Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Locked On Jayhawks - 10.21.19

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

KU football edged by UT in classic; Les Miles reaction; Bill Self talks MBB depth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everyone? Welcome into this new week of Locked On Jayhawks. I am Sean Kellerman, Learfield IMG College Broadcaster and University of Kansas Insider. This is Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jay-Aid officially after that performance on Saturday. Kansas, of course, falls short in Austin to the 15th ranked Longhorns, 50-48, in a game that was really one of the best college football games I can ever remember watching. Kansas got down early, 14-0, which unfortunately was symmetrical with how it's kind of gone, particularly on the road for this Jayhawks team for a number of years now to be frank and as they did against Boston College earlier this year KU got down early but then they showed fight and they came back in a strong way particularly due to their offense and some of the top performers, Carter Stanley and Puka Williams again. But really the story of this one was, aside from the offensive performance under brand new offensive coordinator Brent Dierman,

to me it was the fight of this Jayhawks team. They showed that they're going to get knocked down occasionally, but they're going to always make their way back up. And that was what happened as Texas, I think, thought they were going to steamroll the Hawks. And I think they showed that early on back-to-back possessions leading in the first half. Texas decided to go for it on fourth downs. Both of those possessions ended with Kansas getting stops on fourth down. And then the offense went and scored a touchdown on both of the ensuing drives.

So it was unfortunate how it ended. It was incredibly the highest scoring fourth quarter between two college football Power 5 teams since 1937. Truly, truly unbelievable how these teams went back and forth throughout. And in the fourth quarter, Kansas scored 24 points and Texas scored 26. So 50 combined points in the fourth quarter Kansas scored 24 points and Texas scored 26 so 50 combined points in the fourth quarter of this one unfortunately the Jayhawks do fall two points short losing 50 to 46 but coach Miles talked after the game about how proud he was of his guys they did everything Everything we asked them to do, they were all out in those things. They didn't shuffle or they didn't go slow.

They rushed to play. They played hard. They gave everything that they had. I say, I told them, I'm very proud to be associated with them. Pride in the Jayhawks, something that Les Miles talked about a lot. And what was interesting, and we highlighted it a little bit last week, Tom Herman's press conference following the Oklahoma game for UT took place last week, and in 26 minutes,

there was not a single question asked about Kansas and even in the middle of the press conference coach Herman quipped we got a game this week kind of sarcastically toward the reporters because no one was focused on the upcoming game against Kansas at all they were looking back toward the Red River Showdown and then also at the end of the press conference, as he was walking off the stage, Coach Herman said, Beat Kansas! And I think that some of the KU coaches and players took offense to that

because they're tired of being the doormat of the Big 12. And they showed it with their play. They won the turnover battle 2-0 against a team that was leading the Big 12 in turnover margin. And Carter Stanley played perhaps the best game of his career. Puka Williams had another phenomenal year. But back to Kansas pride, here's what Coach Miles had to say about that after the game. You think that the people that leave the stadium will know Kansas?

I think they'll know that phrase, Kansas. It seems a little bit more now to me, Kansas. I mean, not just in the stadium, in the conference. In the country. Kansas. Yeah. So the Jayhawks in this one, even in defeat, feeling like they made a statement to the rest of the conference and the country that you can't just overlook these guys. And one of the main reasons was the firepower that all of a sudden Kansas showed offensively I mentioned Carter Stanley and Puka Williams let's just take a look at their numbers Stanley was 27 of 47 for 310 yards and four touchdowns no turnovers for the senior he also rushed 65 for 65 yards on 9 carries. And Puka Williams, 25 carries for 190 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Puka also had 4 catches in this one. And then even going to the receivers, Stanley did a great job spreading it around. Stephon Robinson had the best game statistically. He had 7 catches for 67 yards and 2 touchdowns. Kwame Lasseter had one of his better games as a Jayhawk. 5 catches for 67 yards and two touchdowns. Kwame Lasseter had one of his better games as a Jayhawk, five catches for 66 yards. And then Andrew Parchment and T'Kove Williams also had touchdown receptions for Kansas.

So really, there was production top to bottom for this Kansas offense. And also, Carter Stanley, he just made plays. He does what he does, which is put his body on the line for this team. And man, talk about Mitch Lightfoot bleeding crimson and blue. I think there's a case to be made that if you cut Carter Stanley open, a Jayhawk would fall out of him too. So another impressive performance by Stanley and the offense as a

whole. And it was under new offensive coordinator Brent Dierman and Coach Miles was asked after the game about his new OC. We have really good coaches. I've got guys that are fighting like hell to be a part of what we're doing here. And Dierman is one of them. There's just a bunch of real quality people in the backdrop of that program that's just doing a great job for us. So the Jayhawks did have that impressive performance offensively against Boston College

and Chestnut Hill back on September 13th, but this was even more impressive. After six games under the direction of Les Kenning, Kansas takes just one game under Brent Dierman to really kind of wow Jayhawk Nation and maybe shock some of the fans from Texas and any other fans that tuned into this game or saw highlights of it because Kansas was pretty much unstoppable offensively. They were 2-for-2 on fourth downs, 10-of-19 on third downs. The Jayhawks had 569 yards, and they were well-balanced. Even without Khalil Herbert, they rushed for 259 yards.

They passed for 310, and Coach Miles also talked about in his press conference the number of plays, just how evenly matched this game was. Kansas ran 86 plays, and Texas ran 85. Time of possession was nearly dead even as well, and Texas got big performances, of course, from a guy who was in Heisman conversation earlier this year, Sam Ellinger. He threw for nearly 400 yards and four touchdowns. And Ellinger ran for 91 yards. He had 14 total carries. And a lot of those carries were third-down scrambles

where he was able to get past the KU defense and make plays. And that included a time on the final drive when he was able to do that, set up the eventual game-winning 33-yard field goal from Cameron Dicker. Dicker, the kicker, wins it for the Horns. Ellinger was great, but I want to talk about our guys even more just because of how proud we are as Jayhawks. It sucks when you wake up and you realize that you're 2-5 and you're 0-4 in Big 12 play, but you would be hard-pressed to not see tangible improvement from these guys.

We've heard so much about how much talent and how much potential these guys have, and I think we saw that particularly on the offensive side of the ball on Saturday. Defensively, obviously you're going up against one of the top teams in the country. I think Kansas probably doesn't feel as bad as Texas in terms of defensive performance on Saturday just because statistically and athletically, Texas has the advantage on the offensive side of the ball. But highlight a few guys defensively for the Jayhawks. Gavin Potter having to step in at linebacker in the absence of Drew Prox. How far has he come in just a few weeks? The true freshman led the team with nine tackles. He had two and a

half TFLs and one and a half sacks, and he was great. Mike Lee forced a fumble. Bryce Tornadin had eight tackles and recovered that fumble, and Najee Stevens-McKenzie had another interception, his second of the year. Of course course the elephant in the room were the special teams Kansas feels like they win this game without the two blocked kicks one a Liam Jones field goal and then one a Liam Jones extra point attempt that was when Puka scored his second touchdown to make this game 31 to 30 and Kansas was just a PAT away from tying it and disaster struck the kick was blocked and Texas returned it all the way

to the end zone for a two-point conversion. So instead of being tied 31-all, it was 33-30 and that three-point swing really ended up stinging as Texas ends up winning 50-48. Again though, even after that, KU gave up a touchdown on Texas' next drive, and they were down 40-30 again, so all the fight Kansas had through three, three and a half quarters was perhaps washed away, because there they were down by 10 again, but again, Carter Stanley rallied the troops, Kansas got a field goal, that Stevens-McKenzie interception, another touchdown, and eventually the Jayhawks were within a touchdown at 47-40. And then they got the touchdown, Stephon Robinson, and the two-point conversion to Daylon Charlotte. Charlotte had the SportsCenter number one play, by the way,

on a fourth down on that last offensive drive for Kansas, making an incredible play on fourth and ten to keep the Jayhawks' hopes alive. Then he had the two-point conversion that put Kansas up 48-47. But, of course, Cameron Dicker ended it with that field goal, 50-48. So KU, 21-point dogs in this one. Falls by two on the road to a very good Texas team. Got so much to get into. We've got more sound from Les Miles in the next segment.

We'll also recap the Friday Five, see how the first installment of that went. And then a little bit later in the show, we'll get a chance to hear more from Bill Self. And we'll see where the Jayhawks fell in the preseason AP Top 25 poll. That's all coming up next. This is the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Could not have been prouder of a guy that's getting pressured and whacked and gets up, kind of dusts it off, and goes right back to fighting. That's Coach Les Miles talking about his quarterback, Senior Carter Stanley, who, like I said, had a phenomenal game,

and I was just incredibly impressed with Stanley's resolve and this offense as a whole. KU continued to fight back. You just wish they could have gotten one big stop on defense or maybe had one of their kicks go through, and the end result might have been different. But as it was, Texas 50, Kansas 48 in Austin on Saturday, and the Hawks will now head home for back-to-back home games

against beatable teams, Texas Tech this upcoming Saturday and Kansas State on November 2nd. Going to recap the Friday 5 now. I'm not sure who ended up following those picks for me, but it was off to a great start. Florida ended up covering their minus five at South Carolina. That game, by the way, featured some unhappy fans, to say the very least, as South Carolina fans were throwing towels and water bottles on the field, upset with the

referees. Florida won that game, easily covering the five at 38-27. The next game on the slate was Kansas State plus three and a half. I actually like Kansas State straight up against TCU, and they did end up getting it done, defeating the Frogs in Manhattan by a touchdown. And then, who would have thought it would have been a bad idea to bet on an 0-6 team, but that's what I did for some reason. I'm glad we're not betting real dollars on this. Akron plus 17.5 against Buffalo. They actually had a chance to cover this without even scoring, but Buffalo won it 21-0 as Akron was just abysmal completely on the offensive side. Georgia

did not cover 25.5 against Kentucky. That game was also a 21-0 score, so Georgia did not cover that 25.5. And then Penn State, they were up 14 on Michigan, but they could not cover the 9 as they won in Happy Valley 28-21. And then how about this? My specialty bonus pick of the week ended up being by far the worst pick. The other games were all close within a score at least.

I really liked the Bears against New Orleans. I was high on Chicago's defense and not so high on Teddy Bridgewater. Teddy Buckets, we'll call him, he proved me wrong to say the least. The Saints defense needs to be talked about a little bit more as the Bears fall 36-25 in Chicago. They actually got a couple late touchdowns. It wasn't even that close. It was 36-10 at one point in favor of the Saints. The Bears got a touchdown, a two-point conversion, and then recovered an onside kick and got another touchdown

with under a minute to go. But the Bears, minus three was the bet, and they end up losing at home by 11. Mitchell Trubisky and Chicago's offense just has a long way to go, clearly. And the Saints need to be talked about as a legitimate Super Bowl contender. And it's amazing what Teddy Bridgewater has done. New Orleans is 6-1 despite not having one of the NFL's all-time greats, Drew Brees, under center. It's been Teddy Bridgewater, a great story. He has certainly

been impressive. The fans have loved him in New Orleans so the Friday 5 plus the bonus one ends up at 2 and 4 after a 2 and 0 start we'll keep a running tally throughout the year we'll hope that it's a marathon and not a race and hope we can get over 500 next edition of the Friday 5 of course will take place on Friday our final show of the week I'll let you know the lines that I like and and I think you should too. All right, so before we get to Bill Self and some basketball talk in the final segment, let's talk a little bit more about this Kansas football team. And I know that obviously we're down about losing, but we're very excited about the direction of the program. Here's one more comment from head coach Les Miles following the loss in Austin. We're going to play hard. This is a team that has the want and fire to finish first, to win.

I'm so proud of them, I can't tell you. And there's a reason that Jeff Long brought in Coach Miles to lead this program. Obviously, he's 65 years old. He's not a young guy. We see so many programs and organizations, college and NFL level, going toward these younger guy head coaches. And while Kansas has gone that way now officially in terms of their offensive coordinator and Brent Dierman, Les Miles is a leader.

And he has taken on more of a CEO role with this team. And you can see it on the sideline. On the sideline, he's just all about trusting his coaches. And he talked about that in that clip we heard earlier. He loves his coaches. He's going to put trust in them. He's going to put trust in his players. And he's going to back them up. And I think that's why we love having Coach. I think that's probably the most attractive thing about him is that maybe he's not as much of an X's and O's guy anymore, but he is bringing in the right guys,

the guys who want to coach and play for a proven winner and a national champion coach. So we certainly are lucky to have him, and we look forward to where he's going to take this program. Now, I know I'm going to be a major homer about this, and I'm sure Jayhawk Nation and the rest of you, are probably similar to me. But I'm looking at this upcoming schedule for Kansas, and they're 2-5. I see a path to six wins. It's not going to be easy, but I see a way that Kansas can get to six wins and become bowl eligible. It's not going to be easy, as I mentioned. You have to go 4-1 the rest of the way, and there's certainly some tough battles. But I think, without question, this KU team,

especially from what we saw on Saturday in Austin, they can beat Texas Tech and Kansas State at home. That's not even a big question for me. If they are anywhere near the team that we saw on Saturday, they can knock off the Red Raiders and the Wildcats, two very beatable teams, and hopefully Jayhawk Nation gets out to David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium to support them. And then you've got back-to-back road games. You're playing at Oklahoma State, who's good but beatable, and then at Iowa State, also a good team,

and then you end with Baylor at home. So I think if you're 4-5 after the Kansas State game, you can get two out of three wins. I think obviously you're going to have to count on beating Oklahoma State because then you've got two of the better teams in the league at Iowa State and Baylor. I understand that's probably not realistic, but if we see the team that we saw again against Texas, then there's an opportunity, and I'm going to believe in these guys as long as the win-loss record allows me to in terms of having an opportunity to make a bowl game. Next opportunity for this Kansas team, of course, is going to be

that Texas Tech matchup. It's going to be Saturday at 6 o'clock, homecoming at DBK Memorial Stadium, so if you don't have tickets, go ahead and find a way to get yourself out there and support our guys. All right, in the final segment, we're going to hear from Bill Self. Can't wait to talk Kansas basketball this week. Of course, we have our first exhibition game on Thursday night against Fort Hayes State.

Going to be great to get back in Allen Fieldhouse. And of course, the AP Top 25 poll came out today as well. We'll see where the Jayhawks were ranked in that and see if they can meet or perhaps exceed expectations by season's end. The Locked On Podcast Network, the local experts on the biggest stories. All right, finishing up the Monday edition of Locked on Jayhawks,

I am Sean Kellerman. Remember to follow me on Twitter if you'd like, at Sean Kellerman. You can also follow the show on Twitter at LO underscore Jayhawks. You can tweet at me. You can message me, whatever you'd like. If you have something you'd like me to tap into or any thoughts on the show, feel free to let me know. I'm happy to give you credit

give me your name and where you're from and anything kansas related i'm happy to talk about and love talked about love talking about our jayhawks on the gridiron and their performance on saturday and we're going to transition now to the hardwood what we do best here at Kansas. And Jayhawks are going to enter the AP Top 25 in the preseason, ranked number three. And I think that that's probably not much of a surprise. I think maybe some people thought two or even one. And I think in some polls, Kansas is even higher. But how about this?

The four teams taking part in the Champions Classic on November 5th in Madison Square Garden are the top four teams in the country. The first matchup is going to be Kansas and Duke. KU3, Duke is four, and then Michigan State and Kentucky. How about that? Right off the top of the college basketball season, you're going to have number one and number two ranked teams in the country. Just to kind of give everyone a reminder, I know we've been away from basketball for a while, but if you're interested in some of the top guys for some of these teams, Michigan State will return a couple guys that were injured for parts of last season, Kyle Ahrens and Joshua Langford.

We all know about Cassius Winston. I could have sworn the majority of last year that he was a senior, but in fact, he'll be entering his senior season. He'll be back, as will Aaron Henry and Xavier Tillman. Marcus Bingham Jr. is a sophomore. They expect big things from him as well, but I think you're looking at the one-two punch specifically of Winston and Tillman that give Michigan State the top nod. Of course, Lankford and Ahrens are guys on the wings that can make their presence known as well. Number two ranked team is Kentucky, and wouldn't you know it, they have got a lot of young guys.

They do return some veterans in EJ Montgomery and Nick Richards. Of course, Ashton Hagans will be returning as well. He will be their sophomore point guard. KU recruiting target Johnny Juzang will be playing for Kentucky as well. And then Tyrese Maxey is another guard who was highly recruited, and he'll be playing for the Wildcats alongside Emmanuel Quickly as well. For Duke, of course, the big story for them in the offseason was Trey Jones returning. Alongside Javin Delorier. Both of

them will be veterans for Duke. Jones, of course, will just be a sophomore and a couple more KU targets that opted for a different brand of blue. Cassius Stanley and Matthew Hurt are on this Duke team as well. So as always, there's going to be a lot of talent in these Blue Blood programs. Of course, I like the Jayhawks. Most of us do. And Kansas has got a lot of talent in these Blue Blood programs. Of course, I like the Jayhawks. Most of us do. And Kansas has got a lot of returning talent, and they've got some newcomers. One thing that this team really needed last year that they did not get enough of was shooting from beyond the arc, three-point shooting.

Quentin Grimes was not as good as we hoped he would be, to put it frank. And Kansas is bringing in a graduate transfer in Isaiah Moss, and they're hoping he can be as good of a grad transfer as somebody like Tarek Black. And hopefully Moss can provide KU with that necessary three-point shooting. And that would be huge for Kansas, not only, of course, because you need to be able to stretch the defense, but if you want to play inside out, out you got to have somebody who can knock it down from outside and certainly with all the bigs that

Kansas has that's going to be the goal. Here is Bill Self talking a few days ago about Isaiah Moss. I've always thought if you had to shoot well to play well then you probably weren't a complete player but the longer you get in the game I mean that's such a big part of the game is making shots and here's a guy that I think he shot 41 or 42 from three at Iowa so if that translates even though they're moving the line back or foot or whatever if that translates to you know 40% here that that's something that we desperately needed I think he's good player he's hurt right now he said he now. He's tweaked his hamstring and hasn't been 100%,

but he will be in a week or so. I see him having a great opportunity to be in that starting role or playing starter's minutes if he doesn't start. To me, Isaiah Moss is an ideal sixth-man type player. I think he's a guy you want to be able to bring in off the bench and provide instant offense when you need a bucket. And I think you can say pretty confidently that Devon Dotson is going to be the starting point guard. And then Ochai Abadji and Marcus Garrett are going to be the starting wings for this team. Ochai can do a little bit of everything. He and

Devon, by many mock drafts, are projected to first-round NBA picks in the spring. And then, obviously, the frontcourt is loaded as well. Silvio De Sosa likely gets the nod as the starting four, and Yudoka at the five with David McCormick not far behind. But you've got Moss as a potential six-man first guard off the bench ahead of guys like Jalen Wilson, Christian Brown, younger guys. But he's the type of guy that this Kansas team needs, like I said, to stretch the defense and to be able to give the bigs a little bit of space

to work on the interior. Speaking of working on the interior, is that something that Kansas is going to look to do this year? It hasn't been that way in about three years. Here's Bill Self talking about that. These past three years, we played small. Historically, we haven't played small. This year, to put our best players on the floor, we're going to go back to playing big. And that doesn't mean we won't play small some, but we'll go back to playing big. And so

I don't think it's necessarily my favorite way to play. I don't think it's not my favorite way to play. I, or it's not my favorite way to play. I just think we just try to do and adjust and tweak that best fits us to give us the best chance. And what gives us the best chance is obviously getting our best athletes and our best players out there. Understanding that's not gonna be the case 100% of the time and 30 or 40% of the time we'll probably make adjustments and do something different.

But it's hard for me to think of a scenario where Doak and Silvio and David, and possibly Mitch, although there's still up in the air about Mitch and what we're going to do this year with him, but I'm real excited about having that option. Playing two bigs and having that high-low option has really been Bill Self's bread and butter throughout his coaching career. And that's something that he brought with him to Kansas from Illinois. We saw that right off the top with guys like Wayne Simeon and then transitioned to Marcus Morris, Thomas Robinson,

and really all the way up to about Perry Ellis's senior year 15 and 16. Then we saw kind of a transition away from that. KU perhaps missed on some recruiting targets. We saw a lot of Landon Lucas at the 5 in 16-17 and Josh Jackson came in and he played a lot of 4 as a big wing and then in 17-18 it was a lot of Sfiima Kailuk at the four as KU had of course Devontae Graham Malik Newman in the backcourt and not as much in the frontcourt and then last year with the injury to Yudoka in which he only played nine games you were looking at a lot of smaller lineups as well with Marcus Garrett playing a lot at the four so we could see that but with this roster this year it hasn't been announced for

any red shirts particularly regarding mitch lightfoot although he is a candidate you've still got those three bigs down low that you're going to lean on and for bill self and the jayhawks i think that's back to the way that they want to play all right been a packed monday show we talked a lot of kansas football We talked about how optimistic I am about this team, and hopefully that optimism will result in a lot of wins here, especially these next couple weeks. You got to get both of these games. I think it's fair for KU fans to not only want to win both of these games against Texas Tech and Kansas State, but this could be a big step for the program. You play these mid-tier teams in your conference at home. You expect to

win those games. Hopefully Kansas can do that beginning with Texas Tech on Saturday and we'll obviously preview that game a lot a little bit later in the week. And we also heard from Bill Self a little preview. Talked about Isaiah Moss and playing big this year and we'll hear so much more from Bill Self, so much more from Les Miles as the week goes on and Locked On Jayhawks continues. Give me a follow on Twitter. Can't wait to talk to you guys the rest of this week. Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

Have a great night and rock chalk, Jayhawk.