Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Football Adds 4-Star Dakyus Brinkley + Ithiel Horton picks Texas over KU Basketball

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Dakyus Brinkley, a 4-star edge/defensive end from Katy, Texas, committed to the Kansas Jayhawks Football team for the class of 2024. Dak Brinkley becomes the highest graded recruit in the 247 Composite era (2010) to commit to Kansas from the high school level, and second highest since then. Lance Leipold, Jordan Peterson and the KU staff are cooking. What it means for the team, the class, what Brinkley brings scouting report wise, and how impressive a Brinkley and Deshawn Warner duo can be on the defensive line. Plus, Kansas Jayhawks basketball transfer target Ithiel Horton has opted not to visit Lawrence and instead commit to Big 12 foe Texas Longhorns, leaving Bill Self once again with a question of adding a 12th scholarship player.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, Kansas lands their highest high school football recruit ever in the 24-7 sports era. So I guess not ever, but 2010 with Dak Brinkley and Ithiel Horton, who seemed like the logical final piece of the puzzle as a transfer target for KU basketball, picks a different Big 12 school. We're discussing that on today's edition of the show. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Mark Johnson, 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 your first listen every day. Thank you to all the everydayers out there. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. Please give us a good review if you could. And you can also find us, like our show, subscribe to our show on our YouTube page with Locked on Jayhawks. On today's edition of the show, we're going to be going over Dak Brinkley, the newest commit in the class of 2024 for KU football, and also Ithiel Horton picking Texas and opting not to go on his visit to Kansas, which was supposed to be upcoming this weekend. So let's start with Dak Brinkley, who becomes the highest-rated high school recruit

that KU has ever landed in the 24-7 sports composite era. The only recruit at all that has been higher in the 24-7 composite era, which goes back to 2010, is Markel Combs. Remember him? Number one JUCO prospect came in in the Charlie Weiss era and then never really played at KU, so that didn't go very well. But sometimes with the JUCO kids, there are reasons they're in Juco and that it doesn't translate or for whatever reason just didn't work out in his time at KU. This is a whole different pair bringing

on from the high school level, which makes this even more impressive. And beyond that, you've been able to really just stack up overall now in your class of 2024 with 15 recruits so brinkley commits to ku on july 4th jordan peterson again the primary recruiter who is on just the absolute greatest like modern ku recruiting heater ever um you go back and think about some of the the great like recruiting halls or or just even guys that didn't even end up signing with ku but just committing like in recent memory you think back to what charlie weiss like at the time i think in the aftermath there's like man that juco thing like did not work out but at the time it was like wow look at all this like juco talent they're gonna be bringing in and all these immediate

players they're gonna be bringing in or when uh charlie weiss brought in like jay heaps and dane chris kind of like back to back over whatever over whatever it was, like a week span. That was like, holy cow, like that was a fun KU recruiting moment. When KU was bringing in all the Louisiana animals with like Tony Hole as the running back coach, like you get all those guys, and that was like a big moment for KU. Just some of the guys who, whether they committed or decommitted, right? Like you think of like Corian Harris or Jamar Chase and something uh like some of those exciting moments this feels

more substantial from a standpoint of like guys that you feel like there's a better chance they're all going to commit now there's you know could you lose one or two to decommit by the time fall comes around who knows maybe but it feels like with this staff, it is more organic and authentic just with this staff in general that and because the team is just in a better spot that it feels like you have less chance of that happening. And like at the end of the day, this has been as as much as David Beatty in certain classes and less miles in certain classes recruited a lot of really good players for KU and some good classes. That was the thing with this staff is like, okay, this staff might not recruit as well, but they're going to develop way more than those other classes did. And so this is even crazier

that they're recruiting even higher than those levels. And Jordan Peterson, what he is doing right now deserves absolute gigantic recognition. And it is a whole staff entirety thing. Like everybody contributes in some way or another but like what Jordan Peterson is leading here and recruiting is absolutely unbelievable for KU football so Dak Brinkley comes into the program stands at six foot three 220 pounds you're going to be looking to obviously add some weight to him again you know check that

off your bingo board of okay you football or just any football program, high school football program or college football program is bringing in a kid from high school. You're going to need to add more weight to them. Yep. That goes on the bingo board. And that's kind of the center square. Right. That's like always there. So he's from Katy, Texas, which is a very big high school in the I believe it's the Houston area and he is a top 25 edge player in both the 24-7 sports rankings where he's actually top 20 and the composite rankings where I think officially he is like 21st in those rankings he also comes in at number 259 nationally in the composite rankings with a grade of 0.9114 you're getting kids with grades of 0.8600 or higher that tends to be a big deal. Even the kids who are below that, you can develop them into something, and those can be a big deal. But from the numbers we've been looking at,

like when you're bringing in the kids of 86 or higher, basically, that tends to be a pretty big deal for KU, and this kid blows past that. I think Markel Combs was like a.92 something or somewhere in that range out of curiosity. But, yeah, I mean, he comes in with your highest grade of a high school commit in that span so with that grade that obviously gives him that ranking and you know he had offers from Texas A&M, Texas TCU, Texas Tech, Penn State, Oregon, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Baylor, Houston, SMU and more like obviously it is a long list of schools that offered him.

I know there is some talk about, well, how many of those offers were based on you came in as a sophomore and you were playing varsity football for a really good high school in Katy, Texas right away as a sophomore, and how much have you grown since that point? How many of those were just interest offers? How many of those are are offers that yeah will take you but waiting to see what this other guy does who knows but either way like the fact that you have interest from all those schools is very very impressive uh for this kid and as far

as the scouting report for Dak Brinkley he played at KD High School as I mentioned uh at KD Seven Lakes prior to his senior season which is upcoming here um track and field some participation there where he ran a 11.24 100 as a junior back in february of this year according to 24-7 sports and uh you know that for a defensive end for lineman that seems to be pretty blazing speed anytime you're getting in like the 10s is like very good uh but if you're running an 11-2-4 as a defensive end that seems very fast to me and then as far as the stats the production he put up so 2021 as a sophomore he recorded 36 tackles half a sack then 2022 as a junior 47 tackles eight tackle for loss two sacks and aumble recovery. And now upcoming will have his senior season at his high school.

Michael Swain from Fog.net did a comparison to Lonnie Phelps, but with more pro potential and better measurables. So if you're getting Lonnie Phelps, but bigger and with more potential, that's pretty exciting. Lonnie Phelps had a great season at KU, earned, I forget if it was second, third team honorable mention, whatever it was, Big 12 recognition, ended up with seven sacks on the season, right?

If you're getting a possibly better version of Lonnie Phelps, you take that in a heartbeat if you're KU. So that would be a great guy. And we talked about earlier that Deshaun Warner, like his comp for Michael Swain, was Dorrance Armstrong. If you end up with a defensive line group of Dorrance Armstrong equivalent and Lonnie Phelps equivalent, you're going to have one of the best pass rushes in the Big 12. And that's very exciting moving forward, what you could be getting with this kid.

We're going to talk more about Dak Brinkley, what he brings to the table, what it means for the class of 2024 and the D-line group moving forward. Also get into some basketball talk with Ithiel Horton picking Texas. First, though, this episode of the show is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Take your first swing at betting MLB on FanDuel and get 10 times your first bet amount in bonuses up to $200. That's right. Just bet $20 and you'll land $200 in bonus bets, win or lose.

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So sign up today and visit FanDuel.com slash locked on to get up to $200 in bonus bets. That's FanDuel.com slash locked on. FanDuel, an official partner of Major League Baseball. On to what it means for the defensive line and the future in the class of 2024 here for KU with the commitment of Dak Brinkley so I obviously mentioned multiple times here that Brinkley is your highest rated high school commit since the composite came out in 2010 well if you

just look at high school commits that are defensive ends slash edges you now have Warner and Brinkley over the last week that have committed to you and I do think it's interesting that the timing of this all with Brinkley committing like did he see Warner commit and he was that made him more likely to commit because he was like man they're getting even more good players like I want to I want to go there and everything's lining up did it make him more likely to commit because he was like oh no they took a defensive end how many more spots, they took a defensive end. How many more spots do they have for defensive ends? I like them.

Let's commit now. I don't know. But, you know, with Brinkley and Warner now, you have two of your top three highest-rated high school commits since the composite era to commit to you at the defensive end edge position two of your highest three the other one is steven parker um which that obviously didn't work out but you know he had a good season in carnet word and not all of it's going to work out right i mean if you bring

on um two really highly graded three-star recruits maybe only one of them works out but you know if you're playing the numbers game, the more you bring on, the better chance you have of it working out. But nonetheless, having two of your top three highest-graded high school commits at the edge defensive end position over the last 15 years, and you have them both in the same class, that's so impressive. And we can talk about the future of the D-line position in terms of the guys that are currently on the roster.

Jeremy Robinson can be back for another year. And whether you're talking about guys who transferred in or guys that you've brought in via the high school level over the last year or two that, you know, could work onto the roster or be upperclassmen or be, you know, contributing players by the time these two arrive or by the time these two are part of the two deep, right? But just realistically, fast forward down the road, and both of them are contributing there. The importance of having these edge players is obviously monumental. Like pass rusher is one of the most important positions in general.

But at the NFL level, you siphon down, and if you're an elite defense, you have an elite pass rusher. At the collegiate level, that's not always the case because's only only so many good pass rushers to go around those guys leave early they go to the nfl draft and uh they're such physical freaks that there there is only such a limited number of them to where once you get to college football like there are a lot of times there's there's you know a defense that could be top 25 top 20 top 15 in the country and they don't have like an elite pass rusher or they just have like an average pass rush but they're good in coverage and they're

good at mixing stuff up against you know younger quarterbacks and they're good against uh the run with pass coverage and everything and like you go back to the orange bowl team the 07 kansas team that won the 08 orange bowl that team's leading or sack leader had three and a half sacks now they did it in a lot of ways a lot of guys had two or three sacks they compounded them by having a lot of guys who could get there by having blitzes and whatnot they didn't have that elite pass rusher right and that was still like a really good defense you can get there in other ways but if you do have those guys in the college game, it sets yourself up so well. And it's hard to find those guys in the transfer portal.

Like it almost looked easy because all Kansas went out and they got Lonnie Phelps. And it's like, I'll just do that every year. That's more of a rarity than it is a commodity at this point. Like you can't count on doing that every year. So now you set yourself up for the future to have a couple of guys that you're not going to have to.

And while all these other schools are going to be looking you know looking for the bargain bin of defensive ends or you know kind of scraping the barrel for guys they can bring in via the portal you're going to be set for the future and that is so important at that position where there isn't that depth of play like it seems like there's always great receivers and corners and you know some of these skill positions running backs across college football right you don't have like once you get down to those those group of five schools once you get down to like maybe the the some of the other power five schools that aren't your household name schools you don't tend to have like a lot of great defensive linemen and offensive linemen on those schools but Kansas

is building that up you have three offensive linemen now in addition to what you already have on your roster you have these defensive ends who are very highly rated guys that could have gone to other power fives like it's a very big deal for Kansas to be able to do that and as far as what it means overall for the class of 2024 I'll go back to this graphic if you're watching on YouTube we'll talk about it here if you're listening on the podcast that you know KU now has 15 guys overall for the class of 2024. And I think if you're looking at it from, are they done? Yeah, they're probably done recruiting the edge position.

Maybe you could recruit another defensive lineman with the idea of being an interior guy. I think there's the Simmons kid. Obviously, you're still going after Bogunowski and Marsh. We'll see where that decision lies. I think that's coming up tomorrow on Friday. Seems like Michigan State is going to be the play there according to you know just some different crystal ball picks and stuff on 24 7 um but there there's some guys basically at this point where it's like

if ku sits at 15 they're probably cool with it but they have a couple guys maybe left on their their board or their their target list or whatever where it's like you're just so good that will take you no matter what but i mean at point, 15 commits for top 500 guys, that is tied for the most top 500 guys you've had since 2010. And that 2010 year, you had nine more commits in tow. Same with the top 600s with five of them. 2010, you had five, but you also had nine more total commits. Then you look at the top 1,000 commits.

You've got eight of them, and that's tied for your second most. And then you look at your percentage of your commits that are top 1000 kids over 50%, which is, you know, by far first. And then we go back to the grade number, which, you know, some classes are built differently. So this might be a better way of looking at it, guys with grades of point 8600 or higher, 11 of your 15 commits are that. You've never had another year since the composite where you've had double digits. That means about 73% of your commits are basically grades of 86 or higher. So about three quarters of your class. Last year was 64%, which is the second most you've had since 2010.

The next highest you go back to 2010 is 33 so you're more than doubling up the quant or the quality of the recruit that you're bringing in and right now the recruiting rank reflects that now the recruiting rank overall for kansas it's not going to finish in the top 40 if they're only bringing on 15 16 17 commits it probably won't even finish in the top 50 because there's going to be other schools at 2025 commits that are going to be higher than them but the quality of recruit makes this that it like is a top 50 class at that point in time and that's really impressive for what ku has been able to do um so you know at this point they could be done with the class of 2024 and it'll be just fine or they could add one of those guys that they are going after just in terms of being like

they're a luxury edition they're the cherry on top. They're players that if we have to go to the transfer portal to fill that position or if we don't get another high school kid, we're fine at this point. But we'd love to still add Bogunowski or Marsh or Simmons or any of these other kids where it's

like you're just so good that we're going to take in. We're going to figure out the numbers later. We're going to finish up here with Locked on Jayhawks with some basketball stuff. Ifyel Horton has picked another Big 12 school with Texas. We're just going to discuss what that means for KU here in just a second. All right, this is Locked on Jayhawks and some basketball stuff. Ifyel Horton, who is a transfer, kind of the, you know,

especially with KU in on him, he was supposed to visit KU this weekend. It was a lot of Jalen Coleman-Lanz comparisons. He started his career at Delaware, had a good season there as a freshman, like 13 a game, transferred to Pittsburgh, sat out a year, then played two years at Pitt, averaging about nine points per game. And then he transferred to UCF last season and had a pretty good year there, averaging double digit points per game, shooting well from three. He entered the transfer portal this year. He coming into this next year will be a sixth year senior because he read shirt

a year and because he used COVID year and was supposed to visit Kansas this weekend. And you look at his three point shooting 37.6% from three over the course of his collegiate career on about six attempts per game. So very good three-point shooter. Out of comparison, Jalen Coleman-Lanz for his entire career, including his year at Kansas, shot 37.6% from three. So the exact same percentage on about five threes per game. Now with Horton, not really great on twos, not really great rebounder passer you know defense basically that's what he was being asked to do he's a three-point shooter he's a floor spacer and so for Kansas it would have made a lot of sense to bring him in if they could because

you're looking at a guy who maybe he could be that eighth man in your rotation or if he's hitting threes that night he gets a little longer leash or if somebody's injured or if somebody's you know missing a game he plays a longer leash that game like i think of uh jalen coleman lands when uh ochai had covid uh for the the game at iowa state like maybe he played a little bit more or the game against george mason where i think remy martin was out and he scored like 20 points and he got a longer lease in that game right to where you can do those and he gives you more insurance and uh he's played at a bunch of different schools to where you know maybe he knows in his cards like okay nba is not my future maybe i could go play overseas

but i can be on a winning team this year and maybe set myself up for beyond basketball some great connections being at kansas on a winning team right there's a lot there unfortunately though he committed to texas uh which stinks for a couple reasons one because you did think it could or at least i did thought it would be a a great fit for Kansas in checking all those boxes and being that Jalen Coleman-Lanz role and giving you injury insurance and being another good three-point shooter, which you can't have enough of at this point if you're Kansas with the rest of the roster, how that kind of works out.

And it also stinks because he's going to be playing at a school that you're going to be playing in Texas, which makes it a little bit tougher there. Then again, you do wonder if he did commit to Texas without even having the Kansas visit. Was it really a great fit? Because part of the fit you were asking for was a guy who was going to come in, cool being a veteran presence coming off the bench, maybe not playing a huge role, maybe being a part of the rotation, but maybe not playing every single night, and maybe not being like a huge nil guy like you'd

still get nil money being a part of kansas and and all this stuff but not being a guy who we're going to promise you this giant nil sum or all this playing time too you know with texas you still do have a couple guards in front of you with max a smith and you know tyree's hunter i guess they have chris johnson now we'll see how that goes which that would be kind of funny by the way if you're chris johnson you're like are you kidding me? I got possibly over recruited again. And so with if you'll Horton, you know, you wonder, is he going to Texas with the idea of, oh, I'm going to play a bigger role. And I have more NIL promises than I would get at Kansas. And if that is the case of why you would choose them as opposed to wanting to go to Kansas and and having more of the win now opportunity,

maybe that wasn't exactly the fit Kansas was looking for anyway, but it is unfortunate because I think he would have been kind of a perfect fit to look for what Kansas is looking for in kind of that, that final 12th scholarship player. Does that mean that, you know, Kansas, cause I don't think Kansas is set that they have to add a 12th scholarship player. So this could signal that they're done because they, they, they missed on this one, or there could be players that are grad transfers that we haven't heard their name of yet or the players that are still maybe in the portal or whatever it is that maybe we're not going to hear a name until they possibly like set up a visit or something like that so um we'll see what happens from here but i felt like that

was a very logical like connect the dots one this one makes a lot of sense you have the path of jaylen coleman lands and it didn't work out so we'll see where kansas goes from here uh if my money is on it i feel like this probably is a sign that they would love to add that 12th player but it's got to be the right situation so if you're if you're asking me uh put a percentage on them adding a 12th scholarship player i'll put it right above 50 not overly confident i'll go 58 just to give a weird funny number that's gonna do it for this episode of the show you can find me on twitter at d johnson radio Right above 50%. Not overly confident. I'll go 58% just to give a weird, funny number. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find me on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio.

You can give us a follow on our YouTube page. Like us if you could. Give us a positive review. You can also find us wherever you get any of your podcasts. That'll do it for this edition of Locked on Jayhawks. I don't think we're going to have a show on Friday, barring some breaking news or maybe some Nick Marsh stuff, if the surprise kind of happens and goes KU way, KU's way.

And then we'll be back next week. This is locked on Jayhawks. Have a good one. See you next time.