Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Ranking Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Remaining Non-Con Games + KU Volleyball in NCAA Tournament

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked On Jayhawks, we rank the remaining games on the KU men's basketball non-conference schedule. We'll also finish up with some KU volleyball they're hosting in the NCAA tournament later today. You are Locked On Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks here, your first lesson every day.

Starting point is 00:00:43 You can find us anywhere in your podcast. You can find us on our YouTube page, or you can like and subscribe to the show. And thank you to every dayers out there tuning in to each and every episode of the show. Tomorrow's episode, we're going to preview the UConn game today. Going to be ranking the remaining non-conference games on the schedule for KU men's basketball. Three hardest, three easiest, three most interesting.

Starting point is 00:01:06 And then we'll finish up with a little KU volleyball because they're going to be hosting in the NCAA tournament and are one of the top four seeds in their region. So let's start with the top three most difficult here. Then we'll get into the easier ones. There's six non-con games remaining. So in theory, you can view my rankings as a spectrum of what I have from the easiest to the easier ones. There's six non-con games remaining. So in theory, you can view my rankings as a spectrum of what I have from the easiest to the hardest. I'm going to work from reverse order here.

Starting point is 00:01:31 The third most difficult, so the top one will be the toughest, the hardest game of the non-con remaining. Number three most difficult is the Yale game. That's coming up on December 22nd. And Yale has actually been a pretty good team. Obviously, you know, you look at some of the Ivy League teams and sometimes they can cause some issues for you. And Yale is ranked 85th on Ken Palm.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Now, it's a close line between that and the Missouri game. The Missouri game, they're 80th on Ken Palm coming in, although they got a big win earlier the other night. Yale is 85th on Ken Palm. But the thing that makes this Yale one, I think, kind of tough, that December 22nd game, it's a Friday night game. That is the last game before the players go home for the Christmas break, for the holiday break. Then they don't play again until Saturday, December 30th against Wichita State. And we've seen at times, whether it's been a bad loss or just a sluggish win, I think I even looked to last year.

Starting point is 00:02:28 I think they played Harvard, who was another Ivy League team, in the last game before it was. It was on December 22nd, same date last year. They ended up winning that by 14, which does not sound right because I think they just pulled away late. If I remember right, that was like a four or six-point game at like the under four or like the under five minutes or something like that to go.

Starting point is 00:02:47 So, Yale game, both in terms of playing a good opponent in Yale. They're a team who does not turn the ball over. They play that, you know, slow, tempoed offense. They can shoot the ball really well from the outside, and then you combine it with the fact that, yeah, you could be looking ahead to your Christmas break, and maybe you're not all there mentally, which we saw maybe that have an impact, just the mental side of things.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Maybe looking ahead to the UConn game for this past one for KU, that makes it even more difficult than it is to begin with, but on top of it, Yale is a good team and could be a team that wins a tournament game or two if they can end up winning the Ivy League. The second most difficult game for KU on the schedule is the Indiana game. Indiana is ranked 74th on Ken Baum, and so Indiana is a team that it's very similar, the rankings between Missouri, Indiana, and Yale, but the big difference between those three games is Missouri and Yale are both home games for Kansas. Indiana is an old game.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Indiana being played on the road on top of it, it's going to be a Saturday morning game, so you really have to get up early into the morning. Now, Indiana without Trace Jackson Davis, that was obviously a big loss for them. They do have Kalel Ware, who's a former five-star prospect, is the center, so that gives them a little bit of size. Mackenzie Mbako ends up picking Indiana over Kansas, and he's got them a little bit of size uh mckenzie and bacco ends up

Starting point is 00:04:05 picking you know uh indiana over kansas and he's got off to a bit of a slow start uh their lone loss of the season so far they lost to connecticut whose games playing on friday by 20 points outside of that they've looked clean but outside of that they haven't played a top 100 team in ken bomb so it's tough a little bit to tell what they truly are but they've been dominant at two-point shooting they've been good at two-point defense defense they've been really good at getting blocked shots early in the season so it's clearly a team when you look at KU strength two-point offense two-point defense they're good at both those things too similar to the UConn game coming up on Friday that immediately starts to come into play come into your mind of the idea that, you know, I guess they can maybe take away

Starting point is 00:04:48 some of the things you do well, which makes the matchup a little bit tougher. And then on top of it, it is a road matchup. I mean, anytime you're playing a power five, anytime you're playing on the road at all in college sports, it's very difficult. So that becomes, I think, the second most difficult game remaining on KU's schedule. The most difficult game remaining on KU's non-conference schedule, though, is the Connecticut game. Connecticut right now is on

Starting point is 00:05:11 a really long win streak. They're on a, I think, 13-game winning streak, and they have beaten 24 consecutive non-conference opponents, and of those 24, they've beaten all of them by double-digit points. You look throughout the year so far for them. They played Indiana, who they beat by 20, as I mentioned. They beat Texas by 10 points. Outside of that, it's lower-ranked teams. You did have the common opponent in Manhattan, who they beat 90-60. You beat Manhattan 99-61.

Starting point is 00:05:40 I don't know that you take that much away from when you're winning a game, that big scoring margin and all that sort of stuff. Obviously it's a home game for you, but you're playing the defending national champions. They have a lot to like on the roster. Donovan Klingin is a national player of the year candidate. He's a lottery pick candidate center spot. So you might not have your normal, just overwhelming advantage of Hunter Dickinson. He's going to have to play in a game to give you even a slight advantage in this game. And Samson Johnson, their backup center, has been really impressive so far this year too. It's kind of similar to what they did last year with the two centers,

Starting point is 00:06:13 although now Kling and Johnson are playing even closer in minutes from the two guys. They've got a really good kind of stretch four who can take over games, hit shots, and Alex Carabani seems to take it another step this year. Like Cam Spencer's a really good shooter and defender for them. Tristan Newton is somebody who is just a good player and can do stuff off the ball for them, create shots, and has maybe taken kind of that step up for them. And they've also got – I don't know if the young freshman's going to be back,

Starting point is 00:06:40 the stud freshman guard kind of doing everything, Stephon Castle. But either way, Connecticut is your toughest non-con game. And overall, Connecticut's ranked third on Ken Palm. So, like, you know, Houston has been one of the best teams in the country so far and is thought to be that way with number two. But, like, I'm sorry, Houston's number one on Ken Palm. So you could say that'll be the Caves' toughest game remaining. But at the end of the day, like, it could end up being that this Connecticut game isn't just your

Starting point is 00:07:06 toughest non-con game remaining. It could be that this Yukon game is your toughest game remaining of anything like kind of remains to be seen on where everything kind of orders out and how that all works out. But this is the hardest non-con game remaining. Now, as far as the top three easiest gamers remaining and the three most interesting games remaining, let's get to those in a moment.

Starting point is 00:07:27 Then we'll finish up with some KU volleyball. This is Locked on Jayhawks. All right, the top three easiest games remaining, followed by the top three most exciting and important games remaining. Most interesting, however you want to phrase it. Then we'll finish up with some KU volleyball here with Locked On Jayhawks. Thank you to every dayers. Thank you to TuneIn and every show, which you can find on our podcast or on our YouTube page. So the three

Starting point is 00:07:51 most difficult, we gave Yale three, Indiana two on the road, and then UConn number one. So that only leaves three remaining games. We're going to go again, reverse order three being closer to being hard. One will be the easiest here. third easiest game so I guess the fourth hardest game depending which way you're looking at it is the Missouri game on December

Starting point is 00:08:12 9th now I thought about making this one ahead of Yale it's obviously got the rivalry aspect to things to where that makes it a little more interesting makes it so that they're fighting very hard in a game like this but we've seen Kansas blow out Missouri the last two years, once on the road, once at home. Missouri's ranked 80th on Ken Palm. They did have a good win earlier this week playing at Pittsburgh. That was a team who made it to the second week or the second round of the NCAA tournament last year.

Starting point is 00:08:37 They beat them by seven on the road. But also Missouri, you know, they lost by 15 to Memphis, and they lost to Jackson State, who is not a very good team. Jackson State is 1-6. Outside of that game, Jackson State has gone 0-6. So I think Missouri is a fine Power 5 team. I don't think that – like the Jackson State game is kind of what I said about the Eastern Illinois game.

Starting point is 00:08:58 You give everybody one game where it's like, yeah, you shouldn't have done that. And that was KU's Eastern Illinois game, at least you would hope. But also you lost the game, which makes it worse. Nonetheless, I say all this to say that that's why I have them below the Yale game. But I don't think it's like an easy game in any estimation. As far as what Missouri does well and stuff, right now they've been a good two-point shooting team. They've been a good three-point shooting team.

Starting point is 00:09:20 They shoot a lot of threes. You could have a bit of a math problem in that game. They force turnovers. But if you can break the press, you can get some easy buckets. We saw that last year in the game a season ago, but they're not a very good rebounding team. They're not an overly big team outside of Connor Vanover, who is overly big. He's like a 7'5 center. He doesn't play like a ton of minutes for them, but he's like a 7'5 stretch five. So interesting team, but yeah, that is on the top three easiest, just below the Yale game.

Starting point is 00:09:49 The second easiest game for KU remaining on the schedule is the Wichita State game. Wichita State's ranked just outside the top 100 on Ken Palm. And the Shockers did not have a good season last year, 17-15, which caused them to fire their head coach with Isaac Brown. They brought in a new coach in Paul Mills from Oral Roberts. And I think there is a scenario here where this Wichita State game actually becomes a little bit difficult than you might think. As of right now, I think there still remains to be seen

Starting point is 00:10:15 what this team truly is with the new coach. They haven't played a super difficult schedule, but they haven't played a bunch of horrendous teams either, like Lipscomb, they beat by 17. They're in the mid-170s. Western Kentucky, they beat by 10. They're in the mid-170s. Western Kentucky, they beat by 10. They're in the mid-180s. St. Louis, who's like 169, is usually a decent A-10 school.

Starting point is 00:10:31 They beat by 19. So they're beating them by a lot. Their one loss was to Liberty, who they lost by 17 points to. But Liberty's ranked top 40 low-key in Ken Palm. So Wichita State, typically under Paul Mills when he was at Oral Roberts, they played fast. They jacked up a lot of threes. Right now, Wichita State typically under Paul Mills, when he was at Oral Roberts, they played fast. They jacked up a lot of threes. Right now, Wichita State isn't really doing that.

Starting point is 00:10:49 And I think that's part of maybe a style. Maybe he's waiting to get the right players into the system because right now they're not taking a lot of threes. They're not making a lot of threes, but they are shooting two point shots well. So it's a well-spaced floor. They're not really turning the ball over much offensively. They're not really turning the ball over defensively much, but they've actually been a pretty good defensive team, which is one

Starting point is 00:11:07 of those things you typically think of with a good Wichita State team. So Wichita State, I think pretty decent team. It's at the Sprint Center where we've seen KU have some struggles. I'm sorry, T-Mobile Center, where we've seen KU have some struggles in some of those non-con games in the T-Mobile Center. So maybe that game makes the game a little bit tougher. You'd imagine Wichita State fans are really juiced up for this game and probably going to travel pretty well. KU probably will bring a good crowd to the T-Mobile Center since it's so close away. And you probably will end up with a fun game in the same ilk of Missouri

Starting point is 00:11:38 because you have a bit of the rivalry aspect to it. Although I don't know that Kansas views it as a rivalry, but I don't think Wichita State is too fond of Kansas. So, you know, I think it'll be an interesting game. I don't think it's an easy game by any nature, but I don't think it's as hard of a game as the Missouri-Indiana or Yale games necessarily. The easiest game remaining on KU's non-conference schedule is the UMKC game. That is their other game left in kind of the same vein of the Eastern Illinois game where UMKC coming into Wednesday night is 301st in the country on Ken Palm and Ken Palm has it as a 30 point game in favor of Kansas. I think the rebranding they're trying to

Starting point is 00:12:19 go by Kansas City, but you know, whatever, everybody knows it is UMKC and they've kind of struggled to this point. They won two games to open up the season against NAIA schools in Avila and St. Mary. Then they got pasted by Baylor, pasted by Colorado State, lost by 12 to UNC Greensboro. Now, all those are top 100 teams on Ken Palm. Then they lost by 10 in overtime to Brown, so things got away from them there in overtime. Then they lost by four to Middle Tennessee, who's just outside of the top 200. They have really struggled defensively. 362nd in the country in effective field goal percentage against them.

Starting point is 00:12:53 So that has been a problem. They have been a good offensive rebounding team. They're a team who is okay at forcing turnovers, but it's not a very good team, one that you expect to blow out. Now, we expected KU to blow out Eastern Illinois, and that didn't end up happening. So you can't just walk into a game and play your D game and expect to win by 30.

Starting point is 00:13:13 We've seen Kansas now in that game. I mean, it was a slow start against Chaminade against these lesser opponents. Twice now have slow games. We've also seen them have dominant games against lesser opponents like the North Carolina Central and Manhattan games. But nonetheless, the UMKC should be the biggest blowout and the one that you expect Kansas to win the most if you're ranking by confidence of all those. That's why it's number one on the easiest. As far as the most exciting,

Starting point is 00:13:36 the most interesting, the most intriguing, the most important for KU, let's go reverse order again. Number three is Wichita State. Again, you have a game where it's an in-state opponent. They probably don't like you very much, and you're playing at the T-Mobile Center where you've had some struggles. Anytime you get even a smidge of a rivalry aspect to a game, it makes it a little bit more interesting. And because Wichita State has a new head coach, I think it adds to kind of the interest a little bit there.

Starting point is 00:14:07 It'll also be your first game back off Christmas break. It'll be your last game before Big 12 play for kind of your last tune-up before Big 12 play. So it becomes interesting. It becomes important anytime you're playing an in-state opponent from just all sorts of reasons. Number two is the Connecticut game. If you beat UConn on Friday, it would be huge to kind of erase some of the worries you had after the

Starting point is 00:14:28 Eastern Illinois game or worries after the Marquette game a week before. It would show that you can beat, I mean, Kentucky looks really good. They just blew out Miami. So that makes that win look even better now, but still it'd be nice to beat the defending champs and, you know, hold onto your home court here and beat a team who does a lot of things you do well or defends a lot of things that you do well to show that you can compete with that type of team. And obviously the streak that they're on is pretty incredible.

Starting point is 00:14:53 So this one would be very important in terms of just reinforcing how good Kansas is. Because if you lose this game, you're still probably going to be viewed as a top 10 team, but there will start to be some questions like, hey, this was our preseason number one. They've already lost twice. They had a weird game with Eastern Illinois. What's going on there, right? Win the game, reassert your dominance, and be like, yeah, this is why this team was preseason number one.

Starting point is 00:15:15 But the number one most important one or most interesting one, it has to be Missouri, right? It just is Missouri. Like, obviously, UConn is the most important game for how good you are. UConn is the most important game for your resume. UConn is the most important game to have good things happen with players or for players to step up to show what they can do for a possible big time game. But the Missouri game is the most important because it is your rival. It is your number one rival. And anytime you're playing your number one rival, that game becomes the most important, regardless if you think you're going to win by a lot, regardless if you don't think they're

Starting point is 00:15:54 very good that year. Anytime KU's playing Missouri, the importance meter is ramped up to 100 and you want to beat them by 100 points. So for that reason, that one is number one on the list, even though it wasn't in terms of the hardest games. We're going to finish up with some KU volleyball talk. They're hosting in the NCAA tournament later today for the first round, and if they win, they'll be hosting again for the second round on Friday

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Starting point is 00:17:18 Well, KU Volleyball is hosting in the NCAA tournament. They had an excellent season. They went 23-5, finished second in the Big 12 at one point, or I guess right now they're riding a 14-game home winning streak. They lost their first home game, ironically enough. They lost to Purdue, who's the three-seed in their same region, and they've won 14 straight since then. A really strong finish to the year. They beat UCF in the finale, Cincinnati, right before that. They had to go at BYU about a week and a half, two weeks ago, and got a big win there against at BYU about a week and a half two weeks ago

Starting point is 00:17:45 and got a big win there against a BYU team that hadn't lost at home before then they you know were able to play Texas close in one of the matches that they played down in Austin had to play both in Austin this year they swept Kansas State and Kansas State was able to beat Texas this year and beat Baylor and beat BYU so it was a good run for KU volleyball over the course of the regular season. Good enough that they were able to earn a top four seed in their region. They only seed the top eight nowadays in the NCAA volleyball tournament in each region.

Starting point is 00:18:13 So it's not a full one through 16, like you get in the men's basketball or women's basketball tournament, but you get your one through eight in each region and the top four in each region. So basically the top 16 overall get to host. While Kansas obviously being fourth gets to host, they're in the top four in each region, so basically the top 16 overall, get to host. While Kansas, obviously being fourth, gets to host. They're in the top right region, and they have a very interesting pod.

Starting point is 00:18:31 And really cool fan attendance and everything from KU Volleyball, because they put the tickets up for sale on, I forget if it was Monday morning or Tuesday morning, or at noon, I think it was Monday at noon and the tickets were sold out within one minute at 12.01. That is unbelievable crowd support, fan support for KU Volleyball and it's going to be packed in the Horace Family Volleyball Center to where they're going to have a real home court advantage, which they normally do because they usually get really good turnout for those games and the crowd does make an impact. So that'll be the case. They'll be playing Omaha in their first game.

Starting point is 00:19:09 That's tonight, Thursday night at 7 o'clock. And obviously you can watch the game too on ESPN+. They already beat Omaha earlier in the year. Then if they win that game, they would play the winner of the first game earlier in the day, which is Yale and Penn State. Yale's been a really good Ivy League team. Penn State is one of the blue bloods of volleyball. They got the five seed. A lot of people thought they'd be hosting and end up getting the five seed,

Starting point is 00:19:28 which makes for a tough draw for Kansas. But you have the home court. Anytime you get an opportunity to play a Penn State or Nebraska or Wisconsin or Texas or one of these top-tier volleyball schools, it's really fun. So I'm really looking forward to that. If Kansas-Penn State ends up happening or Kansas playing anybody in the second round that would be at 5 30 on Friday and that would be right before the UConn game so you could probably I'm sure there's some people doing this doing a double dose of KU they're probably going to go straight

Starting point is 00:19:54 from the volleyball game to the UConn KU game that could be a pretty special night for Kansas Athletics on a Friday night if they can get through if they do get through they can make it to the sweet 16 possibly play Wisconsin who's the number two overall one seed and the number one overall one seed Nebraska only lost one game. It was to Wisconsin. You also have an interesting storyline. Caroline Crawford, former KU, really good middle blocker for a couple of years, transferred to Wisconsin. There was some talk of, I don't know, behind the scenes, NIL sort of weird rumblings of how that went down. So I don't know how juicy of a storyline that becomes of the two playing. I don't know if there's bad blood there or everything's cool.

Starting point is 00:20:29 And, you know, it's just one of those things where you tip your cap and wish you didn't lose someone, but you wish them well moving forward. But either way, you could have that storyline, which would be very interesting. And it's always fun this time of year with KU Volleyball. I absolutely love Ray Bouchard and the KU Volleyball team. Super fun to watch. So highly recommend checking them out if you haven't before. Volleyball is super fast, fun, a high-paced sport,

Starting point is 00:20:50 really easy to get into, and it'll be available for you on Thursday and Friday on ESPN+. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also find us on our YouTube page, or you can like and subscribe to the show. We'll be back on Friday's episode to preview Kansas versus UConn. See you then.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Ranking Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Remaining Non-Con Games + KU Volleyball in NCAA Tournament

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