Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - RED FLAG: Kansas Jayhawks Portal TROUBLE Mounts - Can Bill Self Salvage the Offseason?

Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm officially concerned about this offseason and transfer portal for KU. 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 with another episode of Locked on Jayhawks. And on today's episode of the show, we'll get to some of the latest transfer portal news. We'll also get to some KU Women's Basketball commitment news. They got a transfer portal edition who's averaging 15 points per game. If only we could have that conversation with the men's side as well. But we'll get into some of the latest portal visits and why right now I'm maybe a little more pessimistic on things than I have been all off season long.

Starting point is 00:00:47 I'll start here. We'll see what happens with Keanu Dawes. That could still be about as big of addition as KU could ask for in the portals. If you land Dawes, it's still, you know, at least you're getting kind of a pillar for the roster and everything, right? If they don't land Keanu Dawes, I am going to be in panic mode. I'll kind of put it that way. But the fact we're even to this point to being this close is not good, right? And Dawes is visiting right now with Bonk, Anton Bonk, the center transfer from Charlotte.

Starting point is 00:01:20 And, you know, who knows what will kind of happen there? Apparently, Bonk is just going to be going everywhere. And who knows if this is a leverage play. But this was reported from Jeff Borzello that so he's supposed to be visiting Michigan State on Friday. He'll then visit Cincinnati, NC State, South Carolina, and Clemson. He's also considering Arkansas, TCU, USC, and Gonzaga. So that one is just kind of all over the board, and who knows exactly what is going to happen there. But you look at the, I mean, if we're just talking center position, like Sananda Frue, who was a pretty highly rated guy by certain metrics,

Starting point is 00:01:54 goes to Marquette. Aiden Sherrill makes it efficient or official with Indiana. Yukon gets Najee Hein, so I think it's going to be one of the more underrated editions of the portal. I have my top tier of available centers left, which is two guys, Jop and Chom, both big 12 guys, either of which I would like to see at KU, but doesn't seem like KU is actually kicking the tires on either guy. And so now it's like, okay, are you going to get bonk or not? Is he going to go to some of these other places? Then we look at the guard position for KU. And again, even if they land Dawes, I am starting to see kind of an issue with this staff that either feels one of a couple things, right? Either they're having trouble closing for whatever

Starting point is 00:02:31 reason. Maybe they don't have as much money as we thought, right? Could be one of those two. Or it feels like the staff is misguided. Could be that one. Or they're unprepared and we have been in point because like Jeff Goodman tweeted this out on Wednesday at 613 p.m. 33 of the top 50 players in the field of 68 portal rankings are now off the board. Now that's just one ranking system, but that's like a majority of the guys, right? I was looking at Evan Miyakawa's earlier and it was like 31 of the top 50 were off the board. So you're running out of options as well. And, you know, there's going to be good players who are outside the top 50,

Starting point is 00:03:05 even outside the top 100 who end up making top 50 lists if you're doing it in season. We know that. We know that there are diamonds in the rough. It's just in general, a lot of the big names are going. And right now, KU doesn't have a kind of big name to lean on. And again, maybe you can get that a little bit with Kiano Dawes. That would be a really good addition. But that's not also one you want to lean.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Like if KU goes into the season with Kiano Dawes being the best player on the team, that's a problem, right? and obviously you're hoping you land Tyrant Stokes and that can be the case but that's a story for you know another day with what's going to ever happen there but here's why I say that about the staff it just feels like um it feels like they're being reactive and not proactive to things and then there was kind of a rumor going around today about KU wanting more athletic dudes and that's why they let Terrence Hill and Deshaun Good get away which is just it could just be a rumor right it could just not be true let's just entertain that word.

Starting point is 00:03:59 to be true for a second. If you wanted to build a team off of like all athleticism, that's fine. It's your prerogative to do it, right? Find a find what you want to go for and go for it in the portal. I would push back a little from the standpoint that we haven't seen KU have enough shooting over recent years. And I would like to see some of that. And, you know, it feels like you're kind of going away from that. But at the very least, you have a plan and you're going to try to execute it. But then if that is your plan, again, I don't know, this could, who knows, but if that is or plan, why are you bringing these guys in for visits? Why are you not bringing in other players for visits? Because if you're looking at Hill and saying, oh, we think he's pretty good,

Starting point is 00:04:36 but he's not athletic enough, we think good is pretty good, but he's not athletic enough. Why are you even wasting your time? Why are you not looking for players that do fit the billing of what you're looking for? And now all of a sudden, because you're spending your time on somebody you're never going to get to begin with, that you're never going to go for, you've wasted your time. You've wasted your time. And now the people that you should have been visiting with that would have actually matched what you're looking for have committed to other players. This is just a very silly way of approaching things. Now, again, maybe that's not true and maybe that's not kind of the situation that's happening here.

Starting point is 00:05:06 Is it possible that KU is low-balling people? And low-balling could be one of two ways. It could be in role or money, right? Is it possible that the KU is, you know, not offering enough money that they haven't adjusted to the way the markets are moving, right? Typically, when people come on visits, they have come to a relative arrangement of what the NIL money would be. So that would make you think that maybe they're not low balling enough. But could they could it be their low balling in the role, right? They're telling some of these kids you're like like I think Hill would be a really good starter for KU. Is it possible? They're telling Hill, hey, you're going to come off the

Starting point is 00:05:43 bench and be a great six man for us. And he's like, but I'm getting offers to like start at these other powerful schools, you know? So I don't know if it's just like misevaluation, not having a good plan, not following that plan, not having a good understanding of how to use it. I don't know what is not not an inability to close maybe it's a combination of things but right now this is really bad for kU right we're in a situation where um i think i sent this out earlier that there was like 55 and i think now it's up to 56 or 57 of the power five schools have earned at least one commit which is still a good chunk that that haven't earned any commits um and there's some big schools that that haven't had to commit yet jeff goodman sent out a list of some of the schools

Starting point is 00:06:27 one of them Kentucky has since gotten a commit and everything. But a lot of those other schools that are on that list of like they haven't gotten a portal commit like Vanderbilt was on there. Okay, but Vanderbilt, Tyler Tanner is going to be like a preseason All-American if he doesn't go pro, right? They have a, they have a key foundation returning. It's like with Duke, they've got a really good high school recruiting class coming in and they could have multiple starters coming back with guys like, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:06:49 Dame Saur and Caleb Foster and potentially Patrick Gongba if he doesn't go pro. Like you look at the list of those teams. it's like, okay, they haven't brought in a portal edition, but they've got a lot of potential like returning starters, or at least a key starter to build on. KU doesn't have the potential returning starter to build on either. Like I'm excited, Colorsario is back to,

Starting point is 00:07:08 but what's the role there? Being your sixth man, seventh man, eighth man, somewhere in that range, right? Maybe if he breaks out, you know, he's your fifth starter. That's a different conversation. So, yes, I am very worried. And if they land Dawes, it will subside a little bit. And that'll be a good thing.

Starting point is 00:07:24 if they don't land Dawes, full-borne. But even if they do land Dawes, I'm looking at some of the available guards, and I'm just like, I mean, meanwhile, Terrence Brown visiting, we'll have a deep dive on him coming out on Thursday morning. I'm not the biggest Terrence Brown fan in the world, but it almost feels like right now,

Starting point is 00:07:39 like what other choice do you have? And that's a bad place to be. If you were in the portal, and we are now sitting there with Kansas only having potentially two or three returning players, haven't landed a transfer portal edition, and you're going, eh, I'm not in love with this guy,

Starting point is 00:07:52 but what other option do we have? that is a very, very bad situation to be in, right? This is just to me, like more proof of why they need a GM because the gym during the season is going to be working ahead of this stuff with the agents. And whether it's, you know, again, like are you low-balling things? Are they just bad relationships with Bill Self and the agents that they're working with, right? Is it just you're unprepared for the, I don't know, man. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:08:16 They need a GM. It's clear it's not going to happen. So like I'm yelling to a wall when I say, K, you need a GM. It's just not going to happen with Bill's self. And yeah, that's unfortunate. And then some other news that could have, you know, relation to KU. Robert Bloom's, who was a player who did a deep dive on, would really like him as a bench shooter, somebody who had sounded like there was some KU interest at the start of the offseason but never materialized.

Starting point is 00:08:38 He has since committed to Penn State. Cameron Taylor, who, again, if you were going to go into being an all athletic team, listen, I wasn't a big Cam Taylor fan, but if you wanted to be the most athletic team on the floor, you should have got Cam Taylor. And he ends up committing to Florida State. Zoom Diallo, who was a good guard. prospect and as a former teammate of Tyrant Stokes in high school has committed to Kentucky. So we'll see if that impacts Stokes in any way.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Louisville gets Carter Knox, which K.U. was never connected to Carter Knox. I would have kind of liked it if they did. I thought he would have made some sense. But just in general, like, holy cow, what Louisville and Xavier have done this postseason. And then the last one here, maybe this one is good news is that St. John's got Mo Diabate, uh, who plays the same position as the Sean Good, good left Kansas to go visit St. John's. But then again, it sounds like Kansas just doesn't really want.

Starting point is 00:09:24 not Deshawn good that much. So I don't know, man. This is not good. This is not good. Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. And like, this is not me saying like they're going to get players. They're going to get commands. I'm not, I'm not foolish enough to think that, oh, they're only going to have a seven man roster. No, they're going to fill out the roster. They're going to get players. My worry is they're going to get the wrong players or not good enough players because you're running out of resources and time. And clearly something has gone wrong to this point in time. All right, something went right for Brandon Schneider and KU Women's basketball. Let's get into a big time portal commit for the KU women's team with Mariah Noel next.

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Starting point is 00:11:14 Men's Basketball, but KU. Women's Basketball gets here having 15 points per game this past season. Mariah Noel is a 5-foot-11 guard, played for Xavier, this most recent season. She's originally local to the area, originally from Kansas City, went to Bonner Springs High School, and then she begins playing her collegiate career at Ole Miss, where she played single-digit minutes per game over 39 games in her first two collegiate seasons. She then leaves for Xavier last season, where she starts 28 games and played in 30 of them. Not a very good team with Xavier, but it gave her opportunity, gave her reps, and took advantage of it.

Starting point is 00:11:55 point nine points per game. She also had six point three rebounds per game. Good rebound numbers there. 2.4 assists per game and a steel per game shooting 37% from the floor, 32% from three and 76% at the foul line. But had some big games, nine games of 20 or more points. Her season high of 30 came against St. John's. Very much a boom or bust score efficiency wise. Like there's some games in there where she's going four of 19 or three of 16 or four of 17, but also some big outputs on high efficiency. And I think that was kind of a situation of, hey, you know, we're not a great team. We're just going to need you to take a lot of tough shots for us, right? Here's some of the metrics for the addition.

Starting point is 00:12:35 She was in the 53rd percentile on RIPM, 36th percentile on wind shares per 40, 67th percentile on PER, 61st percentile in wins above replacement player. But I think the most encouraging of the metrics is her on-off numbers. Again, wasn't on the best team in the world. And the way that she elevates. a bad team can be a good sign of translating up because Xavier was seven points per 100 possessions better when she was on the floor on offense and there were over five points per 100 better on defense. So her overall net rating on off net rating was plus 12.1. That was in the 83rd

Starting point is 00:13:14 percent on nationally. So, you know, she did have about as big of an impact as you could on a not great team. That I think bodes well to jumping up to Kansas. Kansas. And overall, some of her strengths include she's good at getting to the free throw line, right? That can be a skill. Excellent rebounding from the guard position. You look at her averaging over six rebounds per game as a 5-11 guard. You know, that's good height for a guard. But that's important because you look at Kansas and there were times this year where they weren't a good enough rebounding team. So she's going to help with that, right? She's also a solid passer. You know, Samaya Nichols, as long as she comes back for her senior season, she's going to be the one with the ball in her hands as the main guard for a majority of the time. So you don't necessarily need Noel to be the main ball handler. But it is nice that if she's a secondary ball handler, she can still pass the ball a little bit. She's also an average to above average three point shooter. The like 31 point whatever percent she shot from three,

Starting point is 00:14:11 almost 32 percent was, you know, basically above average nationally for the guard position. So you're at least getting an above average shooter there. And one that, you know, as we see players get better at shooting as they stay, who's to say that she doesn't get even better at it, especially if this offseason, she's going, hey, like at Xavier, I was asked to be the main score. Now going to Kansas, I'm going to play a little more off ball than I did at Xavier with Nichols and Jaliyah Davis. So I'm just going to work on a bunch of catch and shoot stuff and then you improve the

Starting point is 00:14:41 three-point shooting in a big way, right? Now, some of the weaknesses include she can be a bit turnover prone, though the idea that maybe Nichols would be handling the ball a lot. Maybe that goes down a little bit. Not the most efficient. again, only 37% from the field, not the best two point percentage. So, you know, not the most efficient there. Also a 99th percentile usage rate.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Like, how is she going to scale that into playing off of Nichols and Davis? Because last year she wasn't. Now, the good news is if she can scale that usage rate down, it probably helps the first two question marks, right? If you're not using the ball as much, you're not turning much. You're probably gaining some efficiency. So those things could be correlated that you get a positive. positive boost in some way here. Now, here's a fun stat that you're going to be like,

Starting point is 00:15:27 what the heck are you talking about? By adjusted porpo got to, you're like, what on earth are you talking about? It's a fun, silly name. It's basically Bart Torvik, which is basically like another Ken Palm type site, ranks teams, a bunch of cool stats and all the stuff, right? It's their all in one metric for player value, right? So it's basically like you see BPR, Evan Mia, Mia, Miazawa's rankings or, you know, I mentioned like RAPM. Some of these, wind shares, some of these stats that are like all-encompassing metrics. It's basically Bart Torvich, right? Delia Davis led KU in that metric with a plus 6.9,

Starting point is 00:16:02 Samaya Nichols was second with a plus 6.6. And then it was a steady drop-off for KU. They had Evans, Williams, and Meister all between 2.1 and 2.3 there. Then there's another drop-off to Keeley Parks at one, and then everybody's kind of below that from there, right? So by that metric at Xavier, Noel had a plus 2.5. And so that's not a huge jump from what you had from that trio of Evans, Williams, and Meister, but it is a jump from that, right?

Starting point is 00:16:27 And so you view it from that standpoint, you say, okay, Noel comes in and would be KU's third best player just by that one metric, right? But again, if you're looking at playing next to Nichols and Davis, who are going to be the primary focuses of the opposing defense, does that open her up a little bit more where she's going to have a more efficient season? And all of a sudden, that number jumps up a little bit, right? And then imagine, like, if Kansas is able to make another portal edition or, you know, like an incoming freshman, like a Brooklyn Ren or a Sydney Bryant, where to have a big season, where now you're talking about if she's all of a sudden, your fourth best player on the team, now you're really working with something. So when you look at how this affects the KU women's basketball roster now, I think you look at Noel as being a starter.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Noel is a senior with Nichols as a senior in the back court. I look at the front court and say Jaliyah Davis and Reagan Williams is your two forward starters as sophomore junior. And then the one big open spot to me is kind of the wing spot. Maybe it's Brooklyn Wren who's like a top 60 recruit coming in. Maybe she can man that down. And then you'd have a very big lineup three through five because Wren is kind of a three, four wing who can really play the four well. So you could steer into that. Do we see Sidney Bryant emerge and end up starting at the center position?

Starting point is 00:17:39 You know, that could be a possibility. but if you can add like a good wing, if you're Kansas, to be a starter, I would feel pretty good about the starting five as well as some of the bench depth, because then you're, you know, looking at some of those talented freshmen as being bench depth. There's not too much pressure, but they do have talent to kind of make something happen. So I think this was a good addition for Brandon Schneider and KU Women's Basketball. All right, let's get to some of the other latest news. This is Locked on Jayhawks.

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Starting point is 00:19:00 Just join at RocketMoney.com slash Lockdown. That is RocketMoney. That is RocketMoney. Slash Lockdown. Thanks you for joining us here on Lockdown, Jayhawks. We'll have a Terrence Brown deep dive episode coming at. you on Thursday morning as well. Some of the other latest news for KU, well, KU Baseball on Tuesday night, be Wichita State, 11th consecutive win for KU Baseball, who continues to roll. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:26 you might have seen D1 Baseball had KU as the 16th, the final team hosting right now. Obviously, there's there's so much baseball to be played left. It's like, you know, a month and a half left in the season. We still got a lot of games in the regular season. We got the Big 12 tournament. So, you know, far from that actually getting decided. But the fact that they have. work themselves into that conversation now to have a chance is so freaking cool man i i hope they can get it done i hope they can get to a point where they're hosting um you know in a regional the nc i i i think i think that'll be a true like home field environment uh with the way that the k u students and a lot of people have you know flocked to making that like a big thing in the dan fitzgerald

Starting point is 00:20:05 era also some other news k u volleyball is going to be hosting two matches this year at allan field House. If you remember last year, they hosted a game against Kansas State. That was a bad weekend. KU lost to K State and volleyball in Allen Fieldhouse on Friday. And then I think KU lost it. Was it K State again in football Saturday? Or maybe that was the Cincinnati game. Either way, I know it was not a good weekend. But now you have two games at Allen Fieldhouse, you know, work that out, get a couple of wins there, right? But I think it's a cool opportunity that Matt Olmer's trying to, you know, grow the game a little bit and get a lot of eyes on his team. I just, I envy at the idea of having like, could you imagine if you had a full Allen Fieldhouse for a volleyball game against like a big opponent? That'd be so, so cool, man.

Starting point is 00:20:48 So looking forward to those with getting two of them this year. So extra chance to be able to do that. So we found out on Marco Jackson was going to be going to Georgetown. We also found out today that Jamari McDowell has picked his new school. He'll be going to Wake Forest. I believe Wake Forest was a big school for him at a high school before Kansas swooped in and brought. him along. So him now going to the demon deacons, or we'll see if he can get a little bit more playing time and, uh, you know, do good things. I again, like you wish some of these guys the best.

Starting point is 00:21:15 Like with Jamari, um, you know, he gave everything he could to Kansas. It wasn't always enough, but from a skills perspective, but like from a hustle and effort perspective, um, you know, hats off to Jamari and wish him well over at Wake Forest. I let it over for this episode of the show. Again, check out our player deep dives. We did one. Um, I mean, we've done a bunch. We've done Anton Bonk this week. We've done Keanu Daws. We're going to have a Terrence Brown one coming up. We did a Terrence Hill one.

Starting point is 00:21:41 You can catch up on a lot of the players. KU is targeting or maybe that other schools have landed to this point. You want to scouting and port on maybe KU's playing one of them. Maybe it's somebody that KU's playing in the Big 12 or something. So you can find those unlocked on Jayhawks. Make sure to subscribe to the show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page. And we'll see you next time for another edition of the show right here with L.O.J.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - RED FLAG: Kansas Jayhawks Portal TROUBLE Mounts - Can Bill Self Salvage the Offseason?

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