Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Locked On Jayhawks - 12.5.19

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Big 12 honors for KU football; Bill Self talks 3s, defense Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? Welcome into this Thursday edition 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 Jayhawks, giving you insight, numbers, and a chance to hear from all the voices within Kansas athletics. Looking forward to the show today. We're going to be able to hear a ton of sound from Coach Bill Self, as he had his press conference today and talked with reporters about a variety of things, talking about the three-point shot, both offensively and defensively, talking about Devon Dotson, Marcus Garrett, and, of course, Colorado,

which is KU's opponent Saturday, 6 o'clock tip at Allen Fieldhouse. As always, we'll take a look at our Jayhawks in the NBA later in the show. In the next segment, we'll talk about look at our jayhawks in the nba later in the show and next segment we'll talk about the games that happened last night in college basketball the big 12 and the top 25 a lot of action and some notable scores without question regarding that first things first though i want to kind of wrap things up on the season for ku football as the big 12 awards were announced yesterday and we've got a couple guys who were awarded. Once again, Puka Williams was named to the All-Big 12 First Team. He's the first offensive player in KU history to earn All-Big 12 First Team honors

in back-to-back seasons, so congratulations to Puka Williams. And how about Hakeem Adenoji? He is going to join Puka Williams. KU's left tackle started 48 consecutive games in the Crimson and Blue and earned All-Big 12 honors in all four seasons as a Jayhawk. First team All-Big 12 for Hakeem Adenoji and Puka Williams. And there are a bunch of other Jayhawks who were named honorable mention, all Big 12. Jelani Brown, Hassan Defense, Azur Kamara, Mike Lee, Ben Miles, Andrew Parchment, Gavin Potter, and Kyle Thompson. Congratulations to all those guys.

So a trying year. Kansas finishes 3-9 in Les Miles' first year, 1-8 in Big 12 play. But a lot of guys, especially those seniors, you're happy to see that for them, happy to see their efforts and their talents on the field being recognized despite the subpar season for Kansas football. And hopefully next year we have even more guys on the first and second team of Big 12. And the easy way to do that is pick up some more wins. So hopefully that's the case for our guys next season.

Other tidbit for Kansas football that I wanted to talk about before we get into basketball talk, which we're going to have a lot of today and tomorrow. Interesting Twitter tidbits. I don't know how many people are aware of this, but the man who was originally Florida's starting quarterback, his name is Felipe Franks, he recently announced that he was entering the transfer portal, and if you find him

on Twitter, Felipe Franks, the former Florida Gator, he only follows 101 people on Twitter, and a couple days ago, he followed both Les Miles and Brent Dierman. So interesting. Perhaps Felipe Franks is a guy that's on the mind of the KU coaching staff. We'll never know. Of course, it's just on Twitter, but he doesn't follow very many guys. And that's two pretty important KU coaches, the head coach and the offensive coordinator that the ex-Florida quarterback just followed on Twitter. So, of course, we'll follow that pretty closely as, of course,

recruiting continues for Kansas football. We know we want to see the wins on the field, but this Kansas program is going to get to where we want it to be in the offseason, recruiting, making sure the right coaches are in the right spots, and then getting the guys, the personnel that you want. And that's how this program is going to grow and get back to bowl eligibility for step one. So hopefully that's going to be the case.

Hopefully a very successful remainder of the recruiting season for the 2020 Jayhawks and Coach Les Miles. All right, so let's talk Kansas basketball now. We talked a lot this week. Hearing from the guys and Coach Self moments after the victory in the Maui Invitational Championship game against Dayton. There was a lot of storylines, most notably for Kansas. It was the one-two punch of Doak and Dotson. That was probably the best college basketball game I've seen all year.

I try to do my best keeping up with watching the games and not being too biased one way or the other. But Kansas Dayton, that was the best played college basketball game I have seen all year, still to this point. And it was fun, a 90 to 84 victory. And now we have this awkward week and a half before Kansas is back on the hardwood, which is finally going to be here on Saturday with the number 20 ranked Buffaloes coming in town. But it was nice to see Kansas be able to raise a trophy, right? They won the preseason NIT last year, defeating Marquette in Tennessee in New York. That's just a four-team tournament. This was an eight-team tournament, more of a tournament setting, three games in three days.

And the guys were able to feel like they really won a trophy after falling short in the Big 12 regular season and conference tournaments last year. And, of course, not advancing past the round of 32 in the NCAAs. So Bill Self was asked today at his press conference, is it a big deal? Are the guys hungrier because they won this Maui title? How important was that win to them? We enjoyed winning it.

Don't get me wrong, but we don't make a big deal out of that. That is not something that we're going to hang our hat on or anything like that. Anytime you play, you want to win. Anytime there's a tournament, you'd like to take home the trophy. And I do think the way that we played in the last game especially should give us some confidence moving forward in many different respects. But I don't think when we play on Saturday, that tournament win is going to really be in our mind in any way, shape, or form on how it impacts us moving forward. It probably gave us a springboard to have a decent week of practice, but past Saturday,

we'll only remember Saturday. We won't even remember Maui. It'll perhaps be something that we look back to come season's end for this KU basketball team winning the Maui title. But hopefully the reason we're looking back to it is that the team used it as a springboard toward more championships to come. Bill Self was also asked,

all right, we're about seven games into this season. Is this team about where you thought it would be, about where you wanted it to be? I wish we had Jalen. You know, I think Jalen would be a guy that we could certainly work in and give us some additional options. And I don't think Isaiah is himself yet. But I think he's gaining on it.

But, you know, if he could get, you know, Isaiah, you know, shooting the ball and us doing a better job of knowing how to get him open and, you know, the staff doing more things to get him open, I think that we can become better offensively without question. But we're a long ways away from being a real good team. We're a pretty good team, but we're a long ways away from being a real good team. But based on how we played in New York, I would say we have proved a lot. We have improved a lot since then in a lot of areas. A 6-0 record since that loss to Duke in the Champions Classic. And needless to say, there have not been any 28 turnover outings since then either. So that's been good to see as well.

All right, next segment, the rest of the show, we'll hear a lot more from Bill Self. He's going to talk some X's and O's. He's going to talk about what this Kansas team has worked on the past week of practice and what they need to do to not only beat Colorado on Saturday but upcoming. We have Colorado on Saturday, and then Tuesday, Kansas will host Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Allen Fieldhouse. And a week from Saturday, KU is back at it in Kansas City against UMKC. Treat yourself to the meal you deserve and have your favorite restaurants come to you with DoorDash.

Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code LOCKEDON. Listening on the go? If you can't visit DoorDash right now, you can find this and all other offers from LockedOn sponsors at LockedOnPodcasts.com slash offers. This is Locked On Jayhawks, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. A lot of action in the Big 12 last night.

There were three games, and for the most part, all three were competitive. Oklahoma State suffered their first loss of the year. It was a game in which they were 11-point favorites, and they fall at home to Georgetown, a team that recently had two players leave their program. But Mack McClung, the dunking wonder of Georgetown, drops 33 points as the Hoyas go into Stillwater and win 81-74. As I said, Cowboys' first loss of the season. Lindy Waters in that game had 29 points and 6 assists, and Cameron McGriff had 20 points, but not enough, so Oklahoma State's loss means that West Virginia is the lone undefeated team remaining in the Big 12 Conference.

Another game that was pretty close throughout before one team pulled away at the end was Iowa State-UMKC. Iowa State actually almost covered this game. They were 18.5-point favorites. They win by 18 in a game that was really pretty close throughout, about a 5- or 7-point game throughout. 79-61, the Cyclones over the Roos of UMKC. Tyrese Halliburton, Rasier Bolton, and Michael Jacobson each scored 19 points for the Clones. Halliburton chipped in 7 assists but did have 6 turnovers.

And Rasier Bolton got to the line a lot, 10 of 11 from the line in the Cyclone victory as they tried to bounce back from 2 losses in the battle for Atlantis. Another close game for Texas Tech, another overtime game for Texas Tech, and another loss for Texas Tech. They did not have Jemias Ramsey again in this one, and he's arguably their best player, so offense was hard to come by, not only for Tech, but for their victorious opponent DePaul. DePaul won it 65-60 in Chicago. DePaul is still undefeated. You know who their leading scorer is, right? Charlie Moore. 17.1 points a

game for Moore and 6.6 assists, leading the Big East in that category for the former Jayhawk Moore. Now, he didn't shoot it well this game. He was just 2 of 15 from the field, 6 points, but he did dish out 10 assists. And for Tech, they got 24 points out of Terrence Shannon Jr. He also chipped in 8 rebounds. Davide Moretti was just 1 of 10 from the field in this game, and perhaps what hurt the most was Moretti missed a free throw in and out. He made the first of a two-shot foul, but he missed one. And Texas Tech was up by three at the end of regulation. DePaul would hit a three to tie it because of the missed free throw to force OT. Of course, the Blue Demons would close it out then.

So a tough one for Moretti. And Texas Tech, Chris Beard's got some work to do. I still like them to finish second in the league, but they've got to get Jemias Ramsey back. And they've got some struggles offensively that they're going to have to work through. So 1-2 night for the Big 12. The only Big 12 game tonight is Oklahoma, a road game in Denton against North Texas at 7 p.m.

Top 25 scores from last night. Number 3 ranked Maryland had no problem at home against Notre Dame, 72-51. Virginia entered their game against Purdue on the road, a rematch of the Elite Eight game. Remember that? That was the Carson Edwards game from last year. Virginia had not lost yet, and they got pounded by Purdue, 69-40. Virginia is without perhaps their best offensive returner, Braxton Key, and it showed as Tony Bennett's company undefeated entering, but they were only averaging 54 points a game.

So they're not exactly an offensive powerhouse, and they lose big time to Purdue in West Lafayette. Ohio State goes on the road, 6-7, and the 6th-ranked Buckeyes kill the 7th-ranked Tar Heels of North Carolina at the Dean Dome, 74-49. North Carolina's got Cole Anthony and not a lot else. Armando Bacon was out. He got injured in this game, so that didn't help UNC in terms of their offense, but this game was so bad in the second half that Roy Williams benched his starters and put on some walk-ons. The walk-ons actually performed better even when the starters returned to the court, but Cole Anthony, he's going to go in the top five of the NBA draft. He needs some supporting actors if UNC wants to find their way

to better offensive performances. They have not scored 80 yet any game this year. Number 9, Gonzaga, after their loss to Michigan in the battle for Atlantis, defeated Texas Southern 101-62. Number 20, Colorado, KU's opponent on Saturday. They perhaps were overlooking a little, a Marymount team, but Colorado came back late to pull away 76-64. That game in Boulder.

Tennessee is ranked 21st. They defeated Florida A&M 72-43. Washington defeated Eastern Washington 90-80. The Huskies are ranked 22nd in the country. 23rd ranked Villanova defeated Penn in one of those Philly Five games, 80-69. That game was at Villanova. And Utah State ranked 25th in the country, defeated San Jose State 71-59. Not a lot of college basketball going on tonight.

Mentioned the one Big 12 game, Oklahoma at North Texas. Number 14-ranked Auburn takes on Furman. That'll be an interesting game. Furman, one of the better mid-majors out there. That game is at 8 p.m., the lone top 25 matchup tonight in college hoops. Bringing it back to KU hoops now, one thing that we know from Maui and particularly the BYU and Dayton games is that KU hoops now. One thing that we know from Maui and particularly the BYU and Dayton games is that KU's opponent is outscoring KU from beyond the arc in a large way as Kansas against Dayton was

outscored by 36 points beyond the arc alone. So here's Bill Self today kind of talking about that and how that's really not going to fly as the season goes on. We need to start scoring the ball more behind the arc ourself. Some of the best games we played, we made. What did we make against BYU? Could be wrong, two or four. And against Dayton, we made four. Two of our best games that we played, we haven't shot the ball well at all.

So we need to obviously become more consistent beyond the arc. But we can't be outscored by 36 points consistently and have a chance to win. Remember last year, it was all about LeGerald Vick and his prowess from beyond the arc and Quentin Grimes was streaky shooting threes. This team's got a lot of guys who aren't afraid to shoot from beyond the arc, but Coach Self was asked specifically, all right, who can be the guys to get this team going from beyond the arc? Devon hadn't shot it well yet. Ocho hadn't shot it well yet.

Marcus has made a few, but he hadn't exactly been on fire. So Isaiah has been our best three-point shooter, but it's been inconsistent because when he gets looks, he makes them, but when he doesn't get looks, he doesn't get them off. And so, yeah, we've got to do a better job with that. I think Christian is one of our best three-point shooters, and he just hadn't played much. But, yeah, I mean, we're not going to make 10 a game.

We may have some games we make 10, but I still think we can average seven threes a game, and I think that's basically what we're averaging now. But we've had two games where we made 22 combined and so it's a little bit misleading coach has said all along that it's going to be kind of up and down ebbs and flows this year for the team shooting beyond the arc and you know you also have to take what the defense gives you they didn't get a lot of opportunities to shoot threes against Dayton but they did what they was they fed it inside because Doak was not getting double teamed and he was able to lead the team to victory.

But eventually this team will face some teams that go with the two bigs look. And that'll be interesting to see how KU plays that if they do high low, if they're able to get some more shots up, but I really love what this team has done. They haven't been forcing threes up just because the other team is. There have been a lot of teams Kansas has faced who have been shooting threes, just chucking them up, either because they've got four guards out there. Maybe they think that's their best chance of knocking off a top-five team.

But I like that Kansas is taking what the defense is giving them. And they've shown their versatility. They can beat you inside, and eventually we'll see throughout the season that KU has the guys, the shooters on the outside. Kansas can beat you on the outside as well. Bill Self will talk defense after the break. This is Locked On Jayhawks, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, the local experts on the biggest stories. Well, the story for the Jayhawks in the NBA last night was once again Devontae Graham.

Unbelievable story for Devontae playing in his hometown, or near his hometown I should say. It's Devontae Dawson's hometown of Charlotte. Devontae from nearby Raleigh. D-Tay 33 points last night in the Hornets' 15-point victory over Golden State. Devontae hit 10 threes in this game, which tied the Hornets' franchise record for threes in a game. Oh, by the way, he also pulled down seven boards and dished out nine assists. People are already calling for Devontae being named the NBA's most improved player. He better be getting some all-star votes as well

because Devontae is leading this team, and it's really out of nowhere. I mean, we're cheering for our guys in the league, but how about a guy who played at Kansas until he was 23, last year was up and down with the G League like we've documented, but he is starting at point guard for the Hornets. He's the Hornets' best player this year so far, and he's just doing everything he can for his hometown team and his home state. It's awesome to see for one of Jayhawk Nation's favorite players,

and Devontae Graham. Continue to update on that as the season goes on. The Pistons lost at home to the Bucs, 127-103. Sfee McIloof played 28 minutes, scored 6 points. Markeith Morris, 15 minutes and 5 points for the Pistons. Suns lost to Orlando, 128-114. Kelly Oubre, 8 points, 3 boards, 2 assists. Sheck Diallo, he had a pretty good game, 19 minutes, he had 16 points and 4 boards.

And Andrew Wiggins and the Timberwolves lost to Dallas, 121-114. Wiggs also hit a milestone. He had 26 points, 5 boards, and an assist in this game. But Wiggins has now hit more threes than any other player in T. Wolves history. So a couple nice notables for last night's performances for Jayhawks in the NBA. And tonight's games, Joel Embiid and the Sixers are at the Wizards. Marcus Morris, who should be back for the Knicks tonight. He's been out a couple games because of cervical spasms. Interesting story about his son jumping on him in bed.

That kind of led to Marcus missing a couple games, but he should be back as the Knicks host the Nuggets. Ben McLemore and the Rockets are at Toronto. And then the Suns, who have Ubra and Diallo, are on the road against the New Orleans Pelicans those are the Jayhawks in the NBA games tonight we'll recap those as always on tomorrow's show we'll talk defense right now let's talk defense of this Kansas team we've heard throughout the season that coach Self truly thinks this team can be very very good on the defensive side of the

ball so coach talk today at his press conference about what are some ways that a defense can become elite? It's hard to be great defensively if you're not tough. And I think this team has potential to be a tough physical and mentally tough team. It's hard to be really good if you don't communicate. And I think we're bad communicators. So that's an area that potentially I can see us getting a lot better. I think that if you can't defend a ball screen and not be exploited that way, I think that you're going to have a chance to always be exposed. And we're not great at that yet, so there's room to get better. Coach said there was one more thing regarding X's and O's that great defensive

teams need to do. The last thing is, you know, everybody's heard of help the helper. You know, if your man helps, then you have to cover for your man, you know, for the guy that goes to help. Well, if you're really good, you're kind of like, you know, help the helper's helper. I mean, you're trying, I mean, you can see things two or three passes ahead. That's one thing that I was always so impressed with good defensive teams. If one guy's beat and a guy helps, you've got to cover for his man. But when you cover for his man, that leaves your man open and somebody's got to cover for you.

And when you have confidence that you can just always have help behind you, I think that allows teams to become really good defensively as well. A little X's and O's talk there from Bill Self talking about how teams can become great defensively. In regards to this specific team, Coach Self has talked about this team needing to make their opponents play inside the arc. Here's Coach talking about that. Try to press out a little bit more.

If you play flat, which, you know, just in basketball terms, a very common mistake that defenders make is when the ball moves, they jump to the basket as opposed to jumping to the ball if they don't have it. And so that makes it a longer distance, whether it be just one yard or three or, you know, three to five feet or whatever to close back out to, to when he catches it next on the perimeter. So trying to get our guys to play higher on the floor, uh, when, when their man doesn't have the ball. And I'm not saying told denial, I'm not saying that, but just where that forces them to catch it, maybe

a couple of feet out further. And then it's easier to get to them to contest. And then after they catch it, make them put it down. Coach Self continues basically talking about if this is going to be a battle between two teams both playing inside the arc in the half-court offense, Coach likes KU's chances. I think based on what I've seen so far is if we can make teams play inside the arc and we play inside the arc, then our chances are probably pretty good just because we've got a big body and we've got guys that can drive it a little bit. So I would say that would be a goal, that we can play better perimeter defense,

although we have actually done much better this year than we have in years past defending the arc up until the last game. Touting what many consider to be the most dominant big man in the country in Yudoka Azubuki, I think it would be hard for people to disagree with that. Speaking of dope, we'll hear Bill Self talking about Yudoka tomorrow. We'll also hear sound from Marcus Garrett and David McCormick, and coach is going to preview Colorado. They've got a pretty good point guard on their side with McKinley, right? And they've got some other really nice pieces as well that are going to perhaps cause some trouble for the Jayhawks in the top 20 battle,

the number 20 Buffaloes and the number two Jayhawks taking place at six o'clock Saturday at Allen field house. Can't wait for that. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the show and don't forget to check out the show tomorrow as well as we preview Colorado, take a deeper dive into those stats, and I can't wait to get that thing going

on Saturday. This is Sean Kellerman signing off. Thanks for listening to Locked On Jayhawks, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day, and rock chalk, Jayhawk.