Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Kansas Jayhawks Weekend Recruiting Recap: Hunter Dickinson Visit + Harrison Ingram Picks UNC

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Recapping the latest weekend of recruiting the transfer portal for Kansas Jayhawks basketball from Michigan center Hunter Dickinson visiting Lawrence to Stanford forward Harrison Ingram choosing North Carolina before his visit to KU. What's left for Bill Self to look into at the wing position now?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!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.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND 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, recapping the news that was over the weekend for KU basketball from the latest on Hunter Dickinson to Harrison Ingram picking a different school with North Carolina. 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. 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. We're free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can also find and subscribe to us on YouTube.

On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're going to be going over the latest recruiting news and notes for KU basketball over the weekend, both heavily involved with Hunter Dickinson and Harrison Ingram. First of this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, the official sportsbook of Locked On. Make every moment more. Just visit fanduel.com slash locked on today to get started. So the latest that happened over the weekend, the Hunter Dickinson visit ended up happening. He got in. It sounded like later than maybe normal. There were some flight delays, but

ended up getting in. Sounds like he had a had a good visit you know most visits sounds like they go good right it's it's hard to mess up a visit um you go you have a good time you're shown a good time you get nice food you probably go out to the bars and stuff like it's hard to have a bad time on a visit that's for sure uh so the visit wrapped up and then um for him he now is supposedly heading on a visit that's for sure uh so the visit wrapped up and then um for him he now is supposedly heading on a visit to Kentucky and you know you go to Kentucky from that point we'll see if he goes to Villanova after that like he I believe was scheduled to do um but immediately going there and we'll see what all that means as far as you know with Dickinson going I think a lot of people still are pegging maybe Maryland and Kansas to be the front runners here the Kentucky part of this seems to be

the wild card in terms of how realistic is it for them to get him is this a ploy by him to try to drive up you know the bidding the NIL money to be a smart ploy on his part with Kentucky being involved in it. Or is it something where there is real interest there? Because, you know, Kentucky is probably going to be able to match whatever NIL might like Kansas and Kentucky are probably just going to, they're going to hit a point and be like, okay, that's what we're offering. That's what we're offering. It's the same, like, you know, pick which one you want to go to. Obviously, if you want to make the comparison, like you would say, well,

Kansas had a lot more success over the last whatever three four years than kentucky um kentucky hasn't been well spaced offensively over that time and kansas has done a better job doing that that you make maybe you feel more comfortable as a big man but also oscar shibuye did just win national player of the year a year ago now that was mostly from just like will and tenacity and getting rebounds um so that would be an interesting battle but yeah they national player of the year a year ago. Now that was mostly from just like will and tenacity and getting rebounds. So that would be an interesting battle, but yeah, they're kind of the wild card in this because you don't know if they're being used as a certain tool or if they are real competition.

And if they are real competition, it's, it's always difficult every so often it happens, but it's always difficult to be Kentucky and recruiting battle. It just is like, there are a lot of them that Kentucky has been able to win over Kansas. Obviously there's some that Kansas has been able to win over Kentucky, but it certainly is of note.

So now you just wait on, on Hunter Dickinson. He was never going to be a guy who committed on site and on scene. I mean, most likely maybe if the NIL bag, they pull up like a wheelbarrow and they're like, here's $10 million. You have to commit right now. He's like, okay, yeah, sure. Why not sure why not no but that was never gonna happen so um kind of in the same vein as nicholas timberlake he took his uh north carolina visit then he took his kansas visit then he took his connecticut visit then he went home that next week thought about it for a couple days and made a decision and landed on ku and maybe there were some you know more phone calls with

every coach just to kind of supplant everything from there maybe it was just all him making a decision I don't know but he took his time registered everything he went through what he liked the most what was going to be the best fit whatever went into that decision for him and pick KU that is how I believe Hunter Dickinson's going to do this he went on you know visits to Maryland and maybe Georgetown that I don't know if those were official unofficial because he just lives so close. Went to Kansas. Now he's going to Kentucky, the Villanova one that'll be after it. I don't expect him to commit on any of these visits. And I think the idea here is that maybe he can like picks his school in like two weeks, in a week, two weeks, three weeks, something like that in the month of May.

Seems like the likely destination for Hunter Dickinson. So you're still going to be kind of waiting on pins and needles between now and then obviously over the weekend too was the entry deadline to enter the draft and we'll see what that leads to because there are certain guys that maybe entered the draft and retained their collegiate eligibility they didn't say anything about entering the transfer portal but what happens if they do decide to come back and then they do last minute enter the transfer portal and obviously with the story being out there about the possible was there like a two-year four million dollar you know nil deal with hunter dickinson that alerts people to be like oh kansas is playing with some money here to where like even if they

don't land hunter dickinson maybe they can sway some of those guys who are in the draft process who do end up coming back to be like yeah maybe I should transfer there now as far as Harrison Ingram he went on a visit to North Carolina he was supposed to visit Kansas this next week and he ends up picking North Carolina now it's certainly something that is of interest because he was supposed to visit Kansas earlier this week but there was a scheduling conflict that came up that forced the visit to next week. And then he ended up visiting North Carolina and committee. You wonder if the scheduling conflict doesn't come up, if he ends up visiting Kansas on time, does he end up picking Kansas? Because I think it was a little bit of shock that he did pick North Carolina. There were a lot of local media people.

There were a lot of local just people, national people, too, that thought Kansas was going to be the destination for Harrison Ingram. And so it ends up being a bit of a surprise there. I think certainly it's something where he probably felt like he was slow played a bit. I think that there was some talk, some murmurs about him and KU being a logical destination, like right at the offset of the transfer portal. And then when he entered in, there wasn't really much talk

about Kansas and Harrison Ingram. And there wasn't really much seemingly contact or the visit wasn't scheduled early on. And I think that was Kansas waiting to see what their options were. You know, we talked about in recent episodes, Kansas has kind of gone with the slow play here. You know, you go back to a couple of years ago, they, instead of doing the slow play, they went early and often they got Cam Martin and Joe Yassifu in the first like couple of

weeks of the transfer portal. And then maybe they felt like by the end of the transfer portal that maybe we should have waited to see what other guys were going to enter and i think because of that kansas was being patient this time and saying that you know what we're better off waiting what if some good player really enters in and we're like crap why'd we use a scholarship here when we could have used it there and that player never really came on the wing and harrison ingram was one of the top wing players that you could go after in the transfer portal. So then they end up circling back around to him. They scheduled the visit, but then it gets pushed back. He might have felt like he was being slow played a little bit. I think there was a quote that he gave to

24-7 sports kind of talking about, you know, that he felt like North Carolina really loved him and made him a priority more than any other school, stuff like that. So I don't think it's that the Kansas didn't want Harrison Ingram. I think Kansas very much did want Harrison Ingram by the end of this. But I think they kind of slow played it a bit. And I know for some people that's going to be viewed as like, well, blame KU. Like they messed this up. I still think that was the right way to do it because I think that being in the two motions of,

hey, let's wait and see what talent arrives versus the one from a couple years ago when you brought on a couple guys out too early, I'd rather be on the way of being patient because at the end of the day, yes, you didn't land Harrison Ingram, and we'll get more into this, like how big of a loss is this?

You're still Kansas. You should be able to use the scholarship on another good player. Now, who that is is options might be drying up a little bit we'll finish the show with other options now available at least notable ones for ku on the wing first though this episode of lock done jay is brought to you by fourth book grand slams no hitters double plays they're back and there's no better place to get in on the MLB action than with FanDuel. That's because right now, new customers can step up to the plate with a no-sweat first bet up to $1,000.

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North Carolina over Kansas. And is this loss a big miss for Kansas? So, okay, let's get into it. It is notable. It is certainly notable. It is one that I don't think is a good thing. I don't know that it's gigantic either. Was Harrison Ingram going to come in and be your best player?

No. Was Harrison Ingram going to be your second best player? Probably not. Was he going to be your third or fourth? Maybe. There were, and i will say like i don't want to play revisionist history you know we go back to the deep dive like there's a lot of things harrison ingram would have done really well for kansas you would have been able

to slide him into maybe that four role that jaylen wilson was playing he would have provided good strength scoring inside good feel for the game good passing another ball handler for you to have like solid enough defender on the interior good basketball iq that obviously it would have been a take and it would have been a nice fit for you and you would have expected him to be in the starting lineup but it's also not gigantic because he's not expect i said be one of your two best players can you find another wing who can fit you well yeah absolutely obviously there are the limitations with the shooting right now for harris nigger that could go up this season we'll wait and see um but maybe this allows ku to pivot a bit and say you know what we could really use another shooter let's get somebody else who has a better shooting percentage

so there's opportunity out of it it's not ideal there is opportunity but it also limits your options now and you're starting to run out of wing options because there were other commitments over the last week or so um as far as losing out on ingram to north carolina you know it's kind of funny because i i think nicholas timberlake after he went on his carolina visit the thought was like oh he's going to go to north carolina ends up picking Kansas. This is almost like the opposite. He goes, you know, Harrison Ingram, it's like, oh, well, he's probably going to go to Kansas. He ends up going to North Carolina.

And I know there were some people like saying that, oh, well, you know, they pushed back the schedule for Harrison Ingram because Marcus Adams ended up signing his national letter of intent and reclassified. No, that had no effect on it. That was Marcus Adams reclassifying thing was planned for like a month. That was just a weird circumstance that happened in the schedule. Having Marcus Adams did not preclude you from bringing on Harrison Ingram.

Now, part of it was he felt like he was slow played a bit that the KU might have fumbled the bag in that regard. I think another part of it was it sounds like he wants to play maybe more of the three at north carolina and at kansas i think he would be more of a four and you know i guess it was if you're playing like if you're starting ingram and kj next to each other then it doesn't really matter like at that point ingram is kind of the three so i don't know how much that played into it but um yeah it's just it's just tough because he was somebody who you were almost viewing as like, yeah, okay, he'll be a for sure option for you that can fill a lot of those wing minutes that you've lost.

And right now you've brought in the guard play with Nicholas Timberlake, but you're still looking for that guard. We did our wing rankings like a week ago in top 10 wing rankings on Locked On Jayhawks. And he was one of a handful of players was Ingram in Tier 2. So again, there's other Tier 2 players. But what makes this, I think, sting more and more difficult is that Hakeem Hart, who was another one of those Tier 2 guys,

he just picked Villanova on Friday. Dalton Connect, really good score. He was another one of those tier two guys he just picked Tennessee over the weekend Matthew Cleveland who um was another tier two guy he hasn't picked anyone yet maybe you can still rush your way back into contention at some point you know if you come swinging a big ni hell bag and opportunity at the University of Kansas even if a kid has made a finalist list maybe uh like like we saw that with caden shedrick i think he was like he had like a finalist list and then like some new schools approached him that weren't previously on there

and he's like well maybe i'll add them on so maybe that could happen but like matthew cleveland released his final three kansas was not on the list so you're starting to run out of possible you know really good wing options here and there's a couple different ways you could go about that now do you instead play into the idea of playing like three guards next to each other right instead of if you can't find another good wing add another good guard and at that point you can play dewan harris almarco jackson nicholas timberlake like those are all playing one through three whatever other guard you're adding can play at the one two or three position and you're playing more of three guards together and then you just

need the one wing at the four and the one center at the five could that be a realistic option I don't necessarily hate that to be completely honest um that would be how maybe I would pivot at this point uh remember back like KJ Adams we've all heard the comparison when he was coming out of high school is Mark Vital obviously KU last year made the comparison instead to Draymond Green and I think KJ showed last year like he's and I don't mean this is like Mark Vidal was a very impactful player really good rebounder really good defender really good glue guy but KJ I think is better than Mark Vidal I mean he just has more scoring options more to him right to where if you follow that Baylor path though of that team it was three small guards who could score with Mark Vital and then a center who couldn't really

shoot but he was a good rim roller and good defender well if you have Kansas let's say you don't land Hunter Dickinson and you have KJ starting in that kind of Mark Vital role but better at it and or I guess more to it with the scoring and a center in Ernest Uday or Zuby Adjafar is more of a lob threat dunker good defender what if you just had three guards who could score and shoot around it you'd have DeJuan Harris, Elmarco Jackson, Nick Timberlake, somebody else you add any of these wings you have coming off the bench some of the freshmen right I don't think that's a terrible way about building a roster I do think Bill Self really likes playing with all the wings that's allowed them to be switchable on the defensive side of the ball.

But I wonder at this point if there's just not the options available to them to do that in the transfer portal. And that's what good coaches do. They adjust. They figure it out. So I wonder if that's an option. Another option is maybe going for some of these other guys that are in the NBA draft process, and maybe they are going to enter the transfer portal. We just don't know about it yet. And maybe kind of back channeling that way to figure out if there is any interest, anybody that maybe we're not thinking of that could enter the portal and would

be a nice hit for Kansas. But it's a big loss for KU. It's unfortunate. It's one that I didn't really expect to have. I kind of figured that in a week or so we would be talking about Ingram being on KU, but you can see why he felt a little bit slow played there. Again, I don't necessarily blame KU because I think that's the right way for them to approach it. Be patient because I think in the long haul that will help them as opposed to just jumping on guys that might not be the best player they can possibly get in the early going. Just kind of unfortunate for them. So what other options do they have on the wing if they choose to go?

Let's finish up with that with Lockdown Jayhawks. So at this point, Harrison Ingram gone. I mentioned Hakeem Hart picking Villanova, and I thought Hart would have been a really good fit for KU. I thought that to me, Ingram and Hart were pretty like even in terms of what they would be able to bring. It would have been different in how they would have gone about it. I think you could have argued Hart over Ingram in certain regards, Ingram over Hart in other

regards. they would have gone about it i think you could have argued heart over ingram in certain regards ingram over heart and other regards so that was unfortunate that you know if if you would have found out harrison ingram was going to pick north carolina um on like before hakeem hart made his decision because kansas was in the finalist list maybe you could have gotten back into that right instead of him picking villanova but he committed on Friday then Ingram picks North Carolina Saturday so that was just crappy timing for KU Dalton Connect pick Tennessee I don't know how much Kansas ever was like full go on Dalton Connect uh so who's still available well we have uh some like tier three and tier four guys from that top 10 list we did a week ago that are still out there Oliver and Kamwa sounds like he might still be going pro

i think michigan was somebody who was of interest there i don't know um that obviously he's not the greatest shooter but i guess you could say well he's similar enough to harrison ingram so you know certainly would be an option there keisha johnson from san diego state like good defender good positional size and stuff for you but he's not really a shooter he'd be more somebody i would look at as being like a bench foreman, a bench wing, something like that. I mentioned Matthew Cleveland had his finalist list. Any way you can get back into that, I don't really expect that,

which pretty much leaves like two guys. I mean, unless you do count in Kamwa as a realistic option. But Mbako, the five-star recruit, top 10 kid who was committed to Duke decommitted he's the top available freshman right now that maybe becomes more of a an option here um I I think that once you saw he decommitted from Duke there was some actually murmurs there was some talk about oh receiving interest and from North Carolina now who knows if that was just him trying to get back at Duke and try to freak him out or if that was real. But if that was real, adding Harrison Ingram, who's going to play that 3-4 position for them, maybe that makes it a little less likely he goes there. Maybe it leaves more opening, more playing time for Kansas there.

I don't know how realistic that is when you're committed to a Nike school. Like, what does that mean about going to a different, you know, we see kids sometimes transfer when they're transferring up. Like if they're in a Nike school that's like, you know, I'm playing it. I don't even know if Hartford is like a negative, but you know what I mean? Like a small school, like maybe that doesn't really matter. But when you're on that high level of a, I don't know, maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But that would be, I think, a home run for KU.

Now the floor versus ceiling there is a lot different. Like I think the floor was much higher with harrison ingram than what you would get with imbaka you don't know totally how he's going to translate and i think some people will tell you others will tell you different things about what his game is right now but the ceiling on him is being a foreman who can run and shoot really well and if if it hits, that's a starter for you and one of your best players on your team. If it doesn't, this guy's not really playing much, right? There's a very wide variance there.

So that one would be more of a risk. But at this point, absolutely, for sure. The one guy, though, this definitely narrows a path to is Jalen Tyson. So Tyson's the transfer from Texas Tech. He has to get a waiver to transfer because this will be a second transfer. There is some talk that, you know, because of the Mark Adams thing, like this isn't just your normal coach getting fired, which the NCAA said they're going to crack down on second time transfers and coaches getting fired is not going to be something they're going to be given out for. But with the circumstances of how Mark Adams was fired, because he said a racial uh you know thing it's hard for the ncaa to be like well

you know we because there is like an emotional and physical distress thing that you can get a waiver for and it's hard for them to be like well we don't think you're emotionally hurt from a racial thing that came at you like that would be a bad place for the ncaa to go so you're asking me i feel like he could get the waiver i don't know for sure but's a good shooting wing. This would be a nice little bounce back for you because you could make the argument that Tyson is actually a better fit if this team needs shooting, which they still do, even after adding Nicholas Timberlake. He's like a 40% shooter, three and a half threes per game.

He can play the two and the three for you. Good length. He actually was a really good defender last year at Texas Tech. Like this would be a big hit for him. But is it too too late in the process have you not been going all out on him he just visited Cal where his teammate Fardoz Amak went he had a former coach who's at Cal now on their staff so we'll see if KU can get back into it he would clearly be someone who you would be like okay it's good they let they are not good necessarily but it's fine They lost out on Harrison Ingram and you could have had Ingram and Tyson and it would have worked out,

but it's fine because we ended up with this guy and they're going to be okay because of it, but they're running out of those wing options. So we'll see how much they can kind of put the pedal to the metal there. But again, there could be guys that we don't even know about that are going to enter the portal. So I still feel like Kansas is going to be fine. You still already brought in Nicholas Timberlake. Clearly they have a lot of resources

available, right? If they do land Hunter Dickinson, if they don't, there'll be a little panic, but that just means they have all those resources to use on other transfers. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll be back tomorrow. Primo Spears is supposed to visit, at least as of now.

We'll do a Primo Spears deep dive on tomorrow's show. This is Locked on Jayhawks, and that'll do it for today's show. You can check out anything you missed in the Best of RCSD podcast or the Locked on Jayhawks podcast. You can find me on Rock Chalk Sports Talking with the Best of RCSD podcast as well. And you can find us on YouTube for Locked on Jayhawks

and give us a positive review if you possibly could. We'll see you next time.