Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Offensive Firepower Overcomes 2nd Half North Carolina Tar Heels Comeback Attempt

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, Kansas survives a second half comeback from North Carolina, but they're 2-0. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Eric Johnson, this is Locked on Jayhawks. Thank you for making it your first listen every day. And thank you to the everydayers catching each and every show. We are free and available wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:34 And you can find us on YouTube where you can like and subscribe to the show. We're going to be talking KU North Carolina today. The Jayhawks survived the second half comeback 92 to 89. We saw an awesome offensive performance from KU. Some today. The Jayhawks survived the second half comeback 92-89. We saw an awesome offensive performance from KU. Some questions about the defense, but in the end, you find a way to win against a ranked opponent, top 10 opponent in Allen Fieldhouse. Things are good for KU overall tonight. We'll get into that, our game trophies from the game, what's next for KU, and a little Olympic sport update as well because some big happenings with KU volleyball and KU soccer.

Starting point is 00:01:05 This episode of the show is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. You can start the season with a big return on FanDuel. New customers can place a $5 bet, and you'll get started with $150 in bonus bets. If you win your first $5 bet, just visit FanDuel.com to get started today. 92-89, a game that was a tale of two halves. Awesome, awesome, awesome first half for

Starting point is 00:01:26 KU I think everybody was salivating at what this team could possibly be and and really for most part I mean pretty much everybody who played in the first half like made some sort of impact there maybe a few exceptions here there but you could still probably point some place you lead 53 38 at the half and you give up a last second bucket which felt inconsequential at the time, but maybe that led to a little bit of momentum for the second half for North Carolina, who came out swinging. And for a second there, it felt like KU was going to get 20-22 national titles on their home floor in reverse to North Carolina, but they ended up fending them off. Maybe that's the Allen Fieldhouse difference, the home court environment magic, making noise and providing all that sort

Starting point is 00:02:11 of thing for KU. But in the end, you get a three-point win. And there's really two ways that this conversation would have started with, right? If Kansas ends up losing that game, we would be sitting here right now, instead of a smile on our face, we'd be sitting there with a frown talking first about the defense not being up to par. But because they won the game, now we get to talk about the offense, which was great. And the funny thing is, whether they did win or lose this game, obviously they did win, it doesn't change that conversation.

Starting point is 00:02:38 Like the defense was not good enough, the offense was great enough, right? So either way, that would be a conversation out of this. But since they did win, we get to have it in a happier sense. And that at the end of the day is the most important thing. Did you get the win or did you not, right? So let's talk about that offense first, because Kansas has a lot of weapons to go to. And I mean, it's apparent at the end of the game, you're going to Hunter Dickinson. I posted a tweet with, I think it was like the under four, somewhere around there. And Hunter Dickinson had missed a couple shots in a row, and they were going at him on the defensive end, where I said that I think they should finish the game with Flory

Starting point is 00:03:15 from a standpoint of if Hunter's still shaking the rust off offensively, then maybe you go with the more switchable defender in Flory Budunga, who's going to provide maybe a little bit more rim protection and stuff like that. But they stuck with Hunter, and that's why Bill Self's a Hall of Fame basketball coach, because he ended up being the go-to option late in the game and scoring all these points. And obviously, Hunter's going to not miss some of the shots he's missed in these first two games over the course of the season. He's still shaking that rust off. So 7 of 15, not his best performance yet.

Starting point is 00:03:44 He still ends up with 20 points and three assists on the offensive end. We know he is a dynamite offensive player. He's an all-American offensive player. So you have him, you have a DeJuan Harris, who's been efficient so far early in the season, scoring when he needs to hitting those floaters when you need him to. Rylan Griffin provides you two threes in this game, which is exactly what you're looking for out of him. KJ Adams gives you 14 pointsJ. Storr had a solid game off the bench, scoring 13 points. Floyd Budunga gave you some scoring off the bench. Zeke Mayo was your best scorer for the game, and he leads all scores on both teams in a game that's filled

Starting point is 00:04:16 with very talented guards. Zeke Mayo was the leading scorer with 21 points, and he did it on good efficiency too, and that was even with him not making some threes in the second half that might've been a hair off, right? So you're talking about the amount of options KU has and the ability to, you see it late in the game. KU is going actions with Zeke Mayo, throwing it to Hunter Dickinson because you can't cheat off Zeke Mayo to go to Hunter Dickinson. Zeke Mayo will make you take advantage of it. And so the offensive firepower that this team has, both in terms of number of options, in terms of bench depth,

Starting point is 00:04:47 in terms of ways they can go about it, guys who can shoot standstill threes, guys who can shoot threes off the dribble, guys who can score on a floater, guys who can score in the post, guys who can score on a cut or on a lob or on a dunk. There are a lot of different ways. AJ Storr can be a line drive driver of the basketball. There's a lot of different ways that this team can score theorr can be a line drive driver of the basketball. There's a lot of different ways that this team can score the basketball, and I think that was most impressive and the biggest takeaway from this game. Now, as far as the defense, like we said, it was not very

Starting point is 00:05:13 good in this game. I will say, though, actually, looking at the stats right now, I'm like, wait, how bad really was the defense? If you didn't watch the game and you just pulled up the box score, you'd be like, oh, you held North Carolina, which, you know, a team coming in basically a, you know, top 15, top 10 offense in the country with one of the best, if not the best backcourts on paper coming into the country with a national player of the year candidate in R.J. Davis. If you said, hey, you held them to 43% shooting from the floor, would you take that?

Starting point is 00:05:44 I probably would have. You're going to hold them to 30% from three-point floor. Would you take that? I probably would have. You're going to hold them to 30% from three-point range. Would you take that? Yeah, probably would have on that too. 11 turnovers, that's not a super high number, but Kansas only had four turnovers in this game. They had seven more turnovers than you. Would you take that?

Starting point is 00:05:59 Yes, you would. And it ended up leading to a 16-2 point-off turnover advantage. What about the offensive rebounding? Well, you had 12, they had 10. Now the offensive rebound rate ends up being worse for KU because they got up 13 more shots in the game. But again, if I would have just said, okay, all those things, and you're going to get two more offensive rebounds on them

Starting point is 00:06:16 and lead 14 to eight in second chance points and 42 to 24 in bench points and 50 to 32 in points in the paint, you'd be like, oh, how, obviously I would take all that. Like, what do you mean this was a bad defensive performance? Again, if you didn't watch the game and I said all those things, you wouldn't have thought that this was a bad defensive performance. I think it mostly comes from what happened in the second half because the first half defense for KU was actually okay. You have 38 points in the first half for KU and you know, you're going to be fine with that. And you look at those

Starting point is 00:06:45 first half stats and North Carolina shot 11 of 31 from the floor. They were just three of 11 from three point range. But what happened in the second half was North Carolina made like a lot more shots. Basically they went, or I think I had that wrong. Yeah, no, 11 of 31, so 36% in the first half. Second half, they shot 16 of 32, 50%. So that's what you're judging it on. In fact, they shot 50% in the second half, and at one point were at 40% from three until they missed their last two.

Starting point is 00:07:16 So that's why it feels that way, and you go in with that non-taste in your mouth. But overall for the game, what I'm telling you is that I guess it wasn't as bad as we might have thought. But still, you need to figure that out. I would rather them be figuring out how to be the best defensive team they can be than having to figure out who's going to score the basketball. Because we saw what happens when that happens a season ago,

Starting point is 00:07:34 and they never really were able to figure it out. Your talent will figure out the offense. The coach can figure out the defense at least enough to be competitive there. And Bill Self typically has good defenses. He's going to figure it out, right? So you look at that and yeah, there are things that need to improve on the defense. Obviously, ball screens hurt you and certain three-point shooting. If they're big men, we're shooting threes like you saw with Jalen Withers, that can hurt you. And those are things Bill Self's going to have to figure out to scheme away. Other notes

Starting point is 00:08:02 from this game, Zeke Mayo, like we said, 21 points, let all score, 7 of 14, 5 rebounds, 4 assists. He was awesome in 29 minutes. Finished with the closing lineup, which the closing lineup is more important than the starting lineup, obviously, but David Coit struggled a little bit in this one. Zero points. He was 0 for 4 from the floor, and I don't know. Maybe that's a little bit of concern now that yes Coit has played well in the other games but in the two games against power four power five I don't know what it is in basketball nowadays without Pac-12 uh without power level competition he is now 0 for 9 shooting between the Arkansas and North Carolina games is that just happenstance whatever is that a worry regardless I am kind of expecting Zeke Mayo to be in the starting lineup for the Champions Classic now after this one, and maybe David Coit becomes that

Starting point is 00:08:49 go-to six-man for you off the bench that can be kind of a microwave scorer for you. This was AJ Storrs' best game, and it came at an important time. He ended up with 13 points, six of 13 from the floor. That is what he's going to do. He's going to be a volume shooter that is going to take some tough shots for you and bear the load at times when you need him to. He's going to do. He's going to be a volume shooter that is going to take some tough shots for you and bear the load at times when you need him to. He's going to be a tough driver that'll finish sometimes around the rim. You saw when he is right, he's finishing at the rim and then he's taking advantage of the defense, overemphasize him coming at the rim, and he's able to hit that step back in the mid range. And we saw him make one of those in the, I think it was the second

Starting point is 00:09:24 half or was it the first half? I don't remember remember I think it was the first half actually but um he played a good game AJ Storr was good in this one and you just want him to keep stringing those together and then the confidence pops off I was a little bit like I said earlier surprised we didn't see Flory in the closing defensive lineup now I was saying at the under four I thought it made sense with the way North Carolina was attacking you and maybe having a little more flexibility on defense if Hunter was struggling on offense, but then Hunter stays in the game and he makes everything. So obviously worked out in the end and that's why Bill Self is the best in the business. But I was surprised that Flory wasn't in at least on that final possession, right? Now I guess, I don't know, I guess Hunter Dickinson

Starting point is 00:10:03 misses the second free throw now that I think about it. So maybe that's unfair. Maybe that wouldn't have been possible then. I do wonder if, if he would have, like, let's say it was a dead ball. Let's say Hunter Dickinson misses the first, but makes the second. Would he have subbed him out or would Bill Self have just fouled on a three point? I think those would be interesting to know with how this game ended. Other note, Zach Clements and Rakees Passmore feels like, okay, good. We've been trying to

Starting point is 00:10:28 figure out what the rotation is. This was a game where you were going to learn more about the rotation because this was a go with the guys you trust game. And I think we learned Rakeese Passmore is on the outside of the rotation. There will be other games for him, but Zach Clements is definitely not in the rotation. We'll get more into that in our second segment of the show. But the bottom line here, you survived a crazy second half comeback against a team with elite guards, against teams ranked ninth in the country. And when you had foul trouble on DeJuan Harris and Hunter Dickinson, you had to survive that in a game where they shot 28, or I'm sorry, 31 free throws.

Starting point is 00:11:03 They made 28 of them. You don't see teams out-shoot KU by 14 from the free throw line at Allen Fieldhouse very often. And then on top of it, you tip your cap to North Carolina for going 90% at the free throw line because even if they're the best free throw shooting team in the country, they might shoot 80%, 78% from the free throw line. Two extra missed free throws would have still been a great free throw game

Starting point is 00:11:26 for them, but that would have been the difference in them not even having a shot to tie at the end of the game. But you survived all that with some struggles on defense, but this was a resume win and a really good early boost for KU and a reminder, I think, maybe not even a reminder, a proof of the pudding, a proof in concept of what this team can be like on the offensive end of the floor. All right, let's continue on with the show with our game awards next.

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Starting point is 00:12:42 your first listen every day. Don't forget, you can check out Locked On College Basketball, Locked On College Football. They Don't forget, you can check out Locked On College Basketball, Locked On College Football. They had a big breakdown of this game on Locked On College Basketball, and I'm sure they'll talk plenty about it as well. All right, our game trophies for the game. Let's give our best moment of the game. I guess we could kind of separate these out

Starting point is 00:12:58 because the first half and second half is so different. In the first half, I think the best moment of the game is the Zeke Mayo deep three from straight on. That was cool to see from a couple different levels. Obviously, it's important to hit threes. Zeke Mayo kind of got him going in the game. But also, that was a reminder that it's not just that KU has more three-point shooting. It's that they have guys who can launch from deep.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And the spacing can affect things. And being able to get those shots when you get them are like, I don't know, it's just, it's important to have that ability. And I feel like I, I would do it on occasion, but it wasn't a ton like Christian Brown did it in the final four against Villanova, but it wasn't a ton as far as like a guy who shot like deep threes consistently, who was like in the rotation, you probably have to go back to like Devante Graham, right? I'm trying to think if I'm forgetting anybody but you're gonna have a lot more of that this year with uh Zeke Mayo and even maybe sometimes with like Rylan Griffin and and Diggy Coit and stuff like that uh if you're looking at the best moment in the second half

Starting point is 00:13:54 man it's it's tough to go with like okay you think about like the end of the game and it's free throws for Hunter Dickinson there at the end. Right. So your best moment of the game can't be free throws. What was the best moment of the second half? The Zeke Mayo make to make it 89, 89, maybe. Hmm.

Starting point is 00:14:28 That would be an interesting question I don't know there's not like a stick out moment in the second half and I think that's kind of interesting here and that KU just had to kind of survive so maybe it was just when North Carolina made the final three I don't know uh hit me up at D Johnson radio what was your best moment of the second half as far as worst moment first half for this one is when KJ fell down and then got up limping. He had that, like, brace on his knee. I don't know what that was about, but it seemed to be okay, so that's good. The entire second half until the last, like, three and a half minutes or maybe even more, last, like, two and a half minutes. That was kind of the worst moment of the game from that perspective.

Starting point is 00:14:57 The Bill Self Doesn't Trust Me Award. Early on, it was Flory Badunga. He came in his first time in the game and he messed up like a switch or a rotation or something and gave up like a bucket because of it. And immediately you see Bill Self point to Hunter Dickinson, who was only on the bench for like a minute or two by that point to come back in. Sat him down, talked to Flory. Flory comes back in later though and does a good job. But the real winner of this award is Zach Clements because when that happened to Flory and Hunter, like I said, had only been on the bench for like a minute or two,

Starting point is 00:15:26 it would have been very easy for Bill's up to say, Hey, I want Hunter to get more rest here. Let's bring in Zach Clements just for a few minutes. I think I could have sworn it was, and they even put Hunter back in with like six and a half minutes to go or something in the first half playing with two fouls. And that was a situation where I was like, okay, maybe if he had

Starting point is 00:15:45 more trust there and Zach Clements he would have just played him at least till like the under four timeout or something so I found that interesting as we try to diagnose what the rotations are the game the dunk of the game I mean that flory alley-oop from DeJuan Harris that was awesome but I think the pick to me because it's an all-encompassing play DeJuan Harris has that clean rip steal with one hand. He almost had back-to-back steals. That was a bad call that went against him on the second one. But he has that clean rip steal on the first.

Starting point is 00:16:11 And then he's dribbling. And I don't know about you guys, but as it was happening, you're sitting there watching in the North Carolina backup big man, number 22, is coming from behind, trying to time up to block the shot. And you're like, okay, this guy's bigger than DeJuan. Like, are we going to get this off? Is this going to be a, this is going to be a layup that gets like pinned against the backboard.

Starting point is 00:16:30 You're like, okay, you got to get it off. Got to get it off. Got to get, and then he rises up and he throws down a one handed dunk. And like, we've seen DeJuan dunk before. I don't think we've seen DeJuan dunk like that before. So that is the dunk of the game. And it came off the steel as well.

Starting point is 00:16:44 And our defensive MVP just going off that is DeJuan Harris mainly because of that steal because like we said earlier there wasn't like a ton of great defense for KU in the game but DeJuan Harris did have two steals very easily could have been three uh in this game that he led KU I mean KU only had three steals he had two of the three um they did have four blocks Rylan griffin credit to him for getting two florian hunter each had one in the game for kansas um by the way some interesting plus minus numbers in this one dewan led ku and plus minus he was plus seven which i think was indicative that um i guess we want to do a quick award on the fly here the i can't take you out of the game dewan had foul trouble he had the four fouls every time they took him out of the game, North Carolina went on a little bit more of a run.

Starting point is 00:17:26 And he finished with 10 points, but three assists, two rebounds, like those aren't huge DeJuan numbers. And for a lot of the game, he was sitting at four, six points, but he was making such a huge impact between the defense and just keeping the offensive flow. Like it was just like you just needed somebody to, you had the super expensive luxury car, just somebody needs to drive it and not drive it off the cliff and like um he was just super impactful for just being on the court when

Starting point is 00:17:50 he could as far as our offensive MVP though we could go with uh I guess DeJuan Harris for that argument we could go with first half KJ Adams if we just wanted to split it up because he had 14 uh for the game but and by the way I do find it also interesting that KJ Adams played 37 minutes. Nobody else played 30 or more. So in a year we're all off season, we were like, well, are they going to get KJ down to 24 minutes per game? He ends up playing like by far the most. I think part of that is, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:18:16 you don't have really another true foreman. Ideally you have Storr or Griffin who can play there in a small ball, but anyway. I think part of that too, North Carolina, that they have like Jalen Withers is kind of a four man. Anyway, I think you could also argue Hunter Dickinson. He finishes with 20 points, but you know, KJ missed a lot of those mid range jumpers. He did make one with Hunter until those last couple of possessions. He kind of struggled offensively. I mean, he still put up big numbers, but he was shooting closer to 40% from the floor,

Starting point is 00:18:45 so he was still shaking the rust off. I think it very clearly has to be Zeke Mayo. 21 points, 7 of 14 from the floor, 3 of 9 from 3, 4 of 4 at the foul line. He also ended up with four assists, which actually led Kansas in assists to the game, and he only had one turnover. He was a plus-minus of plus-six, which was tied with Flory for second on the team. The worst plus-minuses on the team. The worst plus minuses on the team. David Coit was minus nine.

Starting point is 00:19:08 And then here's a quick fun one. Guess who the second worst was? Correct answer, Hunter Dickinson at minus three. But again, take those with a grain of salt. All right, what's next for KU men's basketball and a little Olympic sport update for KU volleyball and KU soccer? This episode of the show is brought to you by Robin Hood Gold, where you don't need a silver spoon to eat up the financial flavors of the 1%.

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Starting point is 00:21:00 Finishing things up. So what is next for KU men's basketball? Well, they're going to be back at it Tuesday for the early game, which, oh, the early game. I love the early game. I don't know. Younger college. The kids were currently at KU and in college were probably like, no, I want the late game. I don't even know.

Starting point is 00:21:15 I'm happy about the early game, and that's exciting. So they're going to be doing that against Michigan State, which Michigan State is kind of a, like, borderline top 25 team, at least in how they're being viewed right now. You never know by the end of the season. So that'll be an interesting one, neutral court. And I think one thing that'll be similar in that Kansas has to be aware of in this game, North Carolina is a team that loves to get out in transition. Michigan State is a team that loves to get out in transition.

Starting point is 00:21:41 So if that caused KU some problems today on defense, which I think it certainly did, that'll be a good teaching tool for the Michigan State game. A little big sport update as well, because right now volleyball, who's ranked in the top 10, they just suffered their first conference loss of the year. They had to go on the road against number 11, Arizona State, and they fell in four sets the other night. So now they're tied with Arizona State for the lead in the Big 12.

Starting point is 00:22:04 So you got to win out to control your destiny to at least get a share of the conference. Unfortunately, because of the imbalanced Big 12 schedules, they only play at Arizona State. They don't get them back at home. So that absolutely sucks that the other best team in the Big 12, you only get to play them at their place. Right now, as we are speaking, they're playing at Arizona, who's a solid team. And they're in a tight one. So I'd recommend going to check it out. But they were up two sets to one. They won the third set 29-27. They're currently up in the fourth set, but we'll see how that one finishes out there

Starting point is 00:22:33 before they round out the regular season. And then for soccer, how about this? They got the six-seed Nate Lee's first year as the head coach for the KU women's soccer team. Got the six-seed in the Big 12 tournament. Downed West Virginia, who was the three seed, in overtime. Then they got the two seed Texas Tech on Wednesday night and defeated them. So now they're in the Big 12 championship game against the one seed, which is TCU.

Starting point is 00:22:55 That's going to be Saturday at 7 o'clock Central Time at Children's Mercy Park. So honestly, I think that's going to be a really cool environment if you want to go out to the game. And honestly, if you're driving back from Lawrence, from the KU football game, you're going to the KU Iowa State game, that's going to work out perfectly timing-wise. Maybe you make a stop for dinner in KCK in the Legends area,

Starting point is 00:23:14 and then you go to the game. I think that's going to be really cool. But it'll be interesting to see if KU already has done enough to make the NCAA tournament, because they came into the week ranked 49th on the RPI, but they beat West Virginia, who was 29th. They beat Texas Tech, who was 37th, and they've already since risen to 39th in the RPI.

Starting point is 00:23:31 But now they're playing TCU, who's the top 15 team on the RPI. So that's going to at least help them with kind of the strength of schedule type thing. But obviously if they win, they seal it right there and they're taking a punch right away. So successful first year for Nate Lee. Can only get better cherry on top. If they can find a way to win on Saturday against the Horned Frogs.

Starting point is 00:23:49 That'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page. We'll be back for a KU Iowa State recap tomorrow. So stick around for that. See you then.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Offensive Firepower Overcomes 2nd Half North Carolina Tar Heels Comeback Attempt

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