Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - REBOUND REVOLUTION: Keanu Dawes Gives Kansas Jayhawks Shot at ELITE Defensive Rebounding Front Court

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is going to be the best Kansas defensive rebounding team in a long time. 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 Derek Johnson here? This is Locked on Jayhawks. On today's episode, we're going to break down why this Kansas team should be an elite defensive rebounding team and one of the best in Bill Self history that he's had. We'll get into some of the different stipulations and how does it correlate to defensive impact.

Starting point is 00:00:37 But let's start right here why I think that Kansas has a chance to have one of their best defensive rebounding front courts that we've seen of the Bill Self era. And it starts with one name, one guy, two words, I guess is a name to where. Anyway, Keanu Dawes is the answer here. He had two seasons at Utah. One season, he had a 25.5% defensive rebound rate. year two, his most recent year at Utah this past season, he had a 25.8 defensive rebound rate. And you might be thinking, is that good? What does that mean? It's very good, very, very good. We'll get into what some of those numbers mean in a second here. But you also added Christian Reeves out of the transfer portal to.

Starting point is 00:01:21 And maybe not as prevalent as the Keanu Dawes addition to this just because Reeves numbers, you know, come at a lower level from this past season. also because of his injury, like we don't know, is Paul Olympia going to be the starter? But for instance, Christian Reeves, if you look at his one season or his last season, his final season he had at Duke, it was a 28.5% defensive rebound rate. You look at his one year at Clemson,

Starting point is 00:01:46 it was a 23.5% defensive rebound rate. And you look at his season at Charleston, it was a 24.4% defensive rebound rate. Again, all of those are very good. If we do move to Paulumbia, last season, Kansas and defensive rebound rate. It was closer to 19%.

Starting point is 00:02:03 You'd like to see it be higher, but, and he wasn't technically qualified for it, but he did lead Kansas in that mark. And if you go back to Paul MBS final season at over in the French, junior league, he had like a 26% defensive rebound rate. Again, anything you're talking over 20% is solid. And like Hunter Dickinson, who was an elite defensive rebounder, he was around 25, 26%, just to show you out of comparison, right? And just to show even more how much we're talking here of why

Starting point is 00:02:30 those numbers are so good. There are only 13 players. Okay. There are only 13 players during the entirety of the Bill Self era, right? So we're talking two decades of basketball. Only 13 guys have played at least 300 minutes or more in a season, which, you know, that's like less than 10 minutes per game. 300 minutes or more in a season had a defensive rebound rate of 22% or higher, right? Now, if we look at 23% or higher, it's shaking.

Starting point is 00:03:00 takes down to just 10 guys in the Bill Self-era who played 300-plus minutes, had a defensive rebound rate in a season of 23% or higher. And if we view it from just a standpoint of players and not player seasons, the list of Bill Self guys who had a defensive rebound rate of 22% or higher, played 300-plus minutes, here's the list, pretty good list. Thomas Robinson, Hunter Dickinson, Joel Embedd, Udoca Azabuke, Landon, Cole Aldridge, Markief Morris, Deidrick Lawson, Flory Budunga,

Starting point is 00:03:35 Jalen Wilson, and Jeff Withy. I mean, how many guys on that list were like Big 12 player of the year or an All-American or were at the very least, like excellent role players for what they were trying to do? I mean, that is a heck of a list of guys for KU, right? Now, as it pertains to Keanu Dawes, the only player in Bill Self's time to register a 25% or higher defense, rebound rate for a season, which again, Dawes did the last two years at Utah.

Starting point is 00:04:05 It's Hunter Dickinson, who did it both years at Kansas, so he did it twice. Cole Aldridge did it in his final season at KU. Landon Lucas did it in 2015 to 2016. Udoca Azabuque did it in the 2019 to 2020 season. Joel Embed did it in his lone season, and then Thomas Robinson did it twice. T. Rob was a freak on the defensive glass. He didn't just cross that mark. He crossed 30 percent both years, which is just bonkers.

Starting point is 00:04:30 maybe the best defensive rebounder in, I don't know, Will Chamberlain exist, Danny Manning exists, but he's on the Mount Rushmore of defensive rebounders at KU, right? But the amazing thing here is we're talking elite company on the defensive glass, but when I'm going through those lists of players, when I'm mentioning Thomas Robinson, when I'm mentioning Joel Embed or whatever, like these guys didn't play together.

Starting point is 00:04:57 These are incredible seasons by guys over, individual years, right? Right now, we're talking about two or three. If Paul and Bia gets closer to his numbers that he had at his junior league in France, if Christian Reeves does what he's done every year he's been in college pretty much, if Keanu Daz does what he does, Daz does, that is a bit of a, anyway, if Keanu Daz does what he did at Utah's last two years, which you would think it would carry over your playing in the same conference,

Starting point is 00:05:28 it's not just that you're going to have one of these guys. on the list. You could have two of these guys on the list. Now, maybe it works out in a way that, okay, well, somebody's got to be grabbing the defensive rebound and, you know, it's going to lower the rate of the other guy on the court with the other. I get that. But like, how many times have we had multiple elite defensive rebounders on the floor at the same time, you know? And the only time, in fact, that Kansas had two players do it in the same season, 22% plus defensive rebound rate, play 300 plus minutes in the same season, is the 2010 to 2011 season. That's when Markief Morris and Thomas Robinson did it in the same season.

Starting point is 00:06:07 And what I find interesting there is when they had it happen with two guys, that Kansas team finished top 15 nationally in defensive rebound rate. And they were number one in Big 12 play in defensive rebound rate that year. If you just look at power four teams, Kansas finished third that season nationally in defensive rebound rate because they had two guys. who were able to get to that point. And there's a very real chance that this Kansas team could have two guys that get to that point. When you look at one of Mbia or Reeves, as well as obviously Keona Dawes, right? Now, the 2011 to 2012 season, you had T. Rob and Withie on the same team.

Starting point is 00:06:48 Withy didn't clear the 22% mark till the following season, but if we still counting that one as having two guys on the same team, you know, the 2011, 2012 team still finished top 70 in the nation and defense rebound rate. They still finished number two in Big 12 only play. They still finished 16th in the country among power four only teams in defensive rebound rate, which is obviously very good. And coming off of season two, where Kansas wasn't a great defensive rebounding team. This is an area where, hey, if you lose something here, if you lose Darren Peterson's shotmaking, you lose Florida Bedunga's defensive versatility, what are areas that you can improve to offset some of the losses?

Starting point is 00:07:27 This is a big one that I'm looking at, the defensive rebounding to say, okay, Kansas should be be a much better team defensive rebounding. And all these are reasons why that I'm kind of going to that, right? Because this has the chance to be as good of a defensive rebounding front court as Bill Self has had, right? With having the chance to have more, multiple of these guys, with having a chance to have, you know, three guys who are 20% plus within Bia Reeves and Dawes here, right? And, you know, like, I don't know, if you believe in.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Bia is going to kind of blow up and, you know, continue to improve on his game, you should believe that Mbia can kind of get there, right? And the fun thing about this, too, is it's not like KU is planning to play a lineup of like three tiny guards who don't really grab rebounds surrounded by those big men who are great defensive rebounders. Those great defensive rebounders are going to be supplanted by other guys who can get rebounds. I get it. Leroyd Blyden is a smaller guard. He's still somebody who's putting up four rebounds per game in the max. So he's not, he's not, he's not one of these guards who's only giving you like two rebounds and he's only going to score. When you look at Taylin Kinney, you look at someone who's like OTE numbers,

Starting point is 00:08:38 he's putting up four, four and a half rebounds per game. Like he's somebody who again, you're not going to get a zero there. Like you might be able to get six to seven rebounds per game from the combination of Kinney and Blyden, right? So, you know, from just a guard perspective, KU is going to be okay there. And then here's the big one. Tyrant Stokes is an excellent rebounder. And so we're already talking about, you know, having this elite front court in defensive rebounding, well, now Tyron Stokes is going to grab a bunch of

Starting point is 00:09:06 those two, you know? And if we're talking like three through five where you have Stokes, the three, Dawes at the four, and then one of either Reeves or Mbia at the five, like, that could be as good of a three through five as KU has had on the defensive glass, maybe in the Bill Self era, right? I mean, again, there's some other really good. defensive rebounding teams in there, but numbers kind of back it up, that that can be an actual thing. And so when you look at how it impacts the game, I look to the defensive end of the court, because you could be the best first shot defense in the world, but if you're not grabbing the defensive rebound, it's going to limit what you can be. And I think we saw that a little bit last

Starting point is 00:09:52 year. Kansas was a really good defense last year. They weren't one of the top five defenses in the country. And I think the defensive rebounding was the reason why. So let's get into the fall up question here. How has defensive rebounding related to better defenses for KU? And could it relate to this team end up having a better defense than maybe the personnel might suggest? We'll get to that next.

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Starting point is 00:11:56 there are some questions about how good can this kansas defense be when you look at having a couple smaller guards um i don't know how you know i think kinney and blighton are both guys that have quick hands and we'll get steals, but how solid are they going to be overall defensively? With Stokes, he can be a really big defensive playmaker, but like he's still freshman or they're going to be freshman mistakes. You can falsely off the ball or something like that. With Dawes, you know, I don't know that, like, I think he's a strong defender in the post, but he's not really a shot blocker, not really a somebody who's going to get just steals.

Starting point is 00:12:30 Like if he's playing wings, can he keep up? So, you know, that is kind of a question for KU. Now, at the end of the day, with Bill Self, I expect this to be a top 30 defense in the country, just because that's kind of what happens with Bill Self defenses. So that's kind of my expectation. But how much does the defensive rebounding help it? How much does it raise the floor? How much does it raise the ceiling?

Starting point is 00:12:52 So Bill Self has owned 10 top 100 defensive rebounding teams at Kansas. He's had four that were in the top 50 with the most recent one actually coming all the way back in the 2010 to 2011 team. And Kansas actually finished as the highest ranked KU defensive rebound team that self has ever had that season, which was shortly followed by the 08 team, and that team was 26th in the country at it, right? So of the 10 top 100 defenses that Bill Self has had, or defensive rebound rate teams, sorry, of the 10 top 100 defensive rebound rate

Starting point is 00:13:30 teams that Bill Self has had, the average adjusted efficiency defense overall ranking for KU was 8.3. And seven of those 10 teams that had top 100 defensive rebound rates also finished as top 11 units nationally for total defense. Then we look at the top 50 defensive rebound rate teams, they'll self-sad. So four top 50 defensive rebound rate teams of those four, the average defensive efficiency overall ranking for KU was 4.8 with the worst defense of those four being the 11th best defense nationally. So there's a great example. If KU winds up being a top 50 defensive

Starting point is 00:14:11 rebound rate team, the worst defense that Bill Self has had with a top 50 defensive rebound rate is the 11th best defense in the country. Okay. Now, some of those teams also grabbed a fair amount of turnovers, like they might have gotten steals or they were also strong rim protecting units. This one, I think will be solid at rim protection. I think a B.L will be solid at it. Reeves will be solid at it. I don't think it's going to be as good as last. year for instance though so maybe not elite but still good at it as far as the steals like that'll be interesting because last year kew was horrible at forcing steals i do think kinney and blighton like i said earlier are both guys i mean blighton was like 1.8 steals per game kinney was putting up big steals

Starting point is 00:14:51 in otee i think both guys should be able to you know cause more chaos and get you more steel than you have last year but how much better is it going to be like that'll be obviously a big question but for instance the 2024 defense just to show you the importance of defensive rebounding here. The 2024 defense for KU, so the 23 to 2014, the 24 defense finished 71st in the country in defensive rebound rate. They were 72nd and block percentage, 207th in turnover percentage. I look at this team and I'm like, yeah, they could finish around there or better in defensive rebound rate. They could finish around there or better in block rate. They should be able to clear 207th in the country enforcing turnovers. Well, that team was 20th

Starting point is 00:15:34 in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency. So like, again, I'm looking at it. I'm like, okay, well, with Bill Selfly, maybe they could get this to be a, you know, with Bill Self and the defensive rebounding, maybe it could be a top 15 defense. 2016, I thought was an interesting comp. They were 152nd in turnover rate defense that year. So slightly above average, which maybe this year's team could be. They were 86th in the country in defensive rebound rate.

Starting point is 00:15:58 Again, I think this team has the potential to be top 50. They were a hundredth in the country in block rate. that team finished as the number three defense in the country. Okay. Now, 2011, they were just outside the top 150 in turnover rate, defense. They were 86th in block rate. Again, those could be similar numbers than this year. But they had a top 15 defensive rebound rate,

Starting point is 00:16:21 and they were sixth nationally overall on defense. And a good example as well of this is for KU the last couple of seasons. Right. So last year, or this past season, whatever you want to call it, Kansas finished ninth in the country defensively. They had an unbelievable. They had the big 12 defensive player there in Florida Bedunga, who was unbelievable in terms of his versatility and switchability defensively. KU finished as one of the better shot blocking teams in the country. They were sixth in the country in block rate. They were fourth in the country in two point percentage defense. They were even 25th in the country in three point percentage defense. all those things are like, wait, why are they not better than ninth? They should be a top five defense with some of those metrics going their way.

Starting point is 00:17:13 An interesting thing, if we go back to 2025, where Hunter Dickinson had some defensive deficiencies, I always say that, you know, Hunter was actually a really good defender in terms of just clogging up the lane, grabbing defensive rebounds and like one-on-one post defense because he was strong and big and tough to go around, where Hunter ran into problems was teams that could, you know, spread him out and get him out into space, which wasn't every team. But if you were able to do that, that caused KU problems defensively.

Starting point is 00:17:41 Even then, even knowing that, that Kansas team finished 11th in the country defensively in adjusted defensive efficiency on Ken Palm. They had a defensive rating of 93, adjusted defensive rating of 93, basically meaning you're giving up an adjusted 93. points per 100 possessions based on your schedule.

Starting point is 00:18:03 This past year's Kansas team was 93.5. So it was actually a higher number. Now, overall offense got better this year in college basketball. But point being, you basically had the same defense overall rating in 2025 as you had 2026. It didn't feel like that, did it? No, it didn't. But you know what the big difference was?

Starting point is 00:18:23 26, Kansas, this past season, was 152nd in the country in defensive rebound rate. Okay? If we just look at Big 12 only play, they finished 11th in the Big 12 in defensive rebound rate. 2025 was 65th in the country in defensive rebound rate. If we look at Big 12 only play, they were fourth. So I get it. There's a lot to defense, but you can't win the defensive possession until you actually grab the ball because otherwise they still have it and still are taking other shots.

Starting point is 00:18:57 Meaning, I expect this to be a top 100 defensive rebound rate team. I expect it to maybe even be top 50. And because of that, I expect them to be a top 20 defense. You add in that they should have enough shot blocking, enough stealing, enough of Bill Self factoring in the defense. Maybe they can be a top 15, top 10 defense, just based on that. And I know it doesn't always work that way. And I know it doesn't always look that way when you look at some of the personnel.

Starting point is 00:19:22 That's kind of what the numbers are leading me to believe. How would adding Malik-Ewan, target from Arkansas, or Mahalo Musich, the target from Serbia? how would adding either of those guys potentially affect this? We'll get to that next. Thanks for joining us on Locked on Jayhawks continuing on here. And we will have more fun episodes. Don't forget to check out our episode yesterday,

Starting point is 00:19:51 where we actually compared Hilo Musa Kitz, some of his numbers to Paul and Bia coming out from overseas and Malik Youen to last year and kind of getting an idea of all their games. We also had a deep dive episode on Musich last Friday. So check that one out here as well. Now, if you caught some of those episodes, thank you. one of the things that we mentioned was Musikic had a really good defensive rebound rate. He was in the top quartet of the Serbian League for qualified centers in defensive rebound rate.

Starting point is 00:20:19 His defensive rebound rate was like over 22%. We talked earlier in the show that that was kind of the bar in the number we were looking at, 22% and over. Now, there's no guarantee that that translates to 22% in the Big 12 because you might have faster, more athletic players. But he is an older player. what if it does translate over, right? Or at the very least, if it doesn't translate over, but it's close to translating over if it's 19, 20%, and he's your fourth guy, right?

Starting point is 00:20:46 You still have Dawes and Ambia and Reeves ahead of him anyway. Like, that's only going to add to this a little bit more. So it is interesting because Musa Kitch is a better defensive rebounder than he is an offensive rebounder. And it would kind of fit in with this idea for KU being like a dominant defensive rebounding team and how they would be able to, kind of play that way and lift the floor of what the defense can be this season for KU. Now, adding Malik Ewan is a little bit different.

Starting point is 00:21:13 Ewan is a better offensive rebounder than he is a defensive rebounder. When you look at Malik Ewan, he is one of the best offensive rebounding bigs in the country. Like you're talking over 15% offensive rebound rate, that is, you know, very, very good. Like J.P. Estrella, the big that we all wanted to come to Kansas and ends up going to Michigan, he had like a 15, 16% offensive rebound rate, and that was like 99th percentile nationally. So Ewan is also an excellent offensive rebounder. And, you know, in a way that would work well because if you're playing him next to Keanu Dawes at the four, Dawes is this incredible defensive rebounder.

Starting point is 00:21:49 Ewan would be the incredible offensive rebounder and maybe you get a little bit of the best of both worlds. It would not fit in as much with the defensive rebounding dominance, though. And that would be kind of interesting because Malik Ewan is more of an offensive player anyway. And Paul and bea Christian Reeves are more of defensive rebounder, you know, block shots, defensive anchor type guys anyway. So further steering the equation of if you want defense, you throw Mbia or Reeves out there. If you want more offense, you throw Ewan out there.

Starting point is 00:22:17 And I don't know, it's nice to have options if you're Bill Self and nice to have different ways potentially of playing. Ewan's defensive rebound rate closer to 15%. He's closer to being an average rebounder on the defensive side of the glass. So it is interesting because if Ewan did come in and was playing 25 minutes per game and you have more of an average defensive rebounder at the five with an elite one at the four. And probably Stokes for being a three will be an elite defensive rebounder for a three. Is that still good enough to be an elite defensive rebound team?

Starting point is 00:22:47 I think it would probably prevent KU from being a top 50 defensive rebound rate team, which I think right now if you're pairing Dawes with Mbia and Stokes, I do think that can be top 50. If you're pairing Stokes with Dawes and then Ewan, I would probably view it more. as being like a top 100, but it still gets you in the top 100, which is one of the bars we talked about kind of clearing here for, again, top 100 defensive rebound rate teams at Kansas averaged out to be the eighth best defense nationally under Bill self, right?

Starting point is 00:23:17 And seven of the 10 were top 11. So that would still get you to a point where you would feel comfortable, and you would still have, like, you still be playing and B.N. Reeves coming off the bench to grab your defensive rebounds. It is interesting. I don't totally know the numbers on Davian Adkins as a rebounder. So as he kind of continues to impress and could he be in the rotation, that would be kind of an interesting caveat too.

Starting point is 00:23:36 We're like, is you playing at the four? Is you playing at the five as well? But that's, I think, how adding some of those guys would potentially affect things for KU. But overall, I really like the way they're going with the defensive rebounding. And I do think it is going to be an underrated key for this upcoming season that probably a lot of national guys

Starting point is 00:23:52 aren't going to talk about or really notice or mention. So now you know. All right, I don't know for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe. See you next time.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - REBOUND REVOLUTION: Keanu Dawes Gives Kansas Jayhawks Shot at ELITE Defensive Rebounding Front Court

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