Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - RECAP: #2 Kansas Jayhawks Escape TCU Horned Frogs 83-81 Led by Hunter Dickinson's 30 Points

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we recap KU's narrow victory over TCU and Allen Fieldhouse to open up Big 12 play. 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. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcasts, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show.

Starting point is 00:00:40 On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're recapping KU's Big 12 opening victory over the TCU Horned Frogs 83-81 inside of Allen Fieldhouse, breaking down the game, getting to our goats of the game, takeaways from the game, and what is next for KU men's basketball. First, this episode of the show is brought to you by Jace Medical. Empower yourself when you purchase a Jace case, providing you with a personal supply of five antibiotics that treat 50 plus infections. Get yours today at jacemedical.com. That's J-A-S-E medical.com. We're going to start with just overall recap of this and takeaways from the game. I guess the first thing's first here. You found a way to win. Kansas came into this one over 30

Starting point is 00:01:24 consecutive. I think it was 32 straight Big 12 opening wins, and only 13 of those were at home. So that's an unbelievable streak to be on. They continue to add to that. You found a way to win in a close game win. That's going to be kind of the story of the Big 12 this year. You have to win close games. It's been the story of the Big 12 in past years

Starting point is 00:01:41 when you have so many good teams. When you look at what happened in this game specifically, you know, TCU, first of all, is a good basketball team. That's team has made it, you know, to the second round of the NCAA tournament for back to back seasons, a team that I think the expectation is to make it to the NCAA tournament. Once again, this season, they've got, you know, a good team that's kind of put together. I know the schedule wasn't great and so far what they put together, but that doesn't mean that they're not a good team.

Starting point is 00:02:05 It just means that they haven't necessarily gotten to show it against good competition, which you saw maybe a little bit more in this one. And then on top of that, TCU played a good game. Like this was a really good, at least offensive game from TCU. They shot above what they normally do. Tennyson had an unbelievable performance.

Starting point is 00:02:23 He was unreal for TCU. It wasn't just that he was hitting a lot of shots. Like, yeah, there were some where it was like, okay, yeah, you left him too open there and stuff like that. But, you know, one of the mid-range shots he hits where it was perfectly guarded and he's on, like, the baseline and has to, you know, overcome the angle of the basket and the backboard and everything. The one three that he hit running around the screen,

Starting point is 00:02:42 he's kind of fading back on the catch. Well, it's pretty well contested by I think Timberlake. Like he was making some incredible shots. It wasn't a great KU defensive game overall. That was actually the worst game by points allowed per 100 possessions for the KU defense of the season, interestingly enough. And I think some of that might be matchup reliance. You know, when we look back to KU over the past, whatever it is, three, four, five years,

Starting point is 00:03:07 you would notice that a lot of times the teams that Kansas is losing to these big, you know, they actually showed it because TCU won by 23 points last year in Allen Fieldhouse. They showed the biggest losses by point differential in during the broadcast during the Bill South era. And like all of them were from 2018 on, you know, is that just a sign of that things are harder now to put together teams that are as dominant because of the transfer portal and, you know, freshmen don't stay as long, all that stuff. I don't know, probably, but I think there's something to the idea. You look at those teams who are getting those blowout wins, you know, Texas last year or Kentucky a couple of years ago,

Starting point is 00:03:41 teams that are super athletic. They have athletic guards. They're quick at the guard position. They have athletes all over the court, whether it's wings at different positions. And that's what TCU is, right? They have really athletic, long, lengthy wings. They have Senator Ernest Uday, who runs the floor really well. They have two very quick guards that are hard to stay in front of with Avery Anderson and Jameer Nelson Jr. So when you look at all that, they're an athletic team.

Starting point is 00:04:03 And I continue to think that just like over maybe the past couple years, playing super athletic, quick, fast teams for KU, that is a bit more of a matchup problem for them. KU is still a good athletic team, but when you compare it to what those are, they're not kind of that same level. So I think some of that's matchup problems. You look at, okay, if you can space the court against a team who has a traditional big center like Hunter Dickinson, you know, you would see times they moved up the level

Starting point is 00:04:28 and they were able to get back cuts or something like that. So it's just those little things getting out in transition that might be a bit of an issue for KU. On top of that, TCU, like I said, had a great game in combination. They shot the ball really well. They had the best effective field goal percentage of any team has had against KU in a game this year. They shot 7% above what their normal free throw percentage is. They shot 38% from three when they came in at about 32%. Tennyson, who came in averaging single digit points per game, goes for nearly 30. All those things are kind of, if Kansas loses this game,

Starting point is 00:05:01 you tip your cap and go, yeah, this would not be ideal. And this would be a bad situation for KU to be in when we've talked a lot about the need to start seven and one or eight and O based on how your final 10 games go, that would make the result. If you lost this one sting, but in a vacuum, if you said, Oh, you would have lost that game because some guy averaged, you know, four times what he does per game. And, you know, they just got hot from three when they're not a great three-point shooting team. And if you're turning a team who is really good at a lot of other things, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:31 rebounding, playing athletic, transition points, defense, and you give them the three-point shot, it's hard to beat them. So you would kind of understand that. But, you know, KU didn't force a ton of turnovers. So, like, they played into it some on the defensive end, too. It wasn't just all TCU playing great. Like, KU could have forced more turnovers I'd give credit to TCU they didn't have as many you know unforced ones like Kansas did they gave up a good amount of offensive rebounds did Kansas now you got a lot back on the other end but you still did have one

Starting point is 00:05:58 of your three or four worst defensive rebounding games of the season and TCU shot really well from two-point shots it was one of the three or four best you know two-point offense games of the season. And TCU shot really well from two-point shots. It was one of the three or four best two-point offense games against the KU defense too. So the crazy part is KU was only outscored 14 to 10 in fast break points, a number that we talked about coming in. Over the last five games coming into this one, TCU was averaging about 21 and a half points in transition per game.

Starting point is 00:06:22 And on the season, TCU came into this one averaging 25 transition points per game. You held them to 14. You held them well below what their normal mark is. And if I would have said that coming in, I would have absolutely taken it. And you would have absolutely thought if that was the case, okay, maybe Kansas turned it into a half-court game. Maybe Kansas turned it into a slower game.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Well, this wasn't one of actually the fastest games by amount of possessions played for KU. So I guess you kind of did do that. And maybe you were able to keep them in half court more than you want to do. You just weren't able to stop them in the half court. Like you maybe thought you should have, or maybe on paper, you thought you would have been able to coming into this game. And then you add to it, it obviously didn't help that KU on the offense side had a really bad turnover game. That was KU's second worst turnover rate in a game this season. The only game they had worse was Marquette, a game they lost's second worst turnover rate in a game this season. The only game they had

Starting point is 00:07:05 worse was Marquette, a game they lost. And this turnover rate was very similar to that one. So teams that have been able to speed them up or get those turnovers, that's when they're having their problems. But they did balance it out because they got an excess of offensive rebounds. 48.5% offensive rebound rate for KU in this game, meaning they basically grabbed one out of every two of their misses. Unbelievable effort by KJ Adams, by Hunter Dickinson, by Kevin McCullough, by everybody who contributed to that in getting those offensive rebounds for KU. That was absolutely remarkable what they were able to do on the offensive glass. It was just their second game above 35% in terms of offensive rebounding rate. And their

Starting point is 00:07:45 second previous high was in the low 40s. This one at almost 50% against a team who came in top 70 in defensive rebound rate. So pretty unbelievable performance by KU there. And that's something that I look to and have been saying all along. I think they have in them to be a better offensive rebounding team than they've showed. We saw it in this game. We've seen it in a few other games. If they can do that each and every game, I think it really does change what this offense can be. Right now, they're ranked in the 30s in offensive efficiency. If you're getting more possessions from that, and they do a better job tightening up the turnovers, which was obviously a problem today, that's how they become kind of a top 25, top 20 offense in the country. KU really didn't get much

Starting point is 00:08:20 outside of the three guys, Kevin McCullough, KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson. In the first half, it was like just those three. Then in the second half, you started to get a little bit more. Johnny Furphy and Nick Timberlake kind of hit like threes within sort of succession. DeJuan Harris hits a couple of big shots for including the one toward the end, which Hunter Digginson ends up hitting the game winning shot. But the one before that was DeJuan Harris. So you at least got a few other moments. It was mostly about those three guys though for KU today KJ, Hunter and Kevin McCuller who were once again excellent coming kind of giving you that big three but in the end this was mostly maybe even more above that about the one guy Hunter Dickinson who carried you in that game

Starting point is 00:08:58 30 points scored ends up with another double double gets the game winning shot obviously he also had the pretty big hit to the face that he received and took and, you know, I guess sold a little bit to the officials. I guess we do have to talk about the flagrant call. I, you know, as you know, I don't love talking about the refs one way or another, but here it is. I don't know. Like, I could understand if that wasn't a flagrant call at the end of the day,

Starting point is 00:09:22 but, you know, I think if the roles were reversed and, and like, if Kansas was the one with, with Ernest due day there, and TCU was the one with Hunter Dickinson, I think Kansas fans probably would have been mad. That was called on them. TCU fans probably would have been arguing. Yes. That was absolutely flagrant, right? It's one of those where you can kind of argue it both ways. There were certain people, you know, like the Gene Serator said,

Starting point is 00:09:42 it shouldn't have been, there were people after the game that were saying it should have been, it was all over the board. It was just one of those where it was like a 50, 50, you know like the gene serator said it shouldn't have been there were people after the game that were saying it should have been it was all over the board it was just one of those where it was like a 50 50 you know some people say this some people say that so i i don't know that it's like there's other calls throughout the game that impact things right like the one that was uh i think it was emmanuel miller they called fallon kj adams there was nothing there there was absolutely nothing there with like the two and a half minute mark or something like that they tend to balance it out. And I guess it is a little different because flagrant,

Starting point is 00:10:07 you're getting two free throws and the ball, as opposed to just a missed call one way or another. But it is unfortunate. I feel bad for TCU that it did happen. Also the stuff where it's like, Oh, you know, Alan field house,

Starting point is 00:10:18 you can't get away. Look at the foul discrepancy numbers for every team in the big 12. And they're playing at home versus playing on the road. KU is not one of those top two or three schools in the Big 12 in that. It's some of the other schools. So for what it's worth, some of that stuff, it just happens. And it's unfortunate refs do miss calls at times. And I don't know if they did or didn't. You could argue that was actually a right call, but it was an important moment in the game and one that definitely might have changed how things went. Maybe KU makes a stop if TCU's

Starting point is 00:10:45 up two with the ball and you don't have the flagrant, and then maybe you go down and tie it. Maybe we're going to overtime. Who knows what happens? But yeah, it certainly was a key moment in the game. One weird thing, though, is I walked away from that game thinking TCU kind of played better than KU in the aftermath overall for the game. I walked away going, man, you got a little fortunate to come away with that one. Maybe that was just because TCU led for a lot of the final couple, three minutes or four minutes of the game. But then I looked up afterwards. I was kind of surprised to see this.

Starting point is 00:11:10 KU led for 24 minutes and eight seconds of the game. TCU led for a little over 12 minutes. So actually you led for a majority of the game, though neither team really led by that much. It was played within a phone booth in terms of the deficit. In the end, you survived, and this is a league. The big 12 is a league of survival. And there's going to be more games like that. There's going to be a lot more close calls down the stretch. There's going to be some other games where maybe KU loses on a game where you feel like you got screwed over by

Starting point is 00:11:39 a foul call or something. It's going to happen both ways for every team in the country or every team in the conference, because there's going to be a lot of close games. And when you have a close game, if one call you disagree with, you're going to feel that way. But you have to find a way to win these tight games. KU did. And we've talked about, again, KU really should need to start 7-1 or 8-0 when you look at the final 10 games of Big 12 play.

Starting point is 00:12:00 It was important to not have to suffer that first loss in their first Big 12 game. We get to our GOATs, good and bad, of the game coming up on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. a Big 12 play, it was important to not have to suffer that first loss in their first Big 12 game. We'll get to our GOATs, good and bad, of the game coming up on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, we are brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. The NFL regular season is wrapping up, and there's still time to get in on the action with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, new customers get $ 150 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place a five dollar bet that's 150 bucks in bonus bets when you're loose this app is so easy to use

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Starting point is 00:13:02 So visit Fanduel.com slash LockedOn and make your first bet a layup, Fanduel, official partner of the NFL. On to our goats of the game. Good goats, bad goats. Let's start with the good goats. First up, we have Hunter Dickinson. How could we not have him here? 30 points on 13 of 20 shooting. He was two for three from downtown.

Starting point is 00:13:20 He had 11 rebounds, one assist, and one steal. He was pretty unstoppable inside, which TCU has a lot of good athletes and everything. And I think TCU, they rotate three quality centers, but Hunter Dickinson exploited what you had there. And it was sad to see Ernest Uday leave over the offseason because I still think he has a very high ceiling in what he could become. But you saw in this specific game, there was a big difference in what you get with Dickinson as opposed to Uday. And you think of the KU offense to this point hasn't been that great of an offense. They rank in the 30s in Ken Palm in adjusted offensive efficiency.

Starting point is 00:14:02 It's one of the lower-ranked Bill Self offenses. Imagine what that would be without Hunter Dickinson. So Dickinson with a phenomenal game, 30 points, kind of carrying you. Kind of similar last year, except you won the game. Last year you lost by 23, but Jalen Wilson went off. Hunter Dickinson did that, but you just had a few more guys go off. One of those was K.J. Adams. K.J. was unbelievable in this game.

Starting point is 00:14:20 18 points, 7 of 8 shooting. He had 10 rebounds, one assist and two steals. That's what I want to see from KJ with the rebound. And he's starting to do that past couple of games, right? He had, what was it? 11 rebounds against Wichita State. Go out there and if you're going to be matched up on a four on a smaller guy, go dominate on the glass too. And he's been playing so aggressively. The dunks he throws down are so much fun. They're such an energy and momentum booster and he's been a good defensive player too he had an excellent performance and yeah i i don't know pick your

Starting point is 00:14:51 favorite kj dunk because there were a lot in that game by the way hunter dickinson had a couple dunks too he hasn't always been you know the big dunk guy he's more of just you know if i don't need to jump that high i won't but he had the the one put back dunk on the rebound he had another dunk elsewhere so lots of dunks between hunter Dickinson and K.J. Adams. That's always a fun thing and a good thing. Kevin McCuller gets a good go here. 16 points on a 6 of 16 from the floor. The three-point shot wasn't falling for Kevin.

Starting point is 00:15:14 Sometimes that's going to happen as a perimeter player. He was only 1 of 5 from 3. He was 5 of 11 from 2, so that much better efficiency there. He finally missed some free throws. He was on an unbelievable free throw streak, goes three for five. He added five rebounds, three assists, one steal. This was far from Kevin's best game. In fact, if you're comparing it to a lot of his other games,

Starting point is 00:15:32 this might be on the bottom half. Not that it was a bad game. I mean, I have him in good goats, just that he's been playing at that remarkable of a level. And TCU has a bunch of athletes and wings and good defenders on the wing. They can throw at him that it made it this one a little bit tougher of a matchup, but he continued to grind through. He had that big three in the first half that at the time gave you your

Starting point is 00:15:52 largest lead of the game at six and felt like, okay, maybe Kansas can about the push, you know, but then he couldn't really stop them at the end of the first half. But anyway, I thought Kevin was still good overall in this game, a little bit of a bench punch in this one. You know, it wasn't one guy scoring 12 points off the bench or two guys giving you three threes each off the bench or something like that,

Starting point is 00:16:10 but I thought Johnny Furphy played pretty well, all things considered. I feel like over the last two games, Johnny Furphy has had good process. He hasn't necessarily had exploding results, but he's had good process. He's driven it a little bit more. He's stayed in front of guys a little bit more on the defensive end he's challenging shots on the defensive end and then you had in being aggressive looking for his shot with uh nick timberlake he missed that one wide open corner three and it was like oh here we go again but then he hit that one layup in transition he hits the next three after and it was like okay that's progression for you too you went from you know missing your first shot maybe in the past uh earlier games you would have gotten

Starting point is 00:16:44 in a funk after that missed the the next one. You were able to overcome that. And that was good to see. And you had those two huge threes on like back-to-back possessions. One was by Timberlake. The next one was by Furphy on a pass from Timberlake. And together, the two of them combined for nine points on three of five shooting, four rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal in 21 minutes of play. You know, 21 minutes of play, that's solid efficiency, solid enough numbers. I thought you got a little bit of a bench punch from them. It wasn't an overall great bench game or anything, but especially in the second half, I guess specifically, I thought that was good enough.

Starting point is 00:17:16 Offensive rebounding gets one here, mentioned 48.5% offensive rebound rate. They got 16 offensive rebounds, 15 second chance points. That really won you the game in a game where uh defensively again that was your worst game of the season by points allowed per possession and everything and you had a billion turnovers on offense you had to get those extra possessions and you did uh in limbo here i didn't put this guy in good or bad the more i think about it maybe i should lean to him being in good but but would be DeJuan Harris. He had 10 points. Good. He hit that one shot, which was the penultimate shot you hit. So Hunter Dickinson hits the one to go up 83-81 to win the game. Before that, it was 79-all. DeJuan Harris hits

Starting point is 00:17:54 that tough floater shot to go up 81-79 before they tied it at 81. That was good. Avery Anderson, you know, he went two of seven. That was a lot of DeJuan defending him. That's good. Jameer Nelson seemed to have his most success when he was switched on to somebody else when it wasn't DeJuan Harris on him. So, you know, not really him. Eight assists, also very good, but he also had five turnovers. That's his career worst. And in a game where KU was, you know, turning it over way too much, you would want your senior veteran point guard to calm things down, keep the turnovers down. So that's why I put them in limbo here, kind of between the two.

Starting point is 00:18:28 I do think, you know, you like the aggressiveness, still eight assists, still, you know, solid enough defense. It wasn't an overly takeover, you know, get a bunch of steals type game for a team that does in TCU typically turn it over a lot and you didn't do a lot of that. So that would go toward being in limbo as well. Bad, I had to put on Marco Jackson here. It's funny talking about the process stuff with Johnny Furphy. The first like, I don't know, 10, 12 minutes of the game. I actually did kind of like the process of what Marco Jackson was doing. He was playing fast.

Starting point is 00:18:57 He was driving downhill. He was getting to the hoop and then he was just kicking it out. Now, a couple of them, he would drive downhill and then kick it out to K.J. Adams at the wing for three, and it's like, well, that didn't actually accomplish anything. But I did like that he was at least driving aggressively to the lane, showing off a bit of the speed, but it didn't result in anything. And then from there, it kind of started to fade a bit. Zero points on 0 of 4, two rebounds, two assists, 24 minutes,

Starting point is 00:19:21 minus six on the plus minus. You go back to the last couple games, you know, I thought he was inching in the right direction. And then the Yale game was kind of a dip down. The Wichita State game was his best game. And then this one probably an inch down again. We talked about this before. Progress isn't linear.

Starting point is 00:19:34 Wouldn't be shocked if he has a good game next game and continues to kind of overall ascend toward the end of the season. And then the last one I have here for bad goats, being weak with the basketball. TCU had. So it's not just the KU at 18 turnovers. And there were several of them that were unforced or made issues of, you know, some of them TCU got credit for a steal. Cause you might've just thrown the ball right to them or something, but TCU had 16 steals. You had 18 turnovers. They had 16 steals

Starting point is 00:19:59 that allowed TCU to lead 22 to eight in points off turnovers, nearly one in the game. If you would've had 10 turnovers in this game instead of 18, you probably win by 10 plus points when you combine with the offensive rebounding and everything that they did. And, you know, that would have been another couple extra shots for Hunter Dickinson or I don't know, a couple extra dunks for KJ Adams. Right. So they have to figure out a way because this is an offense that doesn't

Starting point is 00:20:21 shoot high volume of threes. And it's an offense that doesn't space the floor a ton. You have to make up for it in other ways. They've made up for it in being a good two-point offense. They made up for it in this game with offensive rebounding. You also have to make up for that by not being a high turnover team. The offensive rebounds, I guess, kind of neutralized this in a certain way, but wouldn't it have been great if both were that way?

Starting point is 00:20:42 So I have that in a bad goat. Let's finish up what's next for KU men's basketball on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. First, this episode is brought to you by Jace Medical. I know we come to sports to escape from some of the crazy realities of real life, but according to the FDA, pharmacies are running out of antibiotics like amoxicillin right in the middle of the worst flu season in over a decade. Obviously, you don't want to feel helpless or feel like you can't get your hands on some important medicine, whether it's a supply chain issue or something like that. Thankfully, you can be okay because of Jace Medical.

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Starting point is 00:21:48 and use offer code LOCKEDON to get $20 off your first order with Jace Medical. So thanks for everybody liking and subscribing to the show or following us anywhere you get your podcasts with Locked on Jayhawks in the everyday or tuning in to each and every episode. You can catch anything from last week or ahead. Just an FYI, I'm going to be out a bit this week.

Starting point is 00:22:10 My wife is due with our first baby, so things are going to be crazy for me this next week or two, probably with the show, so it'll be a little less every day per week. I'm going to try to work ahead and get a couple shows for you, so we will see with all that. But if there's not a show on a specific day, I promise it's not that I forgot or that I'm trying to not put out content that you guys want. It's just I'm busy dealing with a baby. So anyway, what's next for KU men's basketball, they're going to be at UCF on Wednesday. And that'll be a game where, you know, it's always difficult to play on the road, and you never take anything for granted on the road, so I don't know, I don't think I go into

Starting point is 00:22:49 a single Big 12 game ever, and I'm just like, oh yeah, they're guaranteed to win that game now, because of how the conference is, but this one is one of those where it's, yeah, UCF is one of the lower tier teams in the Big 12 and everything, the crazy thing about UCF though, is they are basically TCU light, very athletic team, haven't shot it super well. They force a ton of turnovers. They rebound well on both sides of the ball. They play good inside defense. So from that standpoint, after just playing TCU,

Starting point is 00:23:14 maybe that scares you a little bit. Then they'll be versus Oklahoma next Saturday. Oklahoma's almost beat KU and Allen Fieldhouse the last two years. They've got a really good team this year. Should be, as always, a difficult and interesting week for KU in the Big 12. That'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Back later this week for a KU UCF preview. Going to try to get to a latest in the transfer portal for KU football later this week as well.

Starting point is 00:23:36 Like I said, might be hit or miss with my availability this week. But thanks for joining us, and you can find anything you get with Locked on Jayhawks anywhere you get your podcasts or on our YouTube page. You can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time. Have a good weekend.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - RECAP: #2 Kansas Jayhawks Escape TCU Horned Frogs 83-81 Led by Hunter Dickinson's 30 Points

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