Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Killer Instinct | Do Blowout Wins vs WVU, Fresno St. Mean KU is a Big 12 CONTENDER?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It was a dominant win for Kansas over West Virginia, 41 to 10. We're going to break it down and kind of the status of where KU football is at right now with Henry Greenstein of the Lawrence Journal World and KU Sports.com. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. What's going on? Derek Johnson here with Henry Greenstein of the Lawrence Journal World. And this is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making your first listen every day.

Starting point is 00:00:36 And thank you every day. Or is catching each and every episode of the show. We're going to be breaking down KU West Virginia, biggest takeaways from the game. We're going to be talking a little about the running game and the presence of Lashon Williams against West Virginia. And we're going to get to some season long stuff and some false sports action beyond KU football as well with Henry on the show. Before we get into any of that, today's episode of the show. show is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase. So Henry, man, thanks for making time and hopping on

Starting point is 00:01:07 the show here. Again, you can check out all Henry's work, Lawrence Journalworld, KUsports.com, and you can catch up with everything that you might have missed, whether it was from Lance Leipold or from the game. And I'm just curious, Kansas obviously wins by 31. It was obviously a very interesting game when you look at all the three and outs early from West Virginia, the Kansas defense, kind of late West Virginia is able to put up some yards with the backup quarterbacks that make the box score look interesting. What was your biggest takeaway from the game in terms of what it means for Kansas? Yeah, I like the way you kind of laid it out.

Starting point is 00:01:39 It's a style of win that has really not been all too common for Kansas in the last two decades. I mean, you think about the early days of the liepole era, it was kind of like if KU doesn't mix its opponent up with misdirection and strange formations and stuff and get a huge offensive performance, they're not going to make it, whereas in this game, you get maybe a, like, a mid-tier game from your offense with probably a lot of things to nitpick, but the defense and special teams are so dominant, and you beat a big 12 team by 31 points. I mean, that has not happened at KU in recent history. And those kinds of were, those kind of were my main takeaways. You know, the special teams in particular, I think, really stands out. Just uniformly excellent

Starting point is 00:02:21 at pretty much every spot. Coverage was great. Lake Marjan makes 240 plus yard field goals. He's still perfect at KU and only has one miss in his career. Finn Lapin, I think a 46 yard per pun average. He's kind of translated his game well for McNeese and Lance made sure to shout him out at the press conference post game. Emmanuel Henderson, obviously. And then of course, Tate Nagy, I don't think we can really overstate the fact that he's already exceeded the total amount of punt return yardage that KU had the entirety of last season. So I just think with all that in mind, like this is the best special teams unit clearly that KU's had.

Starting point is 00:02:59 And later in the season, that may well be the difference between winning and losing. As it was in this game, it was just kind of the cherry on top. But that was kind of the main thing it stood out to me. And then, of course, you know, lots of great individual performances. You mentioned Lishon. We'll see what that portends for the rest of his season. And Trey Wathen against his former team, a great story. But on the whole, my headline is like a type of win for KU that the Jayhawks don't often get.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Yeah. And to that point, like if we look back to, you know, if we don't even look back at last year, if we're going to look back at the best season so far, they've had 2023 when they won nine games that year. Like even that year, they're beating Illinois. They're winning by 11. They're winning a Nevada by 7, BYU by 11. Obviously, they did blow out UCF in Cincinnati that year. But a majority of the wins that year coming by 7, 10 points, something in that range. And now we're looking at it for KU, even if you want to save the FCS game, the Fresno State game, which, you know, of State has looked pretty decent since KU made them not look very decent. They're four and one. They just beat a three and one Hawaii team over the weekend. And then you look at West Virginia. I mean, we'll wait and see how good they are. Maybe they're a bowl team. Maybe not.

Starting point is 00:04:08 But the fact that they are winning these games by so much, like what is that worth to you? Is that worth putting this team into Big 12 title contention, even though maybe they don't have like a signature win, quote unquote, or is it just enough to make you think, okay, they should be a bowl team? you know, maybe they're in that upper echelon of the big, like, I guess, is that enough for you to take the leaps to think this team could be special? I'm not sure. I feel like I have to be a little bit even keeled here and say, like, in the interest of fairness, KU has an easy start to its schedule and an extremely difficult second half of its schedule. I don't know that we'll really know how much of a Big 12 title contender KU is until it goes to Lubbock, the second weekend of October.

Starting point is 00:04:50 That said, if they're going into that game at 5 and 1, that could be a really. ranked matchup and that could really be viewed as a potential big 12 title game preview even so I think this was the first like definitive proof that KU is a team that could be in the upper quartile of the big 12th um which is good um I think this in that general realm I think this game shows KU maybe has a killer instinct in a way it hasn't always um and I think a lot of that came to just like extending its lead and pivotal stretches of the game you know how often has KU been 10-3 or something as they were here. And then instead of outscoring West Virginia, 17-0,

Starting point is 00:05:29 nothing over the next two minutes and 22 seconds of game time at the halftime in the middle of that, they would get outscored 17 to nothing. And suddenly the games go any other way. So I think, I guess one thing that anyone could find encouraging is this game was a sign that things will be different in some way from last season. And to that point about having kind of the killer instinct in that finishing, you just wrote a really good piece and kind of recapping the game. It's titled Williams delivers big performance as featured back against West Virginia, and it's talking about Lishon Williams.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Obviously, Daniel Hyshaw has the injury. He's in street close in the second half, and Williams forced to kind of play a bigger role. He ends up with a big game, well over 100 yards rushing. Obviously, that 62-yard touchdown was certainly highlight worthy and kind of capped off the day for KU in a lot of ways. And he gave a good quote kind of talking about that, you know, being in the fourth quarter and everything. When you look at Lashon Williams, like, I know with Hyshaugh, he did. have the injury in the game and it changes things a little bit. I don't know what it is because I do think Daniel Hyshaw is still a very talented running back and has certain strengths that can help any football team across the country. But it's hard for me not to view like what LaShawn Williams has done and see the vision.

Starting point is 00:06:43 And I don't know, it's just a little more juice, a little more speed. I guess kind of what I'm saying, I'm kind of ready to get to the point of saying I think LaShawn Williams is the best back that Kansas has. I wouldn't blame, yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I wouldn't blame anyone for saying that necessarily after what they saw last night. The thing is, if Daniel Hyshaw's primary benefit or his primary attribute is his ability to run people over, he hasn't really shown that thus far this season. He hasn't gotten quite the yardage after contact you would open.

Starting point is 00:07:16 You know, some of it may be on the run walking, but I do agree with you that at least last night, and particularly in the second half when West Virginia started to wear down and miss more tackles, we saw a level of elusiveness from Weish on the ability to make people miss. I mean, you know, you see him wearing that number four jersey on that 62-yard run. It maybe doesn't look too different from what KU had going last year. But, you know, it's a guy they brought in with the knowledge that he had an experience of being a featured back, as he was at Iowa in 2023. He didn't score many touchdowns that year.

Starting point is 00:07:48 He's got, so far this year, he's got three touchdowns. He touched the ball 30 times. I think in Iowa, he had four touchdowns his entire career there. So that speaks well of KU's offense. But I will be really intrigued to see, especially if Hyshaw continues to be hampered by injuries, which just so unfortunate has been a recurring aspect of his career, how the division changes. I think that they will always both be called upon. They will always both share time.

Starting point is 00:08:16 But I do agree that Hyshaw hasn't quite been what you might think this year. at Leashon has shown the ability to maybe be a little more slightly than what people expected. And then of course, you know, yesterday or on Saturday, they showed a willingness to incorporate those younger running backs a little more than we've seen. And maybe they can find packages where those guys are best to use as well. I want to talk some more KU football and big picture stuff with Henry. We'll get to that coming up in just a moment on Locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of LOJ is brought to you by Square.

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Starting point is 00:09:40 Use Square. Square, see you in the neighborhood. But today's episode of the show is also brought to you by game time. College football's back. And I don't know how you couldn't be more excited. The tailgates, the rivalries, the energy in the stands, just nothing like it. But, you know, sometimes getting tickets can actually feel like more of a battle, more of a stress than getting to the game or the game itself, endless cues, hidden fees,

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Starting point is 00:10:45 Swipe, tap, Ticket Go, download game time today. Thanks again for joining us, Henry Greenstein with me from the Lawrence Journal World. I'm Derek Johnson, and this is Locked on Jayhawks. So I have a little segment I'm just going to call it kind of better or worse, better or worse-themed question here. So have you seen enough? It's been four games. We have seen a Kansas loss.

Starting point is 00:11:07 We've also seen a couple dominant victories so far. based on where you thought they would be to this point in the season or where you thought they would be at the end of the season before the year began, are they better or worse than you thought? I think I have to go with better because I think that after the Missouri game, I thought they were right about on par with what I expected. I think that many of the position groups, generally speaking, were right about where I thought they were going to be. You know, some of the things kind of evened out in terms of I thought the linebackers were better than I expected O line a little bit worse than I expected and so on. But, you know, the win over West

Starting point is 00:11:39 Virginia was maybe a level of dominance that I didn't necessarily expect. I picked that to be a one touchdown margin. I think like many, I was confused by the two touchdown spread, but it turned out those people knew what they were doing and arguably could have maybe been even more generous. So I'm going to say, I think the team is better than I expect to this point. And I think that largely has to do with the defense. I think I was really concerned about the cornerbacks and they've blended in quite nicely, especially with DJ Graham back now. I think the safeties, I already mentioned the linebackers. Trey Lathen and Bengali Kamar, there's a case you made have been two of KU's best

Starting point is 00:12:17 players, period, thus far this season. And the defensive line has been as good as everyone expected, especially now with Dean Miller and Justice Finkley having just had a good game after having being a bit quiet to start the season. So all told, I'd say a little bit better than I expected. And if you had to pinpoint one specific area, it could be a player, it could be a position, it could be a specific stat or a unit or something, what do you think is the biggest movement of like, I don't know, the most improved, the most better area.

Starting point is 00:12:49 I know that's horrible grammar, the most better area, so to speak, than they were a season ago. That is tough. I think the first thing that comes to mind probably would be the run defense. and it also comes to mind the ability to contain Russian quarterbacks as they did against Boer Buella summons in that Missouri game and that'll be tested again against Cincinnati. But on the whole, like, I think I'm on board with the whole D.K. McDonald thing right now. I think that, you know, you can repeat the phrase fast, physical,

Starting point is 00:13:18 and for each other a hundred times and it starts to lose its meaning. But it's hard to deny the speed and physicality, even in games where they were missing a billion tackles like at Bizzou. They at least had a lot of people around the ball. So if you mis-tackle, someone else is there to clean it up. And that's the best way to deal with mistackles. I really feel like the attributes that he tries to preach, as maybe trite as they are, have come through in what we've seen from the defense.

Starting point is 00:13:44 And so, yeah, to this point, you know, maybe he doesn't need to be yelling at Nico Markey all after a fourth down stop. But to this point, I am on board with D.K., and I think that the pursuit and the physicality have been a key element that's better than I anticipated. Yeah, I heard a lot from West Virginia fans about that. They were a little unhappy there. That actually brings up something else that I want to get to with D.K. McDonald.

Starting point is 00:14:08 Obviously, Jim Zabrowski seems to be off to a good star for the KU offense as well. Who do you think has a better chance at getting a head coaching job next season? D.K. McDonald or Jim Zabrowski? That's a very interesting question. I lean to Zabrowski. Number one, he's been a head coach before. He was at Lakeland College, a little known fact about a, about Zabrowski.

Starting point is 00:14:32 I also name the mascot there. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I know that one. Has been a head coach before, is a longer-term coordinator. This is D.K.'s first year as a coordinator. Granted in the NFL, we see these kind of wonder kitten guys where they get one year as an O.C., maybe. They all seem to coincidentally have worked under Sean McVeigh, and those guys get a,

Starting point is 00:14:54 but I don't know that necessarily applies to, like, a first-time college defensive coordinator. I would say Zabrowski, also just like the public perception of KU's offense has been a known thing over the last several years. Like that I do think that Jayhawks will have to do better on that side of the ball for Zabrowski to be a legitimate candidate for those things. But I feel like even before the season or at the very start of the year, the athletic may have floated him as a candidate for something. I think just in terms of long-term experience and public perception of KU's offensive group and its creativity and its motions and its shifts, Zabrowski would have the edge in that one. If you had to pick between the 2025 team so far and the 2023 team, which one do you think is better? Ooh.

Starting point is 00:15:39 I have to go 2023 simply because of the way we saw them. I mean, it's hard to argue because it's obviously not apples and oranges. Like that was a 13 game sample size. And we've got four so far, only half of them against Power Conference competition. I think that this year's team is better on the defensive special team as I keep harping on. But I don't think we've seen enough evidence yet to indicate that the offense that KU is trotting out this year is quite as dynamic. You know, you think about a player like Devin Neal and what this year's team would be like if it had Devin Neal. I don't think we've seen the evidence to suggest that third and final year, Andy Koldeneg's offense is really worse than what Zabrowski has done thus far this year.

Starting point is 00:16:25 That could change. like they could go out against Cincinnati and Jalen could throw for five touchdowns or something and then I'd be eating my words. But right now, I lean a little bit toward the 2023 team overall. All right. I'm going to slip in a KU basketball one here. Will Darren Peterson be even better than the hype, which has reached astronomical levels? That would be difficult. I mean, if you asked me this a couple months ago, I would probably say yes, based on everything I had heard about him, just like being around the program and whatnot. But I feel like there's been a recent surge of just, you know,

Starting point is 00:17:01 this kind of like generically byline Twitter posts that are like Darren Peterson's ready to have a great season and like a link to some video of him shooting. I feel like the sum total of all those posts has increased people's expectations for DP to write around where I think he's actually going to deliver, which is being one of the best players in the country. I therefore cannot say that I necessarily think he will be. even better than the hype simply because it's, you know, I think maybe the Fran Frasilla tweet, that might have been like patient zero for the escalation of Darren Peterson hype recently.

Starting point is 00:17:36 So yeah, I'd say, I'd say probably right around people's expectations at this point, which are, of course, as you said, sky high. Yeah, I feel like the only new thing that can come out of today is like, oh, Darren Peterson saved somebody's life. Like that's the only thing that can escalate this even higher at this point in time. But I guess it would feel if he lives just up to. how high the hype has gotten. It'll feel like he's exceeded it because it is such a high bar. I want to finish up with what's going around the rest of KU campus with some other

Starting point is 00:18:04 fall sports exciting action. KU soccer off to a great start. KU volleyball starting to hit their stride. We'll get all to that next with Locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Mazda. Mazda crafts cars for those who do more than simply move. From footwork to breath work, athlete's sweat, all the details. Mazda brings this same intention to how we craft every model. You can make everyday drives feel like anything but from smooth handling to intuitive controls. With all-wheel drive, standard in every crossover SUV, you can drive with confidence through almost stall season. Like our players, we sweat every detail because when we make every move count

Starting point is 00:18:46 impossible becomes irrelevant. Mazda, move and be moved. Thanks again for joining us here on Locked on Jayhawks, joined by Henry Greenstein, KU Sports.com. I'm Derek Johnson. And KU, obviously, football, not the only sport going on right now. And so far, it is off to a pretty good start for the Jayhawks and some of these other. Well, I guess my win-loss record wasn't off to the best star for volleyball, but it certainly is picked up. Let's start with KU soccer, though, because the record certainly speaks for itself.

Starting point is 00:19:21 What do you think has been the most impressive thing about Nate Lee's program? so far. Oh, that's a good question. I think their commitment and dedication to their play style. You know, for those of you who don't necessarily know, kind of the defining aspect of an eight-week coach team is the pressure their forwards apply on opposing defenses. You can pretty much count on the fact that whenever an opposing player has the ball and they're like defensive third, there will be two forwards running out of at any given time. And KU has just shown an incredibly impressive commitment to doing this no matter whom they're playing against. That was why they won the Big 12th tournament. Nateley even said at the time, like, it might seem foolish to keep doing

Starting point is 00:20:01 this against teams like Texas Tech and TCU, but we're going to do it. And it worked out. And they won the whole thing because of a mistake that pressure generated. The game winning penalty kick in the championship against TCU was off of like a loose ball that Lexi Watts created by forcing a mistake from a hornfrog defender. So that's continued into this year. They had number two, Florida State at Rockchalk Park and frankly looks like the better team ended up drawing one-one and now they're off to the best start in program history seven and oh and two coming back for their first home conference game this week so I think Nate just does a really good job ensuring complete and total buy-in from his players and also you can see that he's recruited

Starting point is 00:20:43 players who fit that style which is why so many freshmen and sophomores get significant playing time he and Tyler Smaha and that staff do a really good job picking out the sorts that are willing to commit to something, which, by the way, has to be incredibly exhausting. But it's worked out quite nicely for them. And yeah, they're off to a pretty incredible start. And I don't expect that to cease anytime soon. Now, for volleyball, you know, record wise, it wasn't the best start, but it was a lot of five set losses to good opponents where you could kind of see the potential there of the team.

Starting point is 00:21:16 Now they're starting to hit their stride. they've got a winning streak going on. Where do you think this finishes up? What should be the proper expectation for what this season looks like for Matt Olmer in year one? Yeah, it's been an interesting few weeks. First of all, they haven't played a home match yet, and they will on Friday, but that's incredibly uncommon. And it's just a confluence of scheduling factors.

Starting point is 00:21:38 They have been away from home for so long. I think they'll look better when they're in front of a friendly, crowded horse. But it's been a lot of mixing and matching pieces as Ulmer tries to figure out. out the best fit for the style he wants to play. You know, we saw multiple different setters in the early matches. Now he's kind of settled in with Kristen Klein recently. But it seems like from one game to the next, it's not really clear who the primary contributors are going to be.

Starting point is 00:22:02 Like, who is the person you want to set when you need to side out? Like, it's not totally clear exactly who that is right now. There have been great performances from Ryan Swanson, great performances from Grace Nelson, great performances from Reese Patak and many others, Yovana Zanovich, obviously, she was a preseason all-conference player as a freshman. So many you could name, but they haven't all come at the same time. And yeah, I mean, it must have taken an emotional toll on them to have all those five-set

Starting point is 00:22:28 losses early. So it's been good to see them at least take care of the lesser opponents when they faced them. But they enter conference playing kind of a down note, having had a rough go of it at Creighton. They had two matches in the same day, which is kind of crazy. But going up against ASE, which is one of the favorites for the conference will be a great judge of like where they're at at this point. And I think they will continue to become more cohesive as the season goes on. I think, but obviously you want them to make the tournament. I'm not sure this is a hosting caliber team as of now, but Ulmer has such a proven track record of taking teams a distance.

Starting point is 00:23:05 I wouldn't be surprised even if they get in as a lower seat than usual if they go on a run, because we've already seen they can compete with some of the best in the country. Yeah, maybe those five setters start turning the other way at the end of the year when they're a little bit older and know the system and everything. If you had to put your crystal ball together here among all the sports, so not just the fall sports, just for the 2025 to 26 school year, who do you think would be the betting favorite, who would be your pick to finish the season ranked the, I guess it depends which way you looked at, at highest, lowest, like the best ranking of

Starting point is 00:23:39 any KU sports team this calendar year or academic year. That's a tough one. I almost want to say soccer simply because they're already ranked really high. I mean, they were number 12 in one poll last week. But on the other hand, they could take some, I mean, I haven't lost a game yet. Like they may lose some games and take some things simply because the people who vote for those sort of things are less likely to be forgiving to Kansas if it's up there. So I'll go with a safe answer, which is men's basketball.

Starting point is 00:24:09 I think you can usually count on the KU team, even if it doesn't deliver 100% on all of its expectations. being ranked pretty high. I happen to think this year's team will go pretty far. So, you know, it's the obvious thing to do, especially if Darren Peterson is as good as we talked about earlier. And there are some things this team will need to do to finish as a high-ranked team that I'm not totally sure about. I'm not sold on the outside shooting. I'm not totally sold on the four-man situation as it is. And I want to see Darren Peterson like deliver on everything he's supposed to be. But all that said, I definitely think that as is the case in most

Starting point is 00:24:47 years, the KU men's basketball team is the safest bet to finish with the highest postseason ranking. It sounds like it's not going out on a limb, but I mean, they got a seven seed last year and there are a lot of questions there. And you look at preseason rankings and they are closer to that, I don't know, by a lot of places, 15 to 25 area. And so, you know, I don't think there is an obvious answer when you look at how soccer's doing baseball might be pretty good. We'll wait and see. So anyway, Henry, I appreciate the time, man. where can everybody find all your work? Yeah, you can check it out in the print edition of the Lawrence Journal World

Starting point is 00:25:17 if you subscribe to our newspaper or you can go on LJWorld.com or Kusports.com. A pleasure to be on the show, Derek. Thanks for having me. Awesome, man. And Henry always does great work. Give him a follow on Twitter and then Lawrence Journalworld, Kusports.com there as well. That'll look for me today on Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where

Starting point is 00:25:37 you can like and subscribe to the show. And we'll see you next time. We're going to start getting into KU Cincinnati right here on LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Killer Instinct | Do Blowout Wins vs WVU, Fresno St. Mean KU is a Big 12 CONTENDER?

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