Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - OFFENSIVE UPGRADE? Kansas Jayhawks Offense Should IMPROVE with Tyran Stokes, Keanu Dawes & Company

Starting point is 00:00:00 Bill Self in Kansas cannot have a non-top 50 offense once again. But I think with some of their portal additions, they're trending in the right direction to getting the offense figured out. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Derek Johnson here and on today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks. We're going to be breaking down some of the latest news, KU Baseball, with being extremely highly ranked, some latest.

Starting point is 00:00:35 portal news. We'll also get into, well, Kansas be a better shooting team than last year. And in general, how can the offense for KU be more efficient? Are they on the right path here in the transfer portal? Let's start right there. And I think one of the ways to do that to be a better offense. When I look at the things that they didn't do well enough last season, you know, one of them was offensive rebounding. We did a recent episode talking about why I think the rebounding should be better on next year's team. Another should be getting to the free throw line. Like that's, that's one of those situations that can get you those easy points throughout a game. And Kansas this past season was 255th in the country in free throw attempt rate.

Starting point is 00:01:13 They haven't finished above average nationally in free throw temperate for four straight seasons. So Kansas is not getting those easy points at the free throw line. But I think this has a good chance to finish above that mark. Keanu Dawes had a very slightly higher free throw attempts per 40 to Brexon, Reiss and Tiller. If we just want to call that a wash with what you brought in and lost with Tiller, that's fine. Reaves was getting like three more free throw attempts per 40 minutes than Flory was, which, okay, sure, Reeves jumping up to, you know, a bigger level in the Big 12. Maybe that goes down a little bit, but I think that makes sense a little bit. If you think about it, most of Flory shots are

Starting point is 00:01:51 like hook shots away from the basket or dunks, where most often you're not getting fouled on dunks. I know there's the occasional foul on like an alley-oop or something. But like, even, Paulumbia had better free throws per 40 than Florey. So I actually think KU is going to get more free throws out of their five position. Like I said, not a wash at the four. And then Trey White finished in the 80th percentile in free throw attempts per 40 minutes. So you would think that, okay, well, are you going to get better than that? But a couple things there. One, he fell off a little bit as the season went on. He finished slightly above average nationally over the last 10 games. So it dropped off. But here's the other thing. Tyron Stokes is like absolutely a least.

Starting point is 00:02:31 at getting to the free throw line. That is one of his best skills. So even if we base it off the tray white 80th percentile, I think there's a chance Tyrant Soakes should be in the 85th, 90th percentile or something in that stat. So I do think that's a slight upgrade there, right? Then we look at this in the guard position. Peterson, as much as he was attacking the rim earlier in the season, he actually did end the season,

Starting point is 00:02:53 averaging seven and a half free throw attempts for 40 minutes. Blighton was only at like four. So that is actually a pretty sizable, you know, downgrade chunk there, but I think that washes out with some of the center stats. Counsel was only in the 34th percentile in free throw attempts for 40, so can Tray Kinney at least get to that? I don't think that's a super high bar to get to. And then here's where you should have another jump. You should get more free throw presence from Cole Rosario than you got from Jamari McDowell. You weren't getting like any free throws from Jamari McDowell. With Cole,

Starting point is 00:03:26 you'll at least have the occasional drive or transition play where I think that would go up a little bit. So I say all this to be like, okay, maybe slight advantage on the margins here, slight advantage on the margins there. I don't know that this is going to be a strength for KU, but I do think that KU can at least get back toward being like nationally average as opposed to outside the top 250. So that'd be a slight increase. We talked about offensive rebounding to be a slight increase. I think this would be the big one here.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Two point offense. And this is one that seems counterintuitive as well because Florida Bedunga is shooting, he's making all these dunks. He's shooting super efficiently in the 60. percent from the field and you would think, hey, losing that guy, your two point efficiency is going to go down. But like the thing is, even though Flory shot super efficiently, it wasn't a ton of attempts. It wasn't going to sway the overall team numbers. For instance, despite Florey shooting that well from the floor, Kansas is a team finished outside the top 200 in two point shooting last

Starting point is 00:04:21 season. Now, you look at Flore to Reeves. That should be a drop off on twos. Now, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I want to kind of compare this a different way because I don't think that's the comparison I want to go to. And here's why. Flory shot 64% on twos. I guess at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. If one of your bigs is shooting twos efficiently, like if you have two big men and one's shooting well on twos and one's not, it's the same thing. If like if your four man shoots well and your five men does not, and then the other team's five men shoots well and the four does not, it equals out to the same stuff. You get what I'm saying? Like, so, Flory shot 64% on twos, Keanu Dauze shot 68% on twos. So if we compare the two points scoring, I know they're not playing the same position, although Dauz might play some small ball five, but if we just compare Florey's two point shooting to Dau's two point shooting, KAU's actually getting a slight upgrade by adding Keanu Daz there, right? Now, if we compare Reeves to Bryson Tiller, Reeves was 65% on twos this year.

Starting point is 00:05:27 that would be a huge upgrade from Taylor, but that's not the number I want to go off of because here's the thing. Reeves only shot around 50% on twos at Clemson, and then if you look at just the quad one plus quad two games he played at Charleston, it was close to 50%. Could he get a little bit better this year with another year under his belt? Yeah, of course.

Starting point is 00:05:46 But let's say he shoots 50% on twos again. Well, Bryson Tiller shot 50% on twos. So if we're saying that Dawes is a slight increase on twos than Flory was, and Reeves is at least same of what Tiller was, you're slightly better already than you were last year on twos, right? But here's the other difference. You have the luxury of Paul Mbia coming off the bench in this scenario where Reeves is starting, right?

Starting point is 00:06:12 Reeves is coming off the different conversation. But Mbia's probably going to shoot, what, 60, 70% from the floor? Because a lot of his shots are going to be dunks. But that's going to be somebody who's going to raise the two-point efficiency that you didn't have playing on last year's team. It was Tiller filling in for him at the five, filling in for Flory at the five as your backup five, only shooting 50% on twos.

Starting point is 00:06:34 Now when you go to a backup center, he's going to be shooting 60 to 70% this year. So that's another increase that you're getting on two-point shots. Then you look at the three. Trey White was about average for guards on twos. He shot 48% on two-point shots. And again, that was a number that kind of tanked a little bit over the final portion of the season.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Tyrone Stokes should shoot better than that on twos, right? I mean, you're talking about a 6-7 power athlete who plays above the rim, throws down dunks, and that's one of the best parts of his game, his driving ability, right? So I would think Tyron Stokes is going to shoot, you know, in the 50s somewhere on two-point shots. That would be an upgrade over Trey White. Leroyd-Blyden was actually a tad better on two-point shots than Darren Peterson was.

Starting point is 00:07:18 That's kind of interesting, right? Now, Michael Swain did a really good piece on this, I figured if I think it was released Monday morning, talking about some of the numbers that are sticky year to year for players who have recently transferred from the Mac to the Big 12. And one of the things that he found was, you know, for a lot of those guys, the effective field goal percentage actually stayed pretty similar to what it was. So maybe you can count on that. I do think with Blyden being a little bit smaller of a guard and the adjustment and heightened competition, probably going to shoot worse from two is Blyden this year than he did last year. Let's say, though, that Peterson is a slight advantage on two-point shooting than Blyden. But still, you have an upgraded to three, you have an upgrade at the big spots.

Starting point is 00:08:01 And if we're just talking, you know, slight downgrade here on just two-point shots, then we have this one. Melvin Council only shot 42% on twos. That was just the 24th percent down nationally. Now, I don't know that I'm expecting Talen Kinney to be a maestro at the rim. But again, that's not a high bar for him to at least clear or at least get to, right? And then you have Cole Rosario, who a lot of his shots on twos are going to be dunks. So that's going to balloon his two point mark. So I guess I go through all this.

Starting point is 00:08:29 And I'm sitting there going, Kansas should be a lot better on two point shots this season, which is important, obviously, you know, getting easy shots, making easy shots is going to be pretty key for KU. I also think that by having a little more girth at the center position, I think Bill Self will be able to use his duckins and his seal-offs a little bit more this year. than he was this past season. And I think that'll get KU a little more easy buckets in there as well. So when you're looking at why can Kansas improve offensively, how can they improve offensively? I point right there to two-point shooting. What about three-point shooting?

Starting point is 00:09:03 Is it going to be better, worse, the same? We'll get to that next. This episode is brought to you by Indeed, workplace chaos, deadline stacking up, inbox overflowing, and the one position you have to fill is still sitting open. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs, which helps you reach the people who actually fit what you're looking for with the right skills, experience, and location. So you're not just hoping the right candidate stumbles across your post.

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Starting point is 00:09:58 Support our show by saying you heard about it on Lockedon Jayhawks. Indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for Indeed, sponsored jobs. You can get locked on Jayhawks ad free by visiting locked on Jayhawks. That is locked onjahawks.com. Okay, so what about the three point shooting, right? I think slight increase on free throw shooting, slight increase on offensive rebounding,

Starting point is 00:10:25 good increase in two point percentage for KU based on what they've added and what I'm expecting of them coming into the season from where they were last year. What about the three point shooting? Because that could be the difference of moving you, you know, what are we talking here? KU wasn't the top 50 offense. Some of those improvements I've already talked about, maybe your top 40 offense. But you want them to be in the top 25, top 20, you know, at the very least, right? Three point offense might be the key to,

Starting point is 00:10:51 to get in that next level, right? Well, KU last season shot 34.6% on three point shots, which is totally fine, right? And I think it's, it's probably realistic to expect Stokes plus Kenny, if you just combined their games to shoot around that mark. I mean, think about it. Stokes shot 36% at the high school level this year from three. Of course, you know, three point line gets a little longer. Maybe it could go down.

Starting point is 00:11:18 Then again, it's another year of development. I do think his three-point game is probably a little underrated. With Talen Kinney, you're talking somebody shot like 34, 35 percent on threes, and I'm pretty sure OTE played with like the NBA three-point line. So why can't he shoot 35, 36 percent? So if anything, you know, you might expect those guys to shoot above the mark you shot as a team last year at 34.6 percent. But if we just want to say, hey, they're freshmen, like sometimes freshmen come in

Starting point is 00:11:44 and struggle shooting and we just like we saw it with Corrosario, right? and we just say that, okay, let's say combined, they shoot around your season average mark this past season. Okay. I think there's a chance that Keanu Daz is going to have a three point low up. He shot 31% last season from three. It doesn't jump off the page, but if you compare it to other forwards, it's slightly above average, right? And to be clear, that's already an upgrade. Even if you just went off last year's shooting for Keanu does, 31%.

Starting point is 00:12:13 That would be an upgrade over what KU got from Bryson Tiller. Tiller only shot 27% on less attempts per game. So you already are talking being upgraded in terms of you're shooting at the four. But Doss shot 37% from three in Big 12 play. And I don't know that you're expecting to do that the entire season, but like, I don't know. Their story came out with, I forget if it was Jack Ritter, Michael Swain again over fogg.onnet, breaking down how he is working on, like, that's one of the biggest things he's working on the offseason with this like NBA trainer. So if you're going to be working on it to a very high level with some like guys who know what they're doing and you just shot well over the back half of this past season.

Starting point is 00:12:55 And we've seen it before guys coming into their senior season where they get even better at something. And sometimes it's shooting. We've seen like O Chai went from being a good shooter to like an elite shooter, not to say that Daz is going to be elite. That would be pretty cool though if Daws are an elite shooter. Like we just saw a Trey White, a transfer coming in going into senior season who's like a low 30% three. point shooter on lower volume came in and shot like 38% from three for KU on pretty good volume. So what if Keanu Dawes does come in here and shoots 38% from three on three attempts per game? I am not ruling that out.

Starting point is 00:13:26 I think there's actually like a real possibility that happens. But let's be conservative here. Let's say Dawes shoots like 33% on like three takes per game. That's still, like I said, is a nice upgrade over what you're getting tiller who's shooting 27% on less attempts per game. Okay. for Leroyd Blyden who shot like 40% from three and going back to again I keep you know name dropping Michael Swain here so I guess they're doing really good work if I keep name dropping them but I mentioned the um the effective field goal percentage numbers that the Michael kind of went over and how they stay about the same so maybe Blyden can't shoot 40% from three again at Kansas but here's what he would have to do if we're just talking about replacing who you're coming in for right Darren Peterson shot 38% on 165. three point attempts. I think it's very easy for Bladen to get to 165 threes. Obviously, that number was

Starting point is 00:14:16 lower because Peterson's injury, but that ended up being the team output that he provided for KU. So I think there's a chance Bliden shoots above that many attempts. Can you get to 38%? Like, I don't know that I'm going to predict that. I might predict 36, 37 just because of the jump in competition, but like that's not unreasonable at all. So why not, right? I think you would need a jump from Colorsario shooting the three ball, but I think everybody's kind of expecting. it to happen. Now, to what level are we talking? Are we talking? Can you shoot 33% this year? Can he shoot 36%? You know, I'm just kind of in the camp of like, can he get up to 33% and be a semi-reliable three-point shooter? And anything above that is gravy. But that still would be an upgrade on what you had last year. So again,

Starting point is 00:14:57 you keep going down the list here. You're like, okay, these guys are filling what you had last year with Stokes and Kinney. Dawes is going to give you more three-point shooting than Tiller by maybe a good margin. Blighton should be in the range of Darren Peterson. Rosario should be better than last. last year. And then you just need that another bench piece that can give them shooting. And that's where one of these other guys who are in the portal that maybe KU was going after trying to land could maybe tilt this in a further direction to say you're a much better three point shooting, right? But let's just say this, like not counting, you know, that that extra three point shooter that could make this even easier, right? Just to prove a point here. Blighton took 189 three point

Starting point is 00:15:39 attempts last season. So even if it's less at KU, if he's playing less minutes or getting less off, whatever, let's put him at the Peterson mark of 165 threes. And let's say he does shoot 37%. So it tick worse than Peterson did. That's 61 of 165. You don't have to keep track of these numbers. I'm just throwing them out there and then we're going to total them up, right? Now, if you include the postseason, preseason and in season stats, I have it written down here, Kenney was around 34% in the OTE, around four to five attempts for game. So let's say he goes 35 percent. We'll be a little more optimistic there. Four attempts for game. You're talking 49 of 140. Okay. Stokes again, 36 percent from three at high school. Let's say he's taking three to three and a half a game. I don't know. That might end up being

Starting point is 00:16:23 four or five. I don't know. Let's say he gets to 34 percent at KU. That is 41 of 122. And the point of me doing this isn't to say these guys are going to shoot this. It's to give out a general range that you can easily be like, yeah, that sounds about right. Even if you think, I think, that guy's going to shoot better. I think that guy will shoot a tick or two worse. The idea is to be within range to show you that if we take a conservative approach to to these estimations, Kansas can get to where they need to go in three-point shooting, and I think actually has more three-point shooting than you might think.

Starting point is 00:16:53 Okay, so let's keep going. Keanu Dawes, 32 of 101 this past season, but again, ramped it up in Big 12, working hard on the off season. Let's say he takes three a game at 34-ish percent. That's 36 of 105. Now again, let's go back to Cole. Let's say he's taken three, three and a half per game, 40 of 120. That would be 33% for Cole Rosario.

Starting point is 00:17:16 And again, I could easily justify higher for Dawes, higher for Rosario, whatever. If we just total up those numbers that I just said, that is 227 of 652, that's 34.8%. So even by doing a pretty conservative approach to some of those three-point shooters, 34.8% is slightly better than what this past season's team shot, 34.6%, right? And that doesn't even factor in if you bring on a bench sniper. Now imagine if you're adding Obdibashir at 44% from three last year to the fold, or a Dennis Parker, who we have a deep dive on coming, or one of these good three-point shooters off the bench who can give you another 36, 38,

Starting point is 00:18:01 40% from three-point range and raise that number even more. So I guess point being, I actually feel okay about KU shooting going into season. And like honestly, that's been a big question for me going into the seasons for KU for like three straight years. But it's not a question I have coming into this off season, which is pretty cool. I don't know that this is going to be an elite shooting team, but I think it's going to be a fine one. I think it's going to be a solid one. If you do make that other good bench edition, then I think you can be a good one at that, right? So again, we mix all this together.

Starting point is 00:18:30 You tack on some extra offensive rebounding. You attack on a little bit more two point shooting and free three. attempt right you attack on a little bit better three point shooting there's just a lot of things getting a little better for k u offensively i think the recipe's all there for this to be a successful offense for bill self now can it be an elite offense can it be a top 10 offense that i'm not so sure of but can you at least get back in the range of being more competent than you've been these last couple of seasons yes i think that's something k u should be able to do all right let's uh finish up k u baseball certainly seen highly by some of the rankings

Starting point is 00:19:04 Some more college basketball portal news and plenty more coming on locked on Jayhawks. Thanks you have for joining us here on the show. Don't forget, can give us a follow at D. Johnson Radio or at L.O. underscore Jayhawks. And some of the latest news will start here, men's basketball ticket sales. This was released with KU $14.5 million, second Arizona at $7.4 million. So you're talking a big jump from first to second there. And it's just, it's tough because you see that in your life. like, why is KU, like, not able to have all this extra money that these other schools aren't?

Starting point is 00:19:45 And it's just, there's just so much more to it than just the basketball. It's unfortunate that the stadium is being built right now. And then it wasn't done, you know, 10 years ago to where all this money could be funneled into rosters and stuff like that for KU. So, you know, the biggest thing here is once you get the stadium done, you have all your facilities done. if you can position yourself to even get into one of the power two conferences down the road, then it would all be worth it in the long term of the money. But until then, it's going to be a bit of a slow grind for KU on the money perspective. KU baseball comes in at seventh by D1 baseball, eighth on the athletic, and ninth by baseball America.

Starting point is 00:20:24 So I guess consensus from those three, a top 10 team in the country. Now, top 16, not based on those sites by the tournament committee, but that gives you a general idea. top 16 teams host in the opening pod, the opening, you know, weekend of the NCAA tournament where you have your 14 pod with double elimination. So it's super important for KU to get top 16 for that. With reason, especially with how good they've been at home this season and how good of a home field environment, that has been with a lot of the students attending and making that the case.

Starting point is 00:20:54 But if you can get even higher, if you can get in the top eight, now you're talking not only hosting in the first round, but if you can get through the first, you know, weekend, I guess I should keep saying, you would be hosting in the super regionals as well to try to get to Omaha for the College World Series. So still plenty to look ahead to if you're Kansas. They have top 20 showdown with West Virginia this weekend in a three game set. So opportunity to add to your resume if you can win that series, opportunity this weekend to clinch at least the share of the Big 12th title. It's a big weekend for KU baseball to say the least. And then obviously KU softball getting going in the Big 12 tournament also. Last bit of news here is Portal news,

Starting point is 00:21:34 and that is that Duke Harris is going to Tennessee. So, I mean, unbelievable work from Rick Barnes and the donors and the money they've been able to amass and players they've been able to bring in. They've brought in a lot of guys that a lot of schools in the country, including, you know, for Kansas, I would have to have Terrence Hill or Duke Harris or something like that. They're going to have a really fun lineup potentially with Barnes. It'll be interesting how he meshes all this new talent and offensive talent with, you know, his coaching style, which is typically a little more rugged and deep.

Starting point is 00:22:04 defensive based. We've seen over the recent, I mean, they've made three straight elite eight, so give them credit for what he's been able to figure out here. They've almost had these like forever. They have these grueling, gridded out defenses. In the last three years, it felt like each of them had the defense and then like one guy. Like it was a Dalton Connect. It was a, they get getting kids from northern Colorado and stuff. They got the North Florida kid. And they had the one guy to be able to shoot and then the defense to pair with it. Or like this year was Jacoby Gillespie. I guess they did Nate Ameant to. And it feels like this next year, it's going to be like a bunch of shooters.

Starting point is 00:22:38 So it'll be very interesting to see how they do this season. And it has kind of sparked between the Juke Harris to Tennessee. Sean Miller went on the field of 68 podcast and mentioned he thinks there's like 20 to 25 teams. If he had to make an educated guess that are spending 20 plus million dollars on their roster, which that might be totally off. And I've seen people talk about it and be like, listen, if you're Sean Miller and your team is spending, you know, Texas is probably spending 20 to 25 million because they have the money you're not going to be like yeah we're at the top of spending a 20 to 25 million because then donors are going to be like oh you don't need more money

Starting point is 00:23:12 he's going to probably say that to be like yeah we got to keep the money you know so i don't know how much truth there is to that necessarily i saw another report mentioning yukons at like 30 million for their roster um these are all rumors and a lot of this stuff gets overblown and inflated but when when more and more reports keep coming out leading to believe that is the case And we're at a point where we think KU is around $15 million for their budget. It seems like they're a little tapped out right now. That is not good news, right? It does seem like Kansas is, I mean, going back to what we talked about,

Starting point is 00:23:45 the beginning here, these are tough times for Kansas to try to find money and to try to stay competitive where they want to be in all the sports and be competitive in all the sports while still finding a way to fund all these things and the stadium is a very, very difficult time in the college. athletics world to be building a football stadium. And, you know, we'll see if they can keep towing the line. Can they figure out a way to get that one other bench piece while you have a school like Tennessee adding in a potential All-American and Jew cares? All right, that'll do for this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you eat podcast, including on our YouTube

Starting point is 00:24:21 page where you can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - OFFENSIVE UPGRADE? Kansas Jayhawks Offense Should IMPROVE with Tyran Stokes, Keanu Dawes & Company

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