldn't really figure out how to stop him. He just kind of went on a heater.

Sometimes that happens against other opponents. I still think this Kansas team is pretty good defensively. Can they be elite? That's a fair question because for this team to be really good, if the offense isn't one of the top 15, 20 offenses in the country, they're going to have to be like a top five defense if they want to be in that elite discussion right now they're more like a top 10 top 15 defense so they do need to take that next step and that would be an example of times where like there are certain stretches in a lot of these games where it feels like maybe a 10 minute stretch that the

Kansas defense goes from being like that elite defense to just being like an average defense and they need to kind of eliminate that. But also the inability to kind of close things out, and then you end up behind and having to overcome that. Jalen Wilson, phenomenal in that game, had 29 points, 14 rebounds. He didn't really get anything from the bench outside of the Bobby Pettiford game-winning shot. The center position was kind of a mess.

Slow start from Kevin McCuller in that one, but really picked it up, ended up having a great game for you. Grady Dix struggled. The teams that have the ability to kind of face guard him and really put an emphasis on getting out to him, you know, before he even catches the ball defensively are the ones that are going to have the best success. And he's not someone who's going to kind of beat you consistently off the dribble. Now he will be able to beat you off like back cuts and stuff if you play too

tight with him. But the good news for Kansas is that if teams are playing super tight to him, it should open up spacing around the floor for other players. Haven't always been able to take advantage of that. And the fact that they don't have the guy they can just throw it to down low on the post to where, hey, they can't double him because they threw it to him on the post on the same side as Grady Dick and the defender on the same side as Grady Dick.

And the defender has to stay tight with Grady Dick. They can't come down to help. Like Kansas doesn't have that ability. So it makes things a lot different right now on the offensive side of the ball. Bobby Pettiford, though, big shot, hero of the game. Good for Bobby, especially now that he's injured to have that one to go back to. He had been struggling coming into the game and really was injured to have that one to go back to he had been struggling coming into the game and really was struggling even in that one that was his only points again of the game

big time moment though to come up with that shot for Kansas they come out with the win it's all that matters in the end I guess even though there are certain things that that didn't look great for KU and then the next game against Tennessee, the offense absolutely stunk. You were down eight points at half, despite the fact that you forced 17 Tennessee turnovers in the first half, which was just mind-blowing for me. Tennessee shot really well from three. You maybe didn't get around screens as hard

as you possibly could, and you just got kind of out-physicaled. Like, Tennessee is a very physical team. They are number three on Ken Palm. They are number one on defense on Ken Palm. This is a very good Tennessee team. Like, don't let the fact that they were ranked 22nd coming into that game in the AP poll fool you.

That is a very good team, and they blew out Gonzaga in the exhibition. They had kind of a weird loss to Colorado, who's been just a weird team that has beaten good opponents and lost to bad ones. I just view that in the same milk of, like, hey, Kansas lost to Dayton last year. Like Tennessee lost to Colorado this year. Like weird things happen. Center struggles, certainly real.

Hurts you in pulling down rebounds. The Tennessee big men, like the main three with Adu, who was a guy Kansas was actually recruiting and had nine rebounds in the game off the bench for Tennessee. Him, like Vlasicic or however you pronounce it, the big seven foot two dude for Tennessee. And then their other big men, the like six foot nine power forward. They combined for like 22 rebounds in that game. That was a problem for Kansas as it kind of has been all season long.

And we kind of saw what happens when Grady Dick and or Jalen Wilson do not go off in a game. Right now, the Kansas offense doesn't have a lot of other options. Turns out, we found out because Kevin McCuller missed the Texas Southern game, he injured his groin against Tennessee, and he tried to play through it. I'm sure that certainly impacted things. If you look at the statute, he actually had an efficient game. He only took like four or five shots. That would probably explain it. I'm sure that certainly impacted things. If you look at the statute, he actually had an efficient game. He only took like four or five shots. That would probably explain it. He wasn't able to be as aggressive and that would have certainly helped you with another offensive

option. With Jalen Wilson struggling and then Grady Dick unable to get open shots because Tennessee was able to defend him off the ball really well. And then you have DeJuan Harris, who at times when Kansas has needed a bucket, he had those back-to-back games where he scored 14 points. He actually has shown the ability to at times make tough shots for you, but he fouled out. He was in foul trouble. So you didn't really have any offensive options.

That's kind of a throw the tape in the dumpster game for me. In that standpoint, DeJuan Harris, if he does foul out again this season, which I don't really expect to, probably won't be in 17, 18 minutes like it was in that one. Bobby Pettiford was hurt, so there's an initiator gone. Joe Yesfu actually played pretty well. That could be a big takeaway from that, 14 points. We get to the Texas Southern game where he kind of built off that.

You look at the inability of five men to score, which that's kind of a consistent, but just a lot of things in that game that I look at and say, okay, well, Tennessee's a good team. A lot of bad things happen to you. It happens. You know, you're, you're not going to win every game. You're not a perfect team.

It happens. So I guess where I'm left with that is they're obvious again worries about the offense and who's going to be you know the third go-to option or what happens if Jalen does struggle in like an NCAA tournament game for instance can you pick it up around him because in that game he showed not really the case but again it's early Bill Self talked about how this team's going to be better in January, in February. I still believe that to be the case. They're 7-1 right now. Still have a big win over Duke.

I think they're going to be just fine. In a moment, let's switch over to the game last night. Kansas takes down Texas Southern in a blowout win in Allen Fieldhouse. We'll get to takeaways from that in just a moment here with Locked on Jayhawks. But first, this episode is brought to you by Omaha Steaks. Fall is in the air, and that means fall grilling with cookouts, tailgate parties, and so much more. Luckily, the flavor experts

at Omaha Steaks have made it easy to savor all the flavors of all with their mouth-watering assortments of perfectly aged steaks, ultra juicy burgers, and easy to prepare comfort meals that are ready in a flash. Now's the perfect time to load up on this incredible flavor and take advantage of 50% off site-wide by shopping their friends and family sale. Go to almaststeaks.com and use promo code LOCKEDON at checkout to get $30 off your order. I love the fillets. I love the gourmet potatoes. They have the great sides that go with it. It's perfect for grilling or even on the stove and for a nice dinner or a big meal with family. Don't wait.

Go to OmahaSteaks.com. Stock up today. Omaha Steaks isn't just steaks. It is the best steak of your life, guaranteed. And don't forget to score that extra $30 off your order when you use Locked On at checkout. You won't come close to getting this kind of quality at the grocery store. omahasteaks.com promo code locked on at checkout minimum order may be required kansas takes down texas southern game that was never really close they covered the i saw that the spread opened at like 24 and then eventually it worked up to 26 a lot of money was coming in on kansas they still covered by a

couple possessions kind of a nice bounce back went good to have those after the tennessee game both for your confidence and to have the ability to experiment with different guys and certainly there was a lot of lineup experimentation that came not just because the score was out of hand and because the opponent also because you kind of didn't really have any other choice than to experiment with different lineups. Kevin McCuller missed the game with a groin injury. Bobby Pettiford was still out. You're still nursing the injuries of Kyle Cuff and Cam Martin

that left you with nine scholarship players last night. But it's not just that because you still go, oh, well, nine players, you can have a nine-man rotation. That's not that crazy. Four of those nine, I mean, KJ Adams can play the four, which we saw a bit last night, but four of those five players are centers. It doesn't leave you with a lot of lineup versatility to play different guards or different wings. I think that we saw a lot of lineups last night that we're probably not going to see again this season, or if we do, it'll be kind of in weird moments

against lesser opponents or where you're up big and you're just experimenting with stuff. I don't read too much into some of the lineup stuff, like with KJ Adams at the four and playing a center like Ernest Uday or Zuby Ejifer or Zach Clements at the five. That's probably not something we're going to see much this season, unless there are other injury or foul trouble woes. So I guess it's good that you experimented with that.

But a lineup where you have Joe Yesifu, who did play very well last night, but KJ Adams at the four and Ernest Uday at the five, it's not going to be a very successful offensive lineup. Nonetheless, Joe Yesifu, let's start with that because there's only certain takeaways you can have in a game like this. Like, I'm not going to come away from this saying, see, look, Jalen Wilson, he's this national player of the year candidate. See, he did it again last night against Texas Southern. Like, no, that's, that's expected of you against Texas Southern. If you're a National Player of the Year candidate. Grady Dick goes off. Like, same thing. But Joe Yusufu, been a nice surprise over the past two games. The fact that he's been able to stack them up back-to-back games

is really, really good because we haven't seen that consistency from him in his time at Kansas. 14 points back-to-back games. He played 27 minutes off the bench because he needed him to with DeJuan's foul trouble and Bobby Pettiford getting injured against Tennessee. In this game, he got the start with Kevin McCuller out, which, I mean, you didn't really have any other options. It was either starting KJ at the four and, you know, starting a five-man or starting MJ Rice or starting Joe Yesfu. Just had that good game.

That was probably what you were going to do. But he scored 14 points again, looked confident with the shot, was hitting open shots, was hitting them in transition. He had the one blow-by move that he had in the first half where he angles into the rim and lays it up and in. That was really impressive stuff from Joe Yesfu. We've said it all along. I'll say it again. The key for Joe Yesfu is making shots.

It's a simple basketball game. Make shots, right? And for him to carve out a role on this team, Kansas is a team that needs offense. They need shot creation. They need shot making. They need outside shooting. Joe Yesifu can provide those things

based on the potential of what we think he can be because of what we saw him do at Drake and what we've seen him do in flashes like the past two games. That's the key for him playing a big role on this team. Maybe not a big role, but a role big enough that he is part of the rotation come March. 10, 15, 20 minutes a game. He can provide that extra scoring punch that you could really use, maybe similar to what Remy Martin did for you last year,

just maybe a little bit less, you know, Remy Martin light, I guess you would say. So that was impressive to see. That was important to see, and you could really use his continued growth. And maybe this is an opportunity with Bobby Pettiford out for him to get more run and gain more confidence, because I don't think it's something where he just can't physically do it. Like this dude has like a 40-inch vertical. He clearly has shown the ability in past times in his college career to be able to do it at the highest stage. He put up like 25 points on that USC team that blew out Kansas

in the 2021 NCAA tournament. But for him, we've heard from Bill Self, he just wants to do right by the coaches so bad. And he just takes everything the coaches say and tries to execute them so well. You wonder if sometimes he just gets in his own head and overthinks the game. So seeing him be able to do those things back-to-back games, maybe this can be a freeing experience for him, and he would certainly be an impactful player for Kansas

because of what he provides, that there's not a ton of players on this team that can do just that, especially from that lead guard or two guard kind of position. MJ Rice, also fantastic game. It was kind of the MJ Rice, Joe Yesifu game. He kind of showed a whole repertoire for scoring, right? You saw the three point shooting. I don't think he's really someone that is going to be shooting threes like off the bounce right now, but if you give him

an open three and he has time to kind of get set and get it out in transition or an open three in the half court he can hit them at a good enough rate that makes it a thing he also showed the ability as we know as being a great transition player driver dunker can lay it up and in we saw some of the floater game he was really impressive overall the question now is because we've seen two really impressive games for him we saw the one against gosh i said north dakota state uh where he off off the bench in his first game and i think it was north dakota state and we've seen two games now from it now he does have the injuries in between he has the kidney stone so that would excuse the games in between where he hasn't been as effective as those two games.

But now the key is, can we see it against like a power five opponent? I guess in basketball, it's like the big six conferences with the Big East. Can we see it against a big six opponent? Can we see it against a quality opponent as opposed to one that you're just blowing out and completely overmatched and where you are just a much better athlete than the opposition. For example, this Thursday against Seton Hall. I don't know if Kevin McCuller is going to be back for the game or not. They kind of left it up in the air during the postgame press conference. That means even more time for him, which means also more opportunity. But if you do it against a big conference opponent,

then it starts to feel more real. Otherwise, right now, it's just you're just dominating lesser opponents. That's the next step for this, but that was a good first sign for MJ Rice because he's kind of in the same ilk of Joe Yesfu. He can provide some things for you that you don't have all the way through the lineup and can be a nice complimentary piece for you playing 15, 20, 25 minutes a game off the bench. Or I guess hypothetically, maybe at some point, if MJ Rice keeps playing like that, we get to a point where we say, what if you start Jalen Wilson at the five and you bring MJ Rice into the starting lineup? I don't know if that would ever happen, but point is there's an opportunity for him to

play a big role on the team, even if it's coming in as that sixth man and providing a big scoring bunch and giving you an extra athlete on the team, even if it's coming in as that sixth man and providing a big scoring bunch and giving you an extra athlete on the perimeter. By the way, DeJuan Harris reminds me a lot of Cassius Winston. If you remember with Michigan State, Cassius Winston was so great in pick and roll and finding the open guy, and that led to just an instant high floor for what your offense could be. The difference in the KU offense with DeJuan on the floor when he's not on the floor is pretty remarkable so far this season. And he's similar to Cassius Winston in that like

Winston was never taken like off movement threes or really not taking many like pull up jump shots either. He could in the mid range and he would, but it was more of like, hey, you went under a screen kind of like in the Frank Mason way of doing things. With DeJuan, we haven't seen that yet. That would be the next progression in his game. But he's more of like a set shooter, and he's a great facilitator, great defender, just very cerebral game with DeJuan that kind of reminds me in certain ways of what Cassius Winston did,

who great, unbelievable college player. Still no clue what to expect from the center position. I really like Zuby. I think I'm on Team Zuby officially. That could also change next game. So I guess not officially. But I like the fact that he rebounds the basketball. We're going to, on tomorrow's show, do a deep dive into how Kansas has done the bigs defensively

and how they've done in certain regards with rebounding and defensively down low. And I think Zuby can provide some things for you, which we'll get to tomorrow. I just, I just don't know though what to expect. I mean, Zach Clements,

he's going to have to start shooting if he wants a bigger role. And that hasn't happened yet. Shot like 40% his senior year at Sunrise Christian Academy. I know that's high school, but you would think that at least means that he is a good shooter, and I don't know if it's a loss of confidence or what, but we haven't seen him be able to make it. Ernest Uday has really struggled ever since, I think, the North Dakota State game.

And then with Zuby, he's been good at rebounding, but not doing a ton else, though. I did like that play where he got the offensive rebound and found the open shooter with Joe Yesfu on the perimeter. He missed the three. Otherwise, that would have been a good assist for him, but showed some skill for Zuby. But overall, nothing's really been put in stone for the center position. Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to our just overall takeaways from the past three games and do

I guess inventory stock check on where Kansas is right now with locked on Jayhawks. All right, overall takeaways from the game. KU just needs the bench to be more successful. They were last night. It's a lot easier against lesser opponents. You had MJ Rice go off coming off the bench. You had solid rebound numbers from Ernest Uday

and Zuby Ejifer off the bench. But prior to last night, over the basically previous, from the Duke game on, so the Duke game, Southern Utah, and then the three Battle for Atlantis games, the last five games before last night, the KU bench had totaled over 200 minutes. They'd scored 30 points, 29 rebounds. Basically worked out that if you turned it into a one individual 30 minute per game player, they would be averaging like four points, four rebounds per game.

The bench has not been providing much for you again last night. They did. And hey, what do you know? You went off for a big game also against a lesser opponent. You need the bench to provide a punch for this team when they don't have automatic offense all throughout the lineup in the starting lineup and they don't have that interior presence. You need those guys to come off the bench firing and giving you energy,

giving you a lot on that offensive side specifically, but also with the rebounding battle in every regard. It's just the offensive side is probably the most important from what you could get from your bench in terms of the player personnel, what they could provide, and what you need. The center position, just an absolute mess right now. As I mentioned, I like Zuby, as I said, but neither guy between Zuby, Ernest, and Clements are carving out more of a role than the other, and you really could use one too. KJ Adams, really good defender, gives you possibilities as a switchable five man, really good offensive rebounder, makes a ton of hustle plays for you,

actually good on lobs and making dunk catches. And I think they showed a little last night what he can do in a short roll situation because he is actually a good passer. And I think that'll be something they explore more to use him on offense so that he's not just someone the defense isn't respecting. Like if you can get him the ball in the high post and he can make good passes or drive to the rim and finish, that would be super helpful for you but he struggles as a defensive rebounder you need someone to come in and be able to man that down

because that's a very big key of defense you can't get a stop unless you come up with the basketball at the end of it that's why you see a lot of times like defensive player of the year in the NBA it's one of the guys who had the highest number of defensive rebounds. It's not just about shot blocking and altering shots. You have to clear the defensive possession with the defensive rebound defense. I think I said this earlier can be good, but right now it's not great yet. That I would imagine is going to get better. You have new players in their young players who are getting used to talking and knowing when to switch, knowing the scheme, is going to get better. You have new players in there, young players who are getting used to talking and knowing when to switch, knowing the scheme, knowing the system.

I would also imagine KU, because we've seen this with Bill Self, he, as the season goes on, especially once we get to conference play, will adjust how they play ball screens especially. We saw a couple years ago they started to go into that icing. I'm not into the X's and O's enough to tell you the difference here, like hard hedging or whatnot, maybe playing drop coverage. Here's just different terms that they could possibly do. Again, I'm not going to break down what they could or couldn't do, what they're doing or not doing right now. I would imagine some of that stuff is going to get changed up or altered to the specific personnel but that's part of why it'd be more beneficial to pick one guy

because maybe for a guy like Ernest Uday what if he's better at icing ball screens or what if Zuby Ejifer is better in drop coverage so that if you could find your one center that's going to play a lion's share of the minutes with KJ Adams so like KJ's playing 20 minutes a game the other center's playing 20 minutes a game and maybe if one gets in foul trouble or you give another a look for five minutes in a specific game but you know that hey for a majority of the game we're going to play this style of defense as opposed to having to change it up based on the center that could be beneficial again though the defense has been good there's stretches and moments in time where it feels like it fades to being average that's maybe the difference between them

being an elite defense and just a good defense. And that could be the difference of this team being elite versus just being a good team. All right, that's going to do it for this edition of Locked on Jayhawks. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we're going to deep dive into the big men, how they've done rebounding and defensively against some of their recent opponents. On Thursday's show, we'll preview the Seton Hall game. And on Friday, we'll recap whatever happens in that game. Thanks for joining us today on this edition of Locked on Jayhawks. If you have anything you want to ask, comment section on YouTube,

at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter. Don't forget to subscribe to the show, whether it's anywhere you get your podcasts or through YouTube. That'll do it for today. Have a good rest of your day. I'll see some of you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later today. Bye.