Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - MONEY GRAB: Flory Bidunga Transfers from Kansas | Is it Worry Time for the Jayhawks Offseason Plans?

Starting point is 00:00:00 I think there's some light at the end of the tunnel coming this week for KU, but the first week of the portal being open, not great and wasn't a great finish for KU to the weekend. We'll break it all that. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's going on on today's episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks? We're going to be breaking down some of the latest news with KU Baseball, KU Softball, KU-Mazoo News. get to some of the latest KU portal news with some of their targets and visitors.

Starting point is 00:00:38 And we'll start off the bat right here with what was not the best end of the week or first week in general, KU with the transfer portal being open. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Fandual. New customers can bet just $5 and get $250 in bonus bets. If your first bet wins, head over to fandwell.com to get started today. So the first week of the portal comes to a close here and Kansas doesn't wind up with any commits or player additions. And then you finish out the week with the Sunday news that Flory Bedunga is going to be heading to Louisville. So that officially, you know, wraps up any chance of him coming back. You have Tyron Stokes news that he's going to be visiting Taki.

Starting point is 00:01:17 You have some news of certain players who, you know, whether they were targets for KU or not, whether they were going to try to set up a visit, you know, how aggressive were they going to be in it or not, end up committing to other schools. And in general, it was not the best first week for Kansas. Now, I am optimistic that this week shows some light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, that there are some good things potentially to happen for Kansas starting with this week for KU. But certainly the first week was one that, you know, not only will test your patience a little bit, but certainly more probably negative things happened, at least officially, than positive things happen.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Let's start with the Florida Badoon run, right? So Florey entered the portal last year, decided to come back. back. This year he enters the portal. And it never really had that same feel where like last time it was about getting the bigger both times it was about a money grab. Right. And I continue to say like, I don't think Flory is a bad kid. I think Florey's in a bad situation here. I think Florey's guardians and handlers are money hungry thieves for lack of a better term. But like, you know, that's one man's opinion. And I know other people have that opinion. I know other people in the college basketball realm have that opinion. At the end of the day, Flore gets a huge check.

Starting point is 00:02:32 Good for him to go to Louisville and I think Louisville be a pretty good team. Could it be Pat Kelsey's first team to make it to the second weekend of an NCAA tournament? Very quite possibly could with the addition of Florey and Jackson's Shellstad. Could Pat Kelsey shock the world and do that? It's entirely possible, right? I do actually think it's a good spot for Floree from the standpoint of, I don't know that Florey's offensive game is going to be worth the price tag associated with him, but the defensive game is going to be super valuable. And for a Louisville team that wants to run up and down super fast, that wants to launch a bunch of threes,

Starting point is 00:03:10 having a center who can just grab your rebounds, play defense, and throw down dunks with the really good spacing they'll probably have, is going to be super valuable for them. And so basically Flore can, by just being in a really good fit, not improve on his lack of offensive game, but have an even bigger statistical season this season and then get paid off of that even more and probably enter the transfer portal again next year and look for an even bigger check, whether it's from Louisville or some other school, right? So I think this is interesting because, you know, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:03:40 Flory becomes one of the biggest villains in KU history. Like seriously, like for a guy who won Big 12 defensive player of the year, like that is the case here. He becomes one of the biggest villains in KU history. KU's going to be hosting Louisville in an exhibition game. That ain't going to feel like an exhibition game, right? That is going to be very interesting with how, you know, he is received and treated and stuff like that. And again, to me, this is less about Floreen more about his handlers and stuff. You could say at some point, do you draw the line, but there's a kid coming over from Africa who didn't pick up a basketball until he was like 16 years old who doesn't really know better of this world and situation. And he's just with kind of

Starting point is 00:04:16 the wrong people. That being said, again, credit to him, he, you know, got all the money in the world that he could have possibly wanted and seem, you know, so is what it is. And from the Kansas perspective, obviously it means that you're looking for a new starting center for this upcoming season, right? So then the other big news from this week was the Tyrant Stokes announced that he's going to be visiting Kentucky this. Now, the reason being, he has a bit of a different staff, a couple of their assistants left for other jobs.

Starting point is 00:04:42 They hired Mo Williams, who close with Jamal Crawford, who was a high school coach for Tyron Stokes at Rainier Beach. I don't know. Is that being overblown a little bit? Because, like, Jamal Crawford was Tyron Stokes coach for, what, three months? He joined Rainier Beach halfway through. Maybe it's being overblown. Maybe it's not, right?

Starting point is 00:05:03 It certainly doesn't hurt because clearly seemed like they needed a little bit more relationships there. So we'll see. You may think that having a visit to Kentucky this late in the game while you're waiting for him to commit. Probably not a good thing for Kansas, right? I guess the visit could go so poorly that it steers him to KU, and that would be the hope, I think, in Lawrence. But does this start to make you, you know, consider if you're Kansas, hey, let's go with our plan B here, our plan A was going to have Stokes and then these try to get these portal

Starting point is 00:05:30 additions, do you start looking elsewhere? You know, do you start potentially moving some of that money around and looking to other players? There's some really good players in the portal right now that, to me, would deserve some of that money. Alan Graves, I'll do a deep dime of name a little later than this week from Santa Clara. To me, would be worth the money for that. there's a kid who was with overtime elite, then went overseas to Europe and was on the number two team in Euro League, which Euro League is the second best league in the world.

Starting point is 00:05:56 On the second best team in Euroleague and was like their leading point score and he's like a 22 year old point card. I mean, that would be worth it to me, right? So like go out and do something like that if you can, fill out the rest of your portal roster. But certainly Stokes represents one of your highest ceiling, highest potential additions that you could make still at this point in the offseason. So we'll wait and see what happens there. But again, I don't think that was good news for kids.

Starting point is 00:06:17 amount to nothing news, but it's certainly not good news here, right? And then you have like certain guys that whether KU was targeting or had a visit scheduled or were trying to have a visit scheduled and it just didn't come together. Isaiah Johnson commits to Texas. That's a player that I really was high on going back to his deep dive and whether it was, you know, Texas going to an offer that KU wasn't comfortable with or him just wanting to fit in there. You know, that good early start to the portal season for Texas. David Punch goes there, another player that I think a lot of KU fans were hoping would wind up in Lawrence and didn't feel like there was a ton of movement ever between KU and Punch, Day Day, Day Ames, who, you know, I wasn't the highest on in the world.

Starting point is 00:06:54 I did the deep dive. Like, I think there were good things about Ames game that could have made work at Kansas, but, you know, at the end of the day, that one isn't the biggest miss in the world or anything to me, but you're losing more targets and he goes to Tennessee. Now, they're going to have some visitors coming in this week, at least they're supposed to, but like that's part of this story too. KU was supposed to have multiple visitors this past weekend. and they all got canceled, right?

Starting point is 00:07:17 And so it's just the optics of that happening. Now, is there a chance that KU was able to keep things under wraps, that they had visitors in town without us knowing about it or without it leaking out publicly? Absolutely. I go back to last year, Jaden Dawson, that commitment came out of nowhere for a lot of people. It was just like, he wasn't really on radars in terms of like targets and stuff. And then it was all of a sudden, I think he was KU's first portal edition,

Starting point is 00:07:42 maybe he was their second last year. And it was just like, oh, this guy's a Jayhawk. Like, here we go, you know. So it's a little bit of a different thing. And I'm wondering if that's what's going to happen here. Now, the worry mode started to get a little worried late in the week for the first time this offseason. And then all of a sudden, I'm kind of back in right now because of some of these potential visitors coming in this week. So let's break down some of those players that could be coming in this week that could be game changers in the off season for KU.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Then we'll get some of the latest news after this on Locked on Jayhawks. Brought to you by Fandul Sportsbook. The NBA playoffs are here where every possession matters. Every matchup is magnified and every game can swing a series. And right now, Fan Duel's given new customers a great way to get in on the action. It's $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. The app makes it easy to follow the action with player stats, trends, and matchups all in one place. And during the playoffs, that extra insight really matters when you're looking at stars, roles,

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Starting point is 00:09:27 So real quick, a little more on Florey. What this does is KU bringing in visitors now from an on-the-court perspective is, first of all, you need a center replacement. Second of all, it changes a little bit. And I say change. It felt like the way this was trending. KU to me was probably. operating, Florey wasn't going to come back over the last week or so, maybe even longer than that.

Starting point is 00:09:49 But it certainly makes your roster construction different because if you have Flory at the five, you're probably looking for a four man who can really score the basketball to counteract, you know, not having a true post-up five man, right? The other, I guess, connections here you would say are that by not having Floree, it changes the way you can build the roster unless you bring in a, like can you bring in another center who provides enough rim protection that you feel like if you bring in a couple players who might not be the best defenders in the world you can still make it work that was the beauty of if you would have gotten floy back you could have rounded out the roster with a bunch of offensive players around

Starting point is 00:10:26 florrie and just said hey we have florrie anchoring the middle we have bill self the defense is going to be top 25 in the country and then we have the offensive you know weaponry around it now now you don't have that opportunity and the other thing is the center market seems to be an incredible cost right now And so it's very interesting which way KU goes. Do you pay the cost to say, because I think the assumption is some of the rumors out there is that Flory got like $5 million to go to Louisville. Do you view it as if you're Kansas, you know, we can get a center for $3 million who's a pretty good center and use that extra $2 million on a better wing or making the bench a little bit better

Starting point is 00:11:03 or whatever it ends up being? Or do you go even further than that? Do you try to use a little bit of money ball strategy where you say, hey, we're going to just try to find a average starting center and say, hey, while everybody, like, that's the thing with my, I think people correlate Moneyball with like a specific style of play where it's like you think of the walks and stuff like that. What Moneyball really is, is money ball is finding the, the deficiencies in the market, right? If everybody's paying for this skill or this type of player, let's zig when they zag. Let's find a market inefficiency where there's value to be

Starting point is 00:11:43 had that's being underpaid, you know? And I think that's what you're almost looking at here from if you're Kansas. I don't think it's the worst strategy in the world. I mean, um, 2023 KJ Adams is starting at the five, Kansas gets a one seed. Um, I love Lyndon Lucas. That dude was helpful in so many ways. He was a good defender. He was a great rebounder, uh, really opened up the floor for a lot of people, had those incredible like seal offs that would allow open lanes for people to get easy layups. At the end of the day, you can probably find a landed Lucas type of center in the portal for one or two million, right? And so that's kind of where I'm at where like, if you out the roster around an average level center, because everybody is maybe overpaying the center position,

Starting point is 00:12:26 I think there's almost a market inefficiency there where you could say we can be better at the other positions and all these other teams are going to be overpaying that position. And if we can just have like a good defender there, a good rebounder there, like it's going to be enough for us. So I think that that might be the strategy for KU. We'll see. As far as visits go, I guess we'll just start there with the center. Anton Bonk, sounds like there's some interest there. Great last name. We'll be doing a deep dive later today on Bonk. So make sure to check that one out here with Locked on Jayhawks. So I'll leave a little more for that episode. He's a 7.2 cent. Certainly would be interesting there. Terrence Hill supposedly will be visiting today. He is a

Starting point is 00:13:04 VCU, or I guess tomorrow, I'm releasing this Sunday night. So depending when you listen to it, Sunday or Monday, Terrence Hill visiting Monday, VCU transfer, who is one of the scores in the transfer portal. And for Terrence Hill, I actually released that deep dive on Sunday. I highly recommend checking it out because I don't think I realized how much I was going to love Terrence Hill until I did the deep dive. And now I am like madly in love with Terrence Hill's game. And I'm like, hey, you cannot let him leave Lawrence without, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:33 committing to KU. So that would be a good one to add. DeShon Good sounds like his visit could be coming. If you remember, we did a Sean Good episode. It was one of our first transfer portal deep dive episodes. And he's been one of my favorites in the portal so far. So, you know, I'd be loving the portal if they could get good in Hill. That's certainly the case. And that would give you a lot of offense and shooting. And then the last one here is Terrence Brown. There's kind of a battle of Terrence is going on among KU fans. Terrence Hill, the transfer from VCU, Terrence Brown, the transfer from Utah. definitely on the case that I think Hill is better than Brown. I don't think Brown would be a bad

Starting point is 00:14:07 consolation prize. If you can't get Hill and you land Brown, he can get to the rim. He's quick. He's slithery. I do think Hill is the better player and I'd much prefer to get Hill over Brown. But again, like, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world if you end up with Brown. I don't think you want to do both, though. So that's kind of where we are with some of the latest. And then you're kind of looking at some of the other guys that like, you know, maybe there was initial interest in what's going to happen with some of these other visits. Like who are the guys that you're kind of waiting around on? There's been, you know, there was interest earlier from like reported interest on Twitter and stuff about some of the, the smaller mid-major guards. Like maybe you think of like a Alon Sumler for Charleston Southern or a Corey Cotton from UTRGV guys that can kind of fill out the roster or be bench scores from you.

Starting point is 00:14:59 And then I'm really curious what they do on the wing because to this point, like you think of Deshaun Good, he's a four, you think of some of the interest that they've shown in some of these different five men, whether it's Bonk or potentially like Mustafa Chom or something like that. You think of some of these guards with Terrence Hill and Terrence Brown, it feels like we haven't really heard much about Kansas in the wing department. Like John Blackwell is one of the best players in the portal. Never heard any Kansas interest with Blackwell who released like a top six. Kansas wasn't in it. you think of Duke Harris, who, you know, again, one of the best players in the portal. Again, never really any Kansas noise coming out of there. I even think about like Paul McNeil, more of a shooting guard than a wing, but still, like Devin Vanterpool, kind of the same thing.

Starting point is 00:15:42 Two players I'd be very interested for Kansas to add to, you know, the wing lineup. It doesn't really feel like we've heard a lot there. Now, there was a little bit of talk about Jake Hall, the New Mexico sharpshooter, who I know some people were interested in the Liberty transfer, Brett Decker Jr., who was just insane shooter. He's since committed to Baylor. If you go compare Jake Hall, what he did at New Mexico, to what Brett Decker did at Liberty, you will find yourself liking, in my opinion, Jake Hall even better than Decker, and Hall did it in a tougher league playing in the Mountain West than the conference

Starting point is 00:16:15 that Liberty is in. Like, for instance, Hall shot 54.5% on twos, Decker shot 53.5%. Hall shot 43% from 3. Decker was a bit better at 46%. But Hall actually was taking even more threes per game than Decker was. You look at the free throw attempt rate. That was actually higher for Hall than it was for Decker. You look at the defensive RAPM.

Starting point is 00:16:43 Decker was a negative 1.1. Hall was a 2.2. So you're getting more on the defensive end with Hall than you are from Decker. You look at the Evin Mia rating. Like the Evan Mia rating for 26 was 4.6. versus Decker was a 1.06. So like, anyway, that was a quick diatribe on like, if you liked Brett Decker, you should like Jake Hall even more as a Kansas potential target. But point being, like, I just feel like we haven't heard a lot of names from the wing position.

Starting point is 00:17:07 And I wonder if part of that's intentional, right? You're waiting to see what's going to happen here with Tyron Stokes, which clearly makes sense. But I wonder once we get clarity on that, if you're going to see Kansas quickly pivot and maybe have something lined up, then it's like, okay, if this doesn't happen, we're willing to spend this amount of money on you. So you might want to wait to commit because we're going to give you more than that other school would. So I think this week we'll start to see a pickup. I would not be surprised if we get our first commitment this week. Obviously, Kansas is a long way to go. I could see it being in flurries, you know, where you get two or three commits over a 24 hour span or something like that or a 48

Starting point is 00:17:42 hour span. Obviously, like I said, there was a lot of work to go for KU. But the good news is they're finally getting some people on in visits. Again, for all we know they've had other people visit that just hasn't been kind of publicized for whatever reason. And so I do think there's light at the end of the tunnel and good news coming for KU. But obviously, you know, people are getting a little bit impatient. So we'll see what happens this week for the Jayhawks. It was a good weekend for KU baseball, that's for sure. We'll break it all down along with some of the other latest KU news.

Starting point is 00:18:09 This is locked on Jayhawks. Our episode is brought to you by TurboTax. It is tax time. But for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot. trying to book an appointment, sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers, emailing back and forth and wondering if they really do actually get your situation. But this year, you're getting a major upgrade with Intuit TurboTax. They now have in-person locations nationwide. You can meet face-to-face with a real tax expert.

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Starting point is 00:19:10 That'll be played on a Friday officially for KU, which there's good news and bad news, right? The bad news obviously is typically those Friday games tougher for some people to get. just in terms of like you get off work at five o'clock and the game is at six. I'll say this, though, it's one thing when that's the case for, like when you're doing a Friday game against a, I don't know, random team, like pick a random team. That's one thing. When it's the Missouri game, I think people will be like,

Starting point is 00:19:37 I'm just going to ask off work. I'm just going to tailgate all day. So I don't know how much of an issue that'll be. I think the good news is, I mean, for one, you get kind of the standalone in terms of the TV coverage. But the other part of it, to me, is you know, get an extra day off to get ready for that that international trip the next week. So that's a good thing going into that week with the game coming to England.

Starting point is 00:20:00 So I do think overall it's a good thing for KU that that game is on Friday. But I know for some people, they definitely prefer it to be Saturday. I can understand that. But I do think this is actually a good thing for KU. KU baseball. Heck of a weekend, man. They are absolutely on fire. So they lost on March 27th at Cincinnati.

Starting point is 00:20:17 He gave them their second straight loss at the time. And I don't know what the record was for KU, but they then come back and win the next two at Cincinnati. Then they beat Missouri. Then they sweep Utah. So you're now coming in on a six-game winning streak. You're on the road against top 20 Nebraska team earlier this week. You're on a seven-game winning streak. And then you're playing a top-20 UCF team who coming into the week was first in the Big 12.

Starting point is 00:20:42 Kansas was second. And Kansas swept them. So Kansas wins the first game four to three in 11 innings, another walk-off victory. six to three in game two, three to one in game three. And again, something I talked about earlier this week. The bats have come to play for KU in so many games. You look at the earlier parts of these winning streaks. You're winning one of the games against Cincinnati, 13 to 6, Missouri 11 to 8, Utah, 14 to 12, 14 to 9, 13 to 9.

Starting point is 00:21:05 What happens if the bats aren't hitting this well? What happens if you basically have pitching staff that's able to hold you down a little bit more? You got the answer over these last four games over this week because you played four games against ranked competition. You won all four and you never scored more than six runs. The pitching staff didn't give up more than three in any of the games. That is a huge development for this team long term. And obviously it puts them in the driver's seat right now. They're in first to the Big 12.

Starting point is 00:21:28 They're going to get Wichita State on Tuesday in a home game. Then they'll be at Oklahoma State for a three games set after that. Return trip with Nebraska. Then you're at K-State. It's going to be a good finish to the season for KU Baseball. What a run this has been. And they are starting to look like a juggernaut right now in the Big 12 for the baseball side of things. KU softball continues to play really good ball as well.

Starting point is 00:21:49 I'd imagine KU Baseball is going to be joining KU softball in terms of the rankings. KU softball got ranked this past week after they got a series victory over Arizona State and kind of an upset there. KU Baseball not ranked right now, but after sweeping UCF after beating Nebraska, I'd find it hard to believe that they won't be ranked after what we just saw this past week. So as far as KU softball goes, they just hosted Baylor. They lost the first game, 8 to 7. Then they won the next game 1 to 0 on Friday. Saturday they win the game 5 to 4. It was a game filled with Baylor errors.

Starting point is 00:22:27 But you win the series 2 to 1, so continued good things there. They're going to be hosting Missouri on Wednesday at Oroca, so you can go on out to that one at 5 o'clock if you want some more KU Missouri hate. Other news, KU. Women's Basketball assistant coach Morgan Page. It's been a longtime assistant coach there under Branden Schneider. She's going to be the head coach now at Loyola, Chicago. So wish her the best.

Starting point is 00:22:46 and hope she does great over there. And then Tommy Lloyd, interestingly enough, it came out. I think Michael Swain found this, that the contract. So previously the contract that Tommy Lloyd was on at Arizona, it had a stipulation that he basically had a non-compete in the Big 12. He couldn't go to another Big 12 school without sitting out a year. So obviously that would make things not work for Kansas. Well, he got a new contract.

Starting point is 00:23:12 The money goes up. The buyout goes up. but he does not have a big 12 non-compete anymore. So if you want to, if you want to get all conspiracy theory, is Tommy Lloyd trying to leave things open to when, you know, Bill Self retires or is this the ultimate chess?

Starting point is 00:23:27 And it would be like, hey, now that I took that out when Bill Self does retire, I can leverage even more money out of Arizona to get an even bigger contract. Who knows, but that certainly wouldn't be bad thing. It's a very pro-Tomilyoid guy, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:40 if this increases the chance that he could come to Kansas, once Bill Self is all said and done. That's not the worst thing in the world for KU. All right, I don't know for this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks again. Check out our bonus episodes from over the weekend. We did Dayton Thomas, who unfortunately I posted that one, and then like hours later he commits to Houston. So I guess you can avoid that one.

Starting point is 00:23:58 But on Sunday, I guess you could list the date, listen to the Dayton Thomas one if you wanted to be like, oh, what is Kansas going to be playing this year in Houston, right? Get an early scouting report on one of Houston's players. But Sunday we did an episode breaking down Terrence Hill. who's going to be visiting. So you definitely want to check that one out, especially because of the glowing review I give. And then later today, Anton Bonk, one of the best names in the portal, and a gigantic big man will get to his player review later today as well. So catch it all right here

Starting point is 00:24:26 on Lockdown Jayhawks.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - MONEY GRAB: Flory Bidunga Transfers from Kansas | Is it Worry Time for the Jayhawks Offseason Plans?

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