Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - KJ Adams Dominates in Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Opening Win in Puerto Rico

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

KJ Adams scored 19 points with high-flying dunks as the Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball team won 106-71 in their first game in Puerto Rico. Bill Self's team dominated with athleticism over the Puerto Rico select team with Dajuan Harris and Kevin McCullar in control and Hunter Dickinson making his KU exhibition debut.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.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, we're going to be talking game one takeaways, KU's trip down to Puerto Rico. What went down for the Jayhawks? Who looked good? We're discussing all that and more on this episode of LOJ. You are Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. And you can also find us on our YouTube page, like and subscribe to the show. You can hit me up on Twitter at D Johnson radio on today's edition of locked on Jayhawks. Kansas takes down the Puerto Rico select team one Oh six to 71, a victory for the Jayhawks.

I guess in this unofficial game, they've won over 30 straight exhibition games. We're breaking down what happened in the game, who looked good for the Jayhawks and what's next at the end of all this for KU so overall it was a game that was dominated by KU they came into it the starters were DeJuan Harris no surprise there Kevin McCuller no surprise there KJ Adams no surprise there Hunter Dickinson no surprise there the only one really in question was who was going to start a shooting yard, who was going to start at the two. Some talk about, would it be Artario Morris or Marco Jackson?

I've been flip-flopping around with who that guy was going to be. It ended up being Nick Timberlake. Now, I will say, we had Brian Haney, the voice of the Jayhawks, on Rock Chalk Sports Talk after the game, and he said that Bill Self was talking about before the game, giving a bunch of different looks, playing a bunch of different lineups, and possibly going with different starting lineups to where, you know, it wouldn't shock you if on Saturday, we see Artario Morris in the starting lineup, or if we see El Marco Jackson in the starting lineup, and then we see the other one on Monday. So don't take too much into who started this game

and don't necessarily take whoever starts game two as, oh, it's just because they played better or this guy lost favor. I think there just is an idea to start maybe a few different guys or play different lineups throughout this thing. But it was notable at least to a little bit of who started that game. It was Artario Morozo, Marco Jackson, the first players off the bench. We also saw a good amount of Parker Brown and Zach Clements, who Zach Clements is apparently Michael Jordan in practice. Greg Gurley, the color man, mentioned during the broadcast that Zach Clements had 59 points over the course of the two team scrimmages that were in Puerto Rico. Now, I don't know if the game were the games to, you know, 200

and you had all sorts of points going around. And I guess if you think about it, like, let's say you did play a scrimmage to, I don't know, 100 points, hypothetically. He could never come out of the game, I guess, right? Because if you have, you know, 10 scholarship players, he's never coming out of the game. So it would be a higher point total. I'd be interested to see the other players point to,

but that's a lot of points. I mean, right? Like, clearly Zach Clemens has taken another step to where his game was. I thought he looked pretty good for what it was worth in this game. So KU comes out, dominate the first quarter, 25-7 after the first quarter of play, and that was kind of indicative of how the whole thing would go. Kansas put up 25 or more points in all four quarters of play.

They were never really stressed. Bilsaft mentioned in the postgame that he didn't love the defense, but it was also excusable because they had been working more on the offense, and even then it hasn't been fine-tuned offense. This is something, too, we mentioned in a media veil a week ago that they've more so worked on, okay, let's run this, and if it doesn't work or if we get an offense rebound, here's what we run off that action.

And it hasn't even been everything, but it's been some of that stuff. And they haven't really worked on their defensive scheme and how they want to play certain things as a unit. So some of the defensive shortcomings they could have over this week, I'm just going to chalk up to that and not worry about it. It was a lot of steals, a lot of chaos forced by the KU defense. They had a 34-8 lead in points off turnovers. I think they forced 15 steals in the game. Part of it is because you're playing a lesser opponent. We don't know how talented or good that team is.

You can probably look back to it and say, yeah, KU was just getting a bunch of steals because they were athletically a much better team and a more talented team. And I don't know how much that's going to tell us about this team moving forward. There is something it can tell us though, because you did see a lot of guards picking up the opposing guard for 94 feet, making and pressuring the ball handler all the way down the floor, picking them up right at half court. And the beauty of that is it can tire down another good offensive player. It can make them, you know, take more time before they get into a

set and have to cause problems later in the shot clock in the half court. That should be a good skill of this Kansas team. And because you have three really lead guards with Harris, Morris, and Jackson, all of them can kind of do it because if they do have to play only 20, 25, 28 minutes per game, and it is tiring to do that, that's okay because you have a bunch of other guys that are going to be able to fill in there. But it did feel like a total mismatch athletically for KU. It does feel like this is a Kansas team that is going to be athletic in general. They're going to throw a lot of lobs.

They're going to get a lot of chaos creation, a lot of steals. But it's also like does that look even more athletic than they actually are because of the competition that you played against like what if this team is a good athletic team but it's not a great athletic team they might be a great athletic team i'm just saying it's hard to tell based on the opposition that they went up against a small sample for this but good shooting i talked earlier this week on a show about what we can and can't learn i mentioned that the the shooting's probably going to be one of those things it's such a small sample they shot from three. You would rather them be good at it than bad at it, even though it

is a small sample. I'm not going to have resounding takeaways from it. So that is a positive. Also, because of that athletic difference, you had a bunch of guys just wide open from three on these. I don't know how real they are into a game. Better to do it than to not, though. They're also 15 of 17 on free throws which that that's a really good thing so let's see slightly bigger sample over the next two games still will be a small sample though overall we saw Bill Self play a lot of different lineups play a lot of players a lot of minutes he said that was going to be the case pre-game in an interview with Greg Gurley KJ Adams ended up playing the most minutes, almost 26 minutes in the game, which kind of makes sense. You have the least amount of options

in terms of players who can play the four. Obviously, Fernfee isn't over there yet, or if he will even, I doubt he'd play. Then you had Kevin McCuller, who was just under 23. No one else eclipsed 22 minutes, so it was a very balanced lineup. It wasn't quite Bill Self showing you his seven guys that he trusts the most at this point in time, though. You can get in the weeds and say, oh, this guy played a few more minutes than the other, but I'm not going to there.

Nine players passed double-digit minutes. Zach Clements was 12 seconds away from being the 10th player in double-digit minutes. We actually saw a lot of Zach Clements next to Parker Brown. I think a good part of that was, A, getting them both playing time. B, you don't have a ton of other four-man options that gives you more when you're going to bench that those can be your two frontcourt guys.

But I think there was something to seeing how they would kind of look together or how you would look in kind of a two-big lineup. I don't think we saw Parker Brown next to Hunter Dickinson at all in that first game. But all the bigss like KJ played well with Hunter Dickinson, Parker Brown played well with Zach Clements. It wasn't really a concern, even though we didn't see Parker Brown next to Hunter Dickinson. I really did think the Hunter Dickinson-KJ Adams connection looked awesome though. Maybe a few turnovers forced or a few things that were just a step away a hair of a second away from completing you saw really good I don't know acumen from KJ the ball in the high line of me when to crash of KJ knowing when to cut, of KJ knowing when to go for a lob,

when to crash the offensive glass. He just knew where to be. And that's a very important aspect if you're going to play two big men. You got to know where you got to be to space the defense and take advantage of certain things the defense is doing. So I thought that connection was a lot more smooth in game one than I kind of thought it was going to be this early on. That's a positive side. They had a good connection. They were passing the ball to each other. So I really liked the Dickinson and

Adams connection. The team they played wasn't very good. Take the result with a grain of salt, but certainly some individual players played well. And I want to get into who stood out the most for me in this first game in just a second. First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business. You want to be 100% certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available, which is why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs, helping you find the right people for your team faster and for free. It's super easy to create a job posting on there,

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The first one that stood out was KJ Adams because that was the one that maybe had the most question about how it all was going to fit with KJ next to Hunter Dickinson. It was mentioned by the broadcast and Greg Gurley and stuff about how KJ looks even more built, that he looks bigger, that he looks even more athletic than he was last year, which he already was a very athletic, very well-built, muscular guy. So you're taking another step of that. But he just seems more ready to play the role he's in. He's got that high acumen, as I mentioned. The connection was good with Hunter Dickinson. He wound up with 19 points. He was, once again, a big lob threat, whether it was from Hunter Dickinson,

DeJuan Harris, whoever. You had DeJuan Harris like half-court lob to KJ Adams. That was really good. He went 7 of 10 from the floor. Also had DeJuan Harris like half court lob to KJ Adams. That was really good. He went 7 of 10 from the floor. Also had four rebounds, two assists. Showed the good passing also. Maybe most importantly, though, we saw him hit a three. We saw him hit a three from the corner early in the game.

He was one of two from the game. So that shows you he had enough confidence to take a second. Now, he airballed the other. It was a good contest. Shot clock was running down, so he kind of had to. But whatever. You know, he hit one. And it was good to see that go down and that it is possible KJ Adams to me was the

biggest takeaway in a positive light of what he looked like how he's going to fit with this team and it was not you know you're able to kind of bully the competition in a certain way so it'll be different against the Bahamian national team and to certain degrees against some of the teams you're going to be playing in college basketball. But that was a great first start for that. Kevin McCuller, you look at the stat sheet, doesn't necessarily jump off nine points for Kevin, but I was really impressed with what he did. So if you're watching the game, all nine of those points came in the first half. He was steady. He showed some nice skill on some of those made shots. He had a little stretch where I forget which came first, if he hit the three first or if he hit the three second. But one of the plays in there, he had a nice little move in the mid range where he kind of got it in the elbow high post area and did this like kind of spin turnaround mid range shot that got him separation knocked it down he uh it just looked so pure he just looked confident in command and then the second half he had nine points in the first half I don't

think he didn't score in the second half like yeah he took a couple shots but I don't think it was because he you know was struggling in the second half like I think it was hey we're up so much we have all these other guys like I showed what I needed to show in the first half um I'm gonna do some of these other things and and have that standpoint. I'm going to have a bunch of regular season games to put up all these points more than that. I actually was really impressed with him. It was kind of the opposite, honestly, of Marco Jackson, who I thought played well, 13 points. He had five in the first half, and then he had a couple big threes in the second half to go off for 13 points. With Kevin, more of his came in the first half. go off for 13 points. But with Kevin, more of his came kind of in the first half.

Kevin also had seven rebounds and two assists. I think it's safe to say that Kevin's going to continue to be impactful on the defensive glass, just as he was last season, even though you still have Hunter Dickinson now. How about the long sleeves for DeJuan Harris? I don't know if this will be something he carries over into the season.

The players who have worn short sleeves at KU, it's actually a list of a lot of really good players, right? I mean, think back through the list of all-time great KU players who wore the short sleeve under their jersey, whether you go back to, you know, the Roy Williams era, and you think back to, I don't know, just Drew Gooden count, I guess his were kind of angled off, or you go back to the Paul Pierce, you know, Brady Morningstar, a bunch of guys that I'm forgetting not coming to the top of mind right now, but a lot of good ones with DeJuan going another step further, the long sleeves. Now this might just be a thing for this week that just works out. I do remember it was either Jamal or James Franklin,

San Diego State player. Look him up if you don't know who he is. He wore long sleeves, but it was like a cotton long sleeve t-shirt. I don't think that's going to happen with DeJuan, but I'm all for sleeves. I'm all for the long sleeves. And DeJuan was just in complete control. I found it very interesting that he only scored two points. Both were on free throws. He was 0 for 4 from the floor. I looked at the box score and I was like, when did he take those four shots? I didn't really remember him shooting that much. I remember like maybe one three that he took. He just felt like he was in command without really wanting to shoot. He had nine assists to one turnover in the game. We saw a lot of stat lines like that last year. He also had four assists, which I'm sorry, four steals, which I think he was jibbed on. It felt like,

and they made a joke about this during the broadcast that he had like that he was on pace to get to double digits. Right. So he might have actually ended up with more than that. But he almost didn't feel like he wanted to attack offensively because they have enough options on the floor that he didn't really have to. And I think that's going to be the big thing with DeJuan this year. There are going to be moments, and he showed this last year. You think back to the Indiana game last year and a couple other games that come to mind where he wasn't scoring a ton, but then when the team needed him to, late shot clock possession,

or the team was in a bit of a rut, he kind of took over and scored a flurry of points or hit a big shot. I think that's what he's going to do this year, but even more selectively. I think he thinks that he has a lot of great players around him and they have more creation offensively this year. And maybe they do. And maybe having a hundred Dickinson changes this a good amount. I'm kind of to a point now where I'm wondering,

and it's only one weird game in Puerto Rico, but I'll say this, this is, that's exactly how he played in the camp scrimmage. I saw, I don't remember if he scored in that game, but he was just kind of facilitating and that's what he wanted to do. This could just be an off season thing.

Get everyone involved, make everyone happy, be a good leader, be a good point guard. It could just be that DeJuan Harris, like what if his points go actually down this year? What if instead of getting eight, nine points per game,

he scores six or seven points per game, but he's averaging eight or nine assists per game. And he's hounding people on the defensive end. And then when he has to step up and score, he knows he has that in there that he can do it. But he's being even more of a facilitator than he already was a season ago. Very possible. There were a couple of players who had maybe slower starts, but I think finished strong.

Jamari McDowell, I don't think scored in the first half, but he wound up with seven points, three assists in the second half. So had himself a nice second half there. Hunter Dickinson actually had a slow start. He went one for five in the game to start. It actually might've been one of six. And then I think he finished a five of seven from there. Six of 13, 13 points,

six rebounds, three assists. He was kind of trying to get other guys involved too. He's still morphing into the offense, missed a couple shots that Bill self said in postgame. We see him make those like every time and just missed a couple of easy ones in this game, whether it was nerves or, you know, just kind of your off game. Not really concerning there.

It's going to be more interesting to see Hunter Dickinson against if we get to see DeAndre Ayton and the Bahamian national team. What can he do? So let's get into that next and finish up there with Locked on Jayhawks. What is next for KU in this trip in Puerto Rico? First, though, this episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by eBay Motors. For a championship team, it's all about making sure every player is a perfect fit. It's the same when it comes to your vehicle.

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Let's ride. eBay, guaranteed fit, only available to U.S. customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. Finishing things up with locked on jayhawks what's next to finish out this puerto rico trip for uh the ku team when we had the podcast the other day on on what to watch out for uh it was all radio we didn't know they were going to do a live stream at the time when i recorded that but they do have a live stream so that'll

be happening and the live stream will be pairing the radio broadcast with the like live stream. That's on KU athletics.com and on their Facebook page. Of course, you can listen to both the games on the radio too, with a KLWN, which is one Oh one seven on the FM 1320 on the AM KLWN.com or the KLWN app. If you're away from the radio,

a one Oh five, nine kiss, which again on the radio or one Oh five, nine kiss.com one Oh five, nine kiss apps. You can listen to all the games that way you can watch them on the live streams i know we've had a lot of comments people asking how can you watch them how can you listen how can you tune in so there's all your ways you

have a bunch right there um they're going to be playing the bohemian national team on saturday that one will be a four o'clock tip off with pregame starting at 3 30 on the radio side of things and then they'll be playing their third and final game on monday with pregame at 3 30 on the radio side of things and then they'll be playing their third and final game on monday with pre-game at 10 30 on the radio side of things tip off at 11 o'clock there's a post game too on the radio and all that uh both games on saturday and monday will be against the bahamian national team sounds like deandre ayton buddy healed are are in on the rosters but that doesn't guarantee if they're going to play. They're supposed to play multiple college teams over the day span.

I know they play like LSU a few hours after Kansas on one of the days. So it could be a split squad type of situation. It could be a situation where, you know, the NBA guys for the Bahamian national team are there just to support and be around the team. It could be where they only play limited minutes, right? You don't know. But if we get Buddy Heald, if we get, you know, Clay Thompson,

it's going to be fun seeing like Kevin McCuller going up against them defensively. We already know he's a good defender, but I just want to see it. It'd be really cool, right? Be awesome to see DeAndre Ayton going up against Hunter Dickinson. That's the big one. You know, it's probably going to be hard for Dickinson to stop DeAndre Ayton. He's a pro.

He's really physical. He's fast. He's big. He's athletic, all those things. But if Dickinson can go for 18 and 10 against Ayton, that would be very, very impressive. Just to see him in that matchup, I think, would be very telling in a lot of ways.

It'll be interesting to find out how good the rest of the team for the Bahamian national team is. Hyp hypothetically, if only DeAndre Ayton played and none of their other NBA guys played, like KU could still win that game. I know DeAndre Ayton would be the best player on the floor in that situation, but it is a team sport. So it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the team is. Cause for all we know, there are guys that we don't know who are playing in Europe overseas somewhere that are like great players over there and we just don't know their names that'll be very interesting to see and interested in some of those individual matchups and if we can continue to see that comfort level with KJ Adams playing next to

Hunter Dickinson that's gonna do it for this episode though of Locked on Jayhawks you can find us wherever you get any of your podcasts hit me up on Twitter at D Johnson Radio if you got any questions anything you want the show to talk about. And you can also find us on our YouTube page, like, and subscribe to the show. See you next time.