Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - No Darryn Peterson, No Problem: Kansas Jayhawks ROLL Towson Tigers

Starting point is 00:00:00 No Darren Peterson again, but KU was able to roll through Towson. Imagine if they could have grabbed a defensive rebound. They might have won by a billion points. We're going to break down the impressive win for KU. 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? with Locked on Jayhawks, part of the Locked on podcast network, now the number one sports podcast network.

Starting point is 00:00:36 And on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we are going to be breaking down KU's dominant outing victory against the Towson Tigers. What are some things that still left a little bit to be desired? What were the biggest positives from the game for KU, game awards, what's next, all that. But we are going to start with a little on Darren Peterson, who once again missed another game for KU. Today's episode is brought to you by Fandual Sportsbook. If you want to be right in the middle of the action this season,

Starting point is 00:01:02 visit Fanduel.com and place your NFL live bets all season long. So another game without Darren Peterson for KU, which I don't know that that was unexpected necessarily after the finish to the last game with NC State, but we found out, how gosh, what was it, two hours before, two and a half hours before the game started from a, I guess, press release or quote, whatever, a social media graphic that was tweeted out by KU.

Starting point is 00:01:31 And it said, quote, Darren experienced cramping in his quad. This is from Bill's off. Darren experienced cramping in his quad against NC State on Saturday and felt similar in practice yesterday. He is not able to compete at full strength. He will not play tonight against Towson. He will continue to work tirelessly and prepare to compete with his teammates and represent Kansas in the very near future.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Again, in the very near future, like, okay, that's at least a positive. been to that part of it right this is a prepared statement that is coming out this is not he was asked a question about this on a whim and that's a term he came out like they had time to be able to craft this statement to say very near future does imply to me that very near future right again I think for most people the most logical I don't answer to all this is he sits the next couple of games and then you get the extra time off during the holiday break during Christmas break and then you're back for the start of Big 12 play. I guess it's a good news, too, that he was practicing yesterday.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Not good news about the chronic cramping. And, you know, I was talking to somebody about this because I think the cramping side of things, and then this is what I kind of said coming into the game, like the idea that, I don't know, like it's one thing if it was, he's missing this game because he has more hamstring tightness or muscle tightness, right? You don't think of cramping as being something like, I don't know, I think of cramping. being is like, okay, you're dehydrated or you need to, you know, because Darren Peterson's in great shape. I don't make it seem like he's not in great shape. You know, there's a difference between

Starting point is 00:03:05 great shape and game shape, right? It's just another level. And so like, is him basically going from not playing and then being asked to play 30 minutes in a game, is that causing you to cramp? And then you're going to miss more games, which is going to cause you not to be in more game shape. And it's like this cycle of like okay is that the issue i i don't really think that's necessarily it it does it is leading to just like all of these i think i don't know it gets your brain cycling and i think it gets a lot of people uh because we have heard different things we heard as we have heard tightness i i think quite honestly like this is probably what it is i think it might have been like maybe it was misdiagnosed at first right like maybe k u misdiagnosed it at first and maybe that's

Starting point is 00:03:49 kind of where we're at now that hey it was misdiagnosed at first and this is where they're at now of course is there a chance that you know maybe maybe it is more to the i don't know this or that and um you're trying to save face and and i don't know we can get to the conspiracies and maybe there is one but at the end of the day and i don't think that the i guess inconsistent messaging that we've heard has helped that but i think that would kind of line up to it right if it was kind misdiagnosed what exactly it was, thinking it was, oh, it's just this cramping or it's, you know, a poll, this or that. And then it ends up just being, you know, chronic cramping issue, something else. I don't know, like maybe that's where we've gotten to we are. I guess at the end of

Starting point is 00:04:35 the day, it doesn't quite matter. I mean, it does matter to trying to figure out, like, what exactly is going to happen long term here. But at the end of the day, like the plan is what matters the most here. Now, if this is more of a injury thing, like him taking off a month between, you know, missing all that last time and playing games, I guess that didn't fix it. So do you need to take off more than a month this time? Then again, if that one was taking off a month for, you know, what you're worried about could have been a pulled hamstring versus now this is chronic cramping, you know, maybe two weeks is enough to get ready and get rehydrated and do all the things that you need to do to get back

Starting point is 00:05:18 into that. So I don't know. Just more kind of question marks and not really knowing what to expect here. But again, going back to that quote in the near future, if I was a, this comes with no insight on exactly what they're trying to do. But if I'm going to read between the lines on that quote, it feels like that would be the plan, try to get them back for Big 12 play. At the end of the day, though, this is ultimate crapshoot. All right, back to the game. KU dominates against Towson. And it was an impressive outing for KU to just kind of roll through the Tigers. I thought one of the biggest positives of this game. And this is something that Bilsoff mentioned earlier in the week.

Starting point is 00:05:50 He said he's wanted his team to kind of play faster. I'm paraphrasing here, but that he felt like this is a team that should be able to play faster. And I agree with him, right? You've got some really good athletes on the floor. Make that one of your strengths. And this team plays better when they're running, when they're going fast, as opposed to when they're stuck playing in molasses in the half court. So all of those things make sense.

Starting point is 00:06:12 And they came out in this. I know this isn't a game that KU scores 90 or 100 points. And maybe the tempo slowed down over the back half of the game. That first, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes, KU was playing at a very fast pace. And also keep in mind this, like Towson is a team who's one of the slowest teams of the country. So you could play at a fast pace,

Starting point is 00:06:33 but if they play at a slow pace offensively, it's going to wind up being more of a neutral pace for the game, right? But I thought KU was, it wasn't just that they were playing, fast and it wasn't just, you know, how fast they got the shot up and how fast they ran up the court and how aggressive they were with everybody kind of running and stuff. It wasn't just that, which, you know, those were things that were happening. My goodness, did the ball move quick in this one, especially again in that first half of the game. It felt like KU was, I mean, it almost felt predetermined like that they're going to pass to this guy before they even got.

Starting point is 00:07:07 It was like hot potato, how fast they were passing it. It was just good to see the decisiveness and how quick they wanted to play and execute. I thought those are a really good thing for this team and it's something you can take away from this game that you hope to see in the next game against Davidson and that they can carry over the rest of the season. I would also say the two bigs played well for KU and this one. Like that's another positive because I felt like it had been a bit of a slump.

Starting point is 00:07:30 Like Tiller had a couple down games after starting the season so hot, Flory got kind of outplayed by Van Lubin Alley's a state game. And I thought there was some to be desired. from the two bigs and some recent games, which it does make sense, right? It's a sophomore and a freshman. There's going to be some growing pains and some ups and downs. It's not going to look like two All-Americans every single game. But I thought you got back to those two dudes kind of taking over the game in this one.

Starting point is 00:07:58 Obviously, you'd expect it to be a little easier to do against Towson than, say, NC State. And that's the challenge of, can you do it in Big 12 play, for instance? But this is a big Towson team. This is a tall Towson team who likes to play in. side. So, you know, it's not that it came without any challenge. And Tiller, you know, finishes the game with 11 points on five of nine. He has six rebounds. I thought this was one of the better games Tiller's played in a little bit of time here. You look at Florey. Like, he again looked like

Starting point is 00:08:28 the guy that we expect to be one of the best players on the floor. That's what he was in this game. 18 points on seven of eight. He has a double double, ten rebounds. Both Tiller and Florey getting some highlight blocks for KU. It was just a really good game of the two bigs dominating for Kansas. Again, you do have to carry that over into the bigger games because it's been hit or miss. Like they did carry that over into a couple of the bigger games in the players era in the first two games, but it's been hit or miss, right? Can you be more consistent with that over the back half of the season? I would also say the defense once again, like that's kind of an obvious here, right? I mean, anytime you're holding an opponent to under 50 points scored, that is obviously a strength for you, right?

Starting point is 00:09:06 And it continues to be this season. And it's not just the under 50 points score. That's just like the very easiest way of looking at it because that's kind of the bottom line here. But Tauson shot 28% from the field. And even if you just look at two point percentage, 16 of 45, that is a really, really low mark on two point field goals for Tauson. And this is a really, and this is the crazy part too. Towson took nine more field goal attempts than Kansas did. And the reason why, I mean, if we're talking the biggest negatives of the game, the defensive rebounding for KU was not.

Starting point is 00:09:39 good in this game. Like we've seen defensive rebounding. I would say it's been hit or miss for KU this year. Like first half against Yukon, it was good. Second half against Yukon. It was very bad. And that cost them that game, right? And there have been some other games where the defensive rebounding has been not an issue at all. There have been some games where it hasn't been great. And this was one of those games where it wasn't great. You wound up giving up 22 offensive rebounds compared to 31 defensive rebounds. So that's not great for KU. But it almost at the same point in time makes me marvel. even more at the fact that you held them to 49 points.

Starting point is 00:10:14 They have 50 missed field goal attempts. That's how good the defense was for KU. Even though they're giving up all the rebounds, it still didn't really matter. Now, it will matter in other games, right? You rebound like that against Houston, it's going to be a problem, right? So that's one of those things were process-wise, you've got to do better at it, but in another way was impressive here, right? And then I would say the other negative here, this was a game where without Darren Peterson,

Starting point is 00:10:37 And I wanted to see, I would say, I guess, Jamari McDowell, who filled in for him as a starter, along with Jaden Dawson, Cole Rosario and El Marco Jackson, at least a couple of those guys show something in this game, just in terms of like, okay, you have a little more run, you have a little more playing time here, take advantage of it. And Jamari hit the one three in the second half. I didn't think, you know, if Jamari was fine out there as a complimentary, basically the fifth player on the floor for them. But still the stats, don't jump off the page, four points to two assists in 16 minutes. but you know he ends up with a plus 17 on plus minus so i thought he did well he's the best of the bunch here um marco goes two points um on one of four shooting he did have four assists some of those coming late uh in 23 minutes but nothing really stood out there col risario three points he did hit that one corner three after the offensive rebounds he did have five rebounds credit to him there

Starting point is 00:11:27 but just one of six from three and that's what k u needs from him is the consistent three point shooting jaden dawson just one of six from the field oh of three from three k u was looking for they don't need when we get to a critical point. They don't need Dawson and Rosario to both be in the rotation, but you could probably use one of them to even give you 10, 15 minutes of the game and give you a made three. And if Peterson's hurt, you might need both of them. And you might need one of them to play 20 plus minutes per game.

Starting point is 00:11:54 So that is where that comes into play. But overall, you're expected to win by, you know, 15, 16 points. You win by 24. Ho-hum victory for KU, certainly not going to complain about that. When we've seen some of these games, I guess, on finals time or especially now where you've gotten the brunt of your non-con schedule out of the way, it'd be easy to overlook your opponent, and KU did no such thing against the Tigers. Let's get to our moments, plays of the game, stats of the game, awards, all that and more.

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Starting point is 00:13:04 You can also see Kansas to win the Big 12, really loaded, week 12. Arizona's plus 260. That seems kind of crazy to me, but you can get Kansas plus $1,300. I don't know. That's not a bad bet at all. Anyway, if you want to do that or other or live bets on Fandual, be right in the middle of the action all season. Visit fanduel. Place your NFL live bets all season long, fan duel. The game moves fast, and so can you. Thanks again for joining us here on Lockdown Jayhawks, making us your first listen every day. And thank you for making Lockdown the number one sports podcast. podcast network. So Kansas takes care of Towson here, 73 to 49, the final score are moments

Starting point is 00:13:43 in plays of the game. I would say, I don't know, there's a couple we can go to at the beginning of the game, like counsel hitting a three in the first half to show like, okay, he's going to kind of pick up where he left off. Florey just kind of imposing his will early. But I thought really the moment of the game, you fast forward to the beginning half, Towson had cut the lead down to nine. it felt like there was a little bit of a lull in energy. Like there's still fans who were coming back from going to the bathroom or grabbing some, I don't know, a bite to eat at halftime or something. It just felt like the energy had dropped just a little bit from where it was

Starting point is 00:14:17 at the beginning of the game. And then after they get it to single digits, you get a Melvin Council Steel that leads to a dunk, pushes it back to double digits. I don't think it got back to single digits from then on. And that just kind of reignited everything, the energy from you bench in the crowd and all that sort of stuff. I think in general, like the moments of the game were, honestly, to me, like the counsel steals.

Starting point is 00:14:41 It was that one. There was also the steel on the Tejada drive that led to El Marco missing a three, but then Trey White kind of tips it up, it goes to Flory, and he gets the bucket from there. I will say just one other one, like, good to see the ball go in the basket here. Bryson Tiller making his, honestly, let's just skip ahead to awards real quick. We're going to give an award. Two guys will get it.

Starting point is 00:15:00 Nice to see the ball go in the basket award. one of them would be Colversario who again just one of six from three but I think he missed his first four and then hits one from the corner and you could tell a bit of a sigh of relief like probably nice to just see one go in and hopefully you know regain that confidence and then Bryson Tiller would be the other one he was 0 for 15 in the seven games leading up to this from three he hit one against Princeton in the fourth game of the season then oh for 15 over the next seven games. Nice to see one go in for Tiller from the corner because, you know, it adds another element to his game. It adds another element to the KU offense. It opens up

Starting point is 00:15:39 the spacing when one of those bigs can can make some shots for you. So that was good to see as well. Our other awards of the game, or I guess we have award, one other award, no, two other words. Hotter than the Sun Award. And that goes to Melvin Council. This dude is just on a heater. I mean, 15 points. If he would have to stay in the game longer, probably would have easily surpassed 20. Three of six from three. I mean, the start he had from three, I don't even recognize that guy. He had 12 threes over the last two games. Like, is this guy Brandon Green? Is he Devante Graham? Forget the Taishon Taylor Cops. Like, oh my goodness, this dude's Jeff Boshi from three right now. So anyway, that was fun there. And then nice to see you get some action

Starting point is 00:16:21 award. That goes to Simis Calderon. I just kind of wanted to bring up Calderon here because it wasn't, you know, a standout performance necessarily at zero points on over one in 14 minutes. Did have four rebounds, did have two assists, but the block and the steel, you can at least see the idea there with Calderon. And who knows if it'll ever, you know, get actualized for KU with today's day and age of, you know, turn and burn with rosters and stuff. But is there a world? I don't think this, this happens, but I'm at least going to, bring it up because I do find it at least interesting conversation with the way that Rosario and Dawson specifically have not been able to capture that part of the rotation. Is there any part of the world where Calderon comes out and, you know, plays just as much in the Davidson game,

Starting point is 00:17:11 you're able to take care of business as well. And he does enough in practices leading up where Bill Self says, you know what, we're going to start giving some of these minutes that those guys are getting and use more of Calderon at the four. It'll allow us to play more kind of too big basketball. allow us to use Trey White more at the three where I think he's been a little bit more effective as a rebounder this year and we're just going to you know if we're not getting the shooting from from Dawson and Rosario that we're hoping for I guess we'll just be the longest most athletic team we can be I don't know again I don't expect that to happen but like maybe maybe there's a line there where it could possibly happen but just nice to see him play he hadn't

Starting point is 00:17:48 played in the previous five games and you're always wondering as you're looking ahead to future rosters, you know, what are the, what are the live reps that you got to see of a specific player? Our stat of the game, I mean, you could point to the field goal percentage, which it's not just about holding Towson, 28%. Kansas shot 47%, which up until the last, I want to say, like, I think if the under four timeout, it was KU was above 50%. I could be off on that, but point being like, that was a big disparity in the game. I think you'd probably also point to the points off. Turnovers 13 to 6. I mentioned some of the biggest plays. Melvin Kahn steals.

Starting point is 00:18:23 You could also point to the points in the paint, 38 to 24. That is a sizable advantage for KU that honestly felt bigger than that than even the plus 14. And then this is the one that I'm going to go with here. Actually, no, I'm going to 12 to 4 in fast break points. Like that speaks to KU wanting to get back to playing fast. And they did 15 to 4 assists. That's the one I'm going to go with there, right?

Starting point is 00:18:45 That shows you that KU was moving the ball well. They had 15 assists to just nine turnovers. Meanwhile, they hold Towson to his four turnovers. So even when Towson was scoring, that's the crazy thing, 28%. And in the first half of the game, Williamson had, what, 14 points in the first half? So he finished it was just five in the second half. Nobody else had more than eight for Towson. That means that even when Towson was making a shot in the rare times that they did in this game,

Starting point is 00:19:11 a lot of the times they were unassisted and not easy plays in the flow of the offense to where it was like, like think about the shot that he made like falling down. So even to get to 28% was difficult for Towson. And I think that just shows that they're starting to be really connected off the ball as well as on the ball as a defense right now. All right. Let's finish up here with our game balls and what's next for KU. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Omaha Steaks.

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Starting point is 00:20:44 Thanks again for joining us here on Lockedon Jayhawks, making us your first listen every day. and you can check us out on Twitter at L.O. underscore Jayhawks coming up later this week, we're going to have some more KU football content talking a little bit about some of the latest transfer portal losses for KU, kind of take a re-inventory, restocking of where the KU football roster is right now, and maybe we'll get to some other KU football news and notes as well. Okay, our game balls for this one. Let's start with the offensive game ball for KU. And you really had kind of a three-headed mile. I mean, Tiller had. 11 points, so maybe deserves honorable mention here, but a three-headed monster with Trey White scoring 16, Melvin Council scoring 15, Florey scoring 18. With Florey, you also get the four offensive rebounds, and then you get five assists compared to zero turnovers for Trey White. For Melvin Council, you get one assist to one turnover, so rare lower assist game for Melvin Council. I'm going to go with Flore on this one, though. I mean, getting

Starting point is 00:21:48 some extra possessions, the four offensive rebounds. That's a third of the team's offensive rebound output there. Did have four turnovers bigger than you like to see there, but led the team in scoring at 18, 7 of 8 from the floor. He was able to get to the free throw line at a team high seven times, and he was just kind of like, Kowson didn't really have an answer for him on the inside. So I thought this was really good game from Flory. He gets the offensive game ball.

Starting point is 00:22:12 Defensive game ball for KU. Trey White had two blocks and a steel. Melon Council had those two big steals that he converted, three blocks each for Bryson Tiller and Flory Bedunga, a block and a steel for Smeese Calderon, steals for Colorsario and El Marco Jackson. I'm going to give this the game ball. We know KU switches their D.

Starting point is 00:22:31 It's not always the same guy on the same person, but Kansas shut down as a team, essentially, Kansas shut down Tyler Tehada. He was eight points on just three of 12 shooting with two turnovers. I think he missed his first five shots of the game. And I want to say one of those makes came at the end of the game against some of KU's backups. So it was a little bit of some East Calderon at the end of the game on him.

Starting point is 00:22:53 But for the most part of the game, it was, you know, with the switch, one of Trey White or Bryson Tiller on him, right? I don't know. Maybe there was a possession here or there where Flory was on him, but it was mostly of those two guys. And so that being the CAA player of the year, dude who is, you know, averaging 18, 19 points per game for them. I think we picked between Tiller and White.

Starting point is 00:23:14 They both had three stocks. So maybe we just give, we'll give half a game ball to Trey White on the defense end, half of one to Bryson Tiller on the defensive end as well for KU. And then our overall game ball, we're going to go with Melvin Council there. I mean, like I said, I thought that arguably the two biggest plays the game where his steals and scores, even though the second one, the score is kind of already out of reach, continued to be really hot from three, three of six. The rest of the team was just five of 18 from three.

Starting point is 00:23:39 So continues to be super important there. He also had five rebounds from the guard position. And in a game where one of the key things we talked about earlier was pushing the tempo, playing fast, making quick decisions. I know just one assist. The big reason why was he was just passing the ball out of his hand so fast. So somebody else was getting the assist. He was getting the hockey assists, so to speak, in this game.

Starting point is 00:24:00 And he was the one igniting that tempo and pushing it. He played a good defense game, played a good offense game. So we have counseled the overall game ball there for KU. What is next for the Jayhawks? So they get the weekend off, rare weekend where you don't have KU basketball game. I guess you can enjoy more college football action. So check out locked on college football for second lesson every day. And then they get back to a game against Davidson.

Starting point is 00:24:27 And, you know, Davidson is a little bit better than Towson, like that near top 100 Ken Palm team, a solid, you know, mid-major school that you're going to be playing against. the one that once again you have to do a good job of kind of drowning out the noise you have to do a good job of hey we're past finals week it's about to be christmas i'm ready to get out of here go see my family and friends and just kind of focus on the game i thought they did a good job of that against towson it's even tougher in the davidson game we've seen some of those games be a little closer than you would expect and i've mentioned this like we've seen kansas lose the davidson before so take care of business and that one on monday and then there'll be christmas break it'll be more more time off. It'll be coming back from Christmas rake. It'll be extra practice time. And then Big 12 play gets going on Saturday, January 3rd. They'll be on the road against UCF in Orlando. All right. That'll do it for this episode, Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. Don't forget and check out Locked on Big 12 or Locked on college basketball or Locked

Starting point is 00:25:30 on college football. Plenty to listen to across the number one sports podcast network with the Lockdown Podcast Network. And we'll see you next time. talking a little KU football right here on Locked on Jayhawks.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - No Darryn Peterson, No Problem: Kansas Jayhawks ROLL Towson Tigers

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