Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Recap: #5 Kansas Jayhawks Overcomes 12-Point Halftime Deficit, Blasts #9 Baylor Bears in 2nd Half

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Recapping #5 Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball's 87-71 victory in Allen Fieldhouse against the #9 Baylor Bears. KU overcame a 12-point halftime deficit with a strong second half from Bill Self's team led by Dajuan Harris, KJ Adams and Jalen Wilson. What went on in Lawrence, the meaning of the win for the Big 12, GOATs of the game, and more.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at Linkedin.com/lockedoncollege Terms and conditions apply.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Place your first FIVE DOLLAR bet to get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Free Bets – win or lose! Visit Fanduel.com/LockedOn today to get startedFANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked On Jayhawks, we saw the best, we saw the worst of Kansas, we saw the best, we saw the worst of Baylor. Recapping the big top 10 victory for Kansas on College Game Day on this edition of the show. 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, you can hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk with KLWN in Lawrence, three to six, Monday through Friday. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day.

We're free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts. We have a Sunday edition of this show. That's because KU has a quick turnaround. They're going to be playing at TCU on Monday. So tomorrow's show will be devoted to the KU-TCU preview, but obviously wanted to have a show specific to the Baylor game because it's important of a win as KU could have had this season.

And that's what we're going to be doing on today's show, recapping the KU-Baylor win for Kansas and getting to our goats of the game and all that good jazz that we're used to. First episode of Locked on Jayhawks is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. With LinkedIn Jobs, you can hire qualified candidates more efficiently by matching open roles with people of the skills, values, and experiences to help you achieve your goals in 2023 post your job for free at linkedin.com locked on college terms and conditions apply canton baylor 87 to 61 they were down 45 to 32 at halftime they end up going up 12 at right before the 10 minute mark. It was a Jalen Wilson, like and one to put them up by 12,

I think 10, 20 to go in the first half. It's one thing to overcome that deficit to do it that quickly is, is pretty remarkable. And if had a little bit of shades of the national title game against North Carolina, where it felt like you made up ground so quickly. You had like a Jalen Wilson transition bucket

to kind of tighten it up a little bit more and kind of fitting that that happened because you had like Christian Brown, Ocha Agbaje, Mitch Lightfoot, Remy Martin, Chris Tehan in attendance of the game that made that a little, I think, more special to have that happen that way. But the one thing that like in the North Carolina game, after you had that little swing where like Jalen Wilson gets the,

the, the bucket, I think it was an, an, an one after, and then you get a steal and then you get like a corner three, or maybe I'm reversing these things. And it felt like for a second,

like, oh man, K you might end up winning this game by 10, but then North Carolina battled back and it ended up being a back and forth game until the very finish. That's how this one actually went. KU got the momentum then they got the the slight lead and you get up 50 to 49 after that Grady Dick three crowd goes wild then you get the KJ Adams dunk and it was like well last time we played Baylor yeah you had to have a big comeback and you got up one and immediately Baylor got the lead back they hit like a big three and then they

just kind of stretched their lead back out. Opposite this time, KU just kept ballooning out. I think you saw in this game every reason of why Baylor can be an elite team, but Baylor's shortcomings, and you also saw every reason why Kansas can be an elite team while also seeing Kansas' shortcomings. So in the first half, you saw every reason why Baylor can be an elite team. They're the number one offense in the Big 12. They're the number one offense in the country, led by those three scoring guards. And it was literally all those three scoring guards minus

one bucket from Jalen Bridges in the first half. You saw why they can be such a good team, because if you even give them any bit of opening, they're going to take advantage and knock down shots. They're also going to hit tough shots on top of it that's what makes them a very special team and for Kansas in the first half you kind of saw the opposite you saw reasons of why they've been plagued or reasons why they have lost games this season you know maybe losing guys on the defensive end like overall this has been a pretty good defense for Kansas hasn't been elite but it's been a good defense I think they're 15th on Ken Palm right now in defensive efficiency but they have had times where there's been a lull on that end and they've given up too many open shots. You saw the offense, not enough players in the first half, right? We've seen so many times where it was

Jalen and no one else, you know, Jalen really struggled in the first half, but nobody else really picked up where he left off. You didn't have like an aggressive DeJuan Harris. You had trouble defensive rebounding. Baylor had a bunch of offensive rebounds in the first half so you saw a lot of the reasons that have been plaguing ku you saw a lot of the reasons of why baylor can be an elite team and then the second half we saw the opposite of that we saw kansas show why they can be an elite team they get out in transition they're pretty much impossible to stop jaylen wilson got going in the second half and looked like that National Player of the Year candidate,

which always makes it tough when an opposing team has one of those go-to guys. Grady Dick got going a little bit, though the efficiency wasn't there. DeJuan Harris became aggressive. I saw Kevin Flaherty from 24-7 Sports tweet it out because they've talked about it on the broadcast that I think this year ku is i think at the time they're saying 11 and 0 so that would make them 12 and 0 now when dewan harris scores double digits this season but kevin flaherty put out when dewan harris scores more than three

points so four points or more ku is undefeated in in like his career at cancer maybe it's like 20 and one i don't know it's some ridiculous stat go Go look at Kevin's Twitter page at K Flaherty 24 seven. And just unbelievable when he is aggressive, how much it changes things for you. You saw that in the second half, you saw the defense pickup. You saw the intensity, the turnover creation pickup for Kansas.

And when they do those things, you saw the defensive rebounding pickup, which is going to lead you to having more transition opportunities. So we saw them at their best in the second half. And for Baylor, we saw them at their worst in the second half. Kansas started locking in on defensive end. Baylor wasn't hitting as many of the tough shots that they were hitting in the first half. And then the problem for Baylor is that even though they do have the best offense in the country, they came into that game 10th in the Big 12 of 10 teams in conference-only games in defensive efficiency

so you knew that even though they were up 13 and a half there's a chance that their defense could let them down and Kansas could get rolling and that's what happened in that second half and when Baylor wasn't able to rely as much on making the tough shots they weren't able to win in other ways because Kansas was getting those defensive rebounds they're playing good defense and Baylor wasn't able to make Kansas uncomfortable and make those stops or make it more of a grind for Kansas to get back in the game. It just happened so fast because they couldn't get a stop.

So you saw really the pluses and minuses of both teams in that game. In the end, Kansas' pluses, I guess, were more beneficial or maybe for a longer span of the game. Unbelievable to be down 12 at half and to win by 16. That is just absolutely remarkable. First half, ultimately ugly. Second half, unstoppable. Just an absolute avalanche.

It's pretty amazing. If you just take the first basically nine minutes and 40 seconds of that second half, but I'll just call it to the 10-minute mark to make it round, KU outscored Baylor by 25 points from the first 10 minutes of the first half. And if you extrapolate it out, how well they played in that 10 minutes for a full game of 40 minutes, which I know that's not reasonable and not possible. Like there's a reason runs happen and it takes up so much energy, but realistic, like if, if you did accomplish that, if you did have that insane game where you were able to sustain that pace,

which again would be impossible, you would have beat them 136 to 36 against a top 10 team. That is absolutely remarkable to show you how good that run was for Kansas. But one of the things that really stuck out to me in this game, something we talked about coming in, you had to be much better with the possession game. So in the first time you played Baylor they had 17 offensive rebounds and you were I think like minus six in the turnover battle minus five in the turnover battle you had 15 of them which was one of your high marks of the season overall Baylor ended up if you just view like getting turnovers and getting offensive rebounds as basically extra possessions so to speak uh Baylor was like plus 15 in those two categories in the first game in this game you

only had four turnovers to Baylor's 11 you had eight offensive rebounds to Baylor's 10 and that's the number one team in the conference in offensive rebound rate so you would definitely take a minus two there but that basically means you were a plus five in the possession game after being a minus 15 the first time you played them don't discount how important the hustle the effort the physicality were for Kansas and winning this game as well and you know that the win was important obviously it was a top 10 showdown college game day was there two teams tied for first in the big 12 but let's just detail out all the reasons why it was so important for KU here first of all like I said you were tied first in the big 12 so now you you dispel somebody away, you're a game up. Texas beat Oklahoma in

overtime, so now you stay tied for first as opposed to moving back down a game. Obviously, you want to win the Big 12. It's fun. It's a trophy. It's good for your resume. It's been kind of a rite of passage almost for Kansas that you want to keep up that tradition. And it's actually something else I was thinking about for this. It's not just that you want to win the Big 12 this year. You want to try everything in your power to get the one seed. Because when you look at the Big 12 standings, right now TCU would be the seven seed. And I don't know if that'll hold because they're healthy now,

and maybe they'll end up working to like the five or the six seed. But there's a huge difference between in the Big 12 tournament being the one seed getting to play West Virginia or Texas Tech versus being the two seed and having to play TCU in the first round. So very important from that standpoint. You're at TCU now on Monday. You still have to play at Texas. So if you lose to Baylor in that game Saturday,

you might have had to win out because the path for Baylor to get to 13 wins at that point, if they were to one in Allen Fieldhouse would have been very real. And then at that point you would have had to win out for Kansas. At the very least, it would have completely cut your margin for error. Now your margin for error, you can probably lose one of those two games at TCR Texas. Maybe you could lose both. I kind of lean toward maybe not, but realistically, you just, you raised your margin for error at least a little bit, and you hope you don't give it back in Fort Worth on Monday night.

It's also another top-notch win for your resume, which they continue to add to their quad one win lead over everyone. I thought that was going to be enough for them to be like the second or third one seed when the bracket release came out over the weekend, but unfortunately, they were still the fourth one seed. So clearly, there's still going to be enough for them to be like the second or third one seed when the bracket release came out over the weekend. But unfortunately, they were still the fourth one seed. So clearly there's still work to be done because right now they wouldn't be a one seed that gets them the Midwest. That would be Houston.

So they still need to rack up more quad on wins and go on a roll here if they want to maybe jump Purdue, if they want to maybe jump Houston so they can have a better shot at getting the Midwest and playing in Kansas City. And some people would say, well, do we really care if they're in Kansas City or not? We saw how that went in 2017. I would just say this. I think more often than not, you'd like to have that great crowd attendance in a game. And just because a weird game happened against Oregon doesn't mean that every game is going to go like that. That said, it also is an example.

Okay, you can win on the road or at home. Sometimes the underdog mentality helps. So does it really matter that much? No, probably not. But I'd prefer it to be in Kansas City. It would be nice to just drive down the road and go see Kansas in a Sweet 16 or Elite 8. And then the last thing, why it's important, you didn't get swept by Baylor. You have the bragging rights, the pride portion of winning, which that's always important as well.

We're going to talk about our goats of the game. But first, this episode will be blocked on to you by LinkedIn Jobs. As a small business owner or a hiring manager, you know that success in 2023 all depends on the team members you surround yourself with. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. With LinkedIn Jobs, you can hire qualified candidates more efficiently by matching open roles with people who have the skills, values, and experiences to help you achieve your goals. I know it's super easy for me. I have the LinkedIn app on my phone. I'll get notifications.

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to post your job for free terms and conditions apply the game start with our good goats here then we'll get to uh we have a couple limbo ones and then we'll get to the bad goats um good goats uh the first 10 minutes of that second half that whole second half was really good in general but it was especially those first 10 minutes you went from down 13 at the break to being up 10 at the 10 minute mark remaining and in the first 10 minutes of that second half you outscored them 34 to 9 i already talked about how the pace of that would equal out to be 136 to 36 for a full game unbelievable stretch for ku just doing a little bit of everything playing good defense getting to the free throw line hitting a couple threes DeJuan Harris being aggressive hitting a couple threes there and also hitting kind of that runner shot Jalen Wilson getting

going again everybody kind of chipped in stepped up and that first 10 minutes really set the tone for the second half and then you're kind of able to just, I don't know, sort of coast a little bit from there. DeJuan Harris gets a good goat here. 14 points. He was six of eight from the floor. He had a couple of big threes. He also had nine assists. Let's just take it from Bill Self.

You know, if you're asking for a player of the game, well, how about the head coach? Here's what he said after the game. Those threes he made in the second half is who he is. And then nine assists, one turnover. His defense was unbelievable. He was the player of the game. Okay. Bill Self says he's the player of the game he's the player of the game uh but yeah I I think I probably agree with that I mean his aggressiveness in the second half was

so critical and again you continue to see the difference when he's aggressive versus when he's not versus how much it opens up the offense and when he's willing to take some of those three point shots but also his ability to keep the ball on a string and have the nine assists to just one turnover again Kansas as a team had just four turnovers huge reason why is DeJuan Harris that's a really good number there he he was in control of the game he was in command and I thought defensively he did a really good job I know in the first half Kansas struggled defensively I don't know how much of it was DeJuan necessarily and even then in the first half like they were hitting some pretty crazy shots like the kiante george deep three where he gets fouled or the one where it hits off the rim a

couple times and then it falls in like there were a couple shots that were going in where i was like all right whereas ku was like missing like jaylen wilson had the wide open layup that he missed and that was kind of like well what's going on here like this is just kind of one of those weird instances um but dewan was was key, especially in the second half, with getting the defense going. But again, just four turnovers for Kansas, and DeJuan probably the biggest reason why. KJ Adams gets a good goat.

17 points. He was 5 of 6 from the floor. He was really impressive. Had a couple awesome dunks for Kansas, and just played with a lot of confidence. He went 1 for 4, 1 for five in the first game against Baylor. He only had four points. He was pretty nonexistent, but you got the complete opposite this game.

He had four rebounds. He also had three assists, a couple of big assists for you. He continues to be kind of a good passer from that role. He was a nice force for you getting inside and made some really big plays, especially in the first half. KJ Adams was kind of your best player in the first half on the offensive side of the ball. And if he doesn't have some of the drives or moves that he had in the first half,

maybe instead of being down 13 at the break, you're down 17 or 18. And the way they played in the second half, you're like, well, we just would have won anyway. But I don't know, Maybe it changes the psyche. Maybe it changes the mentality where it's like, you know, 18 is a much bigger hole than 13 is. So I don't know. But either way, KJ was really good.

He gets a good goat of the game. Also, Jalen Wilson, the way he started, I did not expect to end up putting him here, but I ended up looking at the stats at the end of the game. He had 21 points on 16 shots. He took like a tough mid-range shot with like 50 seconds to go with the game in doubt that was kind of like a shot clock's winding down like i just gotta hoist something up so realistically it was like 21 points on 15 shots which it's not

great efficiency for jaylen that he shot uh against baylor but it's not bad efficiency either especially when you take out the first portion of the game where he started so poorly he got on a a tear in the second half, and I looked up like at one point he hits a bucket in the second half. It was like 15 points, 10 rebounds. I was like, what? He just kind of snuck up to that, but the biggest reason why Jalen is on here isn't as much because of the scoring, even though he did have a good scoring game in the end with 21 points. It's the 13 rebounds. So going back to what we said with Baylor, they had 17 offensive rebounds in the first meeting with Kansas. You knew that Kansas was going to have to do a better job on the defensive glass in this game. So what was going to be the biggest area or who was going to be a important player to that? Well, Kevin McCuller sprained his ankle last game. He was playing

through it. He wasn't going to be as good of a rebounder as the first Baylor meeting when he had 12 rebounds. Jalen Wilson has been your best defensive rebounder this season. So you needed him to step up and get those big rebounds to keep Baylor off the offensive glass consistently, and you did. He had 13 rebounds. That's the biggest reason why he gets a good goat here. But also his second half offensively was very good, kind of helping KU push along.

We're going to get on to our Limbo 1es Bad Goats in just a second, but first this episode of Locked on J brought to you by Built Bar. Are you looking for a delicious treat but don't want all the fat and calories? Then you've got to try a Built Bar. We just got through the holiday season and we just got through Super Bowl season and now you're probably trying to eat healthier

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You can thank me later with Bilt Bar. Finishing up with our other goats. These are the Limbo goats, which I wasn't totally sure what to do with necessarily. The bench for me was in limbo. I really liked Ernest Uday and Bobby Pettiford's minutes. I thought both of them were very good. But also, kind of smaller sample size, I'm not going to put Ernest Uday on good goats for five points.

I'm not going to put Bobby Pettiford on good goats for five points. Both of them played well, though. It was nice to see Bobby hit a corner three. It was nice to see Bobby attacking and going for that one layup. Ernest continues to play well as your backup big and give you a solid however long he's going to play that specific game, seven to 14 minutes in a specific game, which continues to be good. But also, you got really nothing from Joe Yasufu in that game.

You didn't see MJ Rice. So overall, I think the bench was a positive i i don't think there's any way i would have put the bench in the bad goats like i thought overall the bench was a positive it's much closer to being a good goat but i don't think i'd go all the way to good goat like it wasn't you know this huge step up game necessarily either but they did more than enough for you to take down baylor uh bad goats the final 10-ish minutes of the first half it wasn't really the full first half I mean it was you know Baylor was up I think 20 to 17 23 to 17 kind of around the 10 minute mark until you were down but then things really got out of hand Keontae George got going for Baylor it was just those three guards with

George Flagler and Cryer who were just killing you until the Jalen bridges late shot. Those last 10 minutes of the first half were ugly. Those looked like the whole first half when you played TCU last time, but you were able to overcome it. But yeah, certainly you don't want to keep having 10 minutes stretches like that. The only other bad goat that I have here is Scott drew Scott drew man. So he goes into the halftime interview with Holly Rowe and he's like complaining

about the foul discrepancy and and some of the stuff there and it's like dude you're up 13 points and so if he's gonna if he's gonna bring it out on his own accord and bring it up to the ESPN interview you know for sure he's talking to his team about it and it's like you gotta realize you're up 13 points here and you know beyond the fact that complaining about foul discrepancy, when of the 31 shots you took, five of them were inside. How many free throws are you going to take when half your shots are three pointers, bud? But beyond that, it's the idea that you're focusing on the wrong things, man.

If you want to complain to the refs when you're on the court and you're next to the ref and you're trying to get calls your way, go for it. That's what college basketball coaches do. You're trying complain to the refs when you're on the court and you're next to the ref and you're trying to get calls your way go for it that's what college basketball coaches do you're trying to persuade the refs but to do it there and to kind of have that be the thing with your team it just gets you focused on the wrong things you start thinking about the officials too much just play the damn game just play the game man scott drew came out cross very very whiny there and i'll just say this like i think scott drew a nice guy. I also have heard from other people that he's one of the more, I don't know. He, he, he will negatively recruit a program, maybe more, if not as much than any coach in the conference.

So little bit of kind of the two-faced nature there, but I do think he's overall a nice guy. Um, but you know, then he said about Jalen Wilson after the game, he's a great player. The goal would be take away his drive right and make it a block charge call. You get half, he gets half. That didn't happen. Again, complaining about that they didn't get enough charges on Jalen Wilson, which, number one, awesome defensive scheme there, man.

Let's just keep flopping and hope it works. Number two, I don't remember any Jalen Wilson plays where he drove and ran into a possible blocker charge. Seriously. In fact, there were a couple plays where Baylor it looked like they flopped and they didn't call the flop call anymore which to be clear I don't I don't know I don't need the flop call honestly but if we're gonna call it this year then probably could have been a couple so uh Scott Drew man stop whining all right that's gonna do it for this episode of Locked J. I'll be back tomorrow for the KUTCU preview. You can subscribe to us

wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can hit me up on Twitter at DJohnsonRadio. See you tomorrow. Later.