Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - SLOW START: Pressure to Land Key Targets as Transfer Portal Drying Up for Kansas Jayhawks Basketball

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Kansas Jayhawks navigate a tense transfer portal period as options at guard and center dwindle. Leroy Blyden’s visit sparks hope, but with Terrence Hill committing to Tennessee and big men like Anton Bonke and Moustapha Chiam weighing other offers, can Bill Self’s squad land the impact players they need in time? The slow pace raises concerns, especially with KU holding just one of 52 Big 12 transfer commits, making every upcoming decision crucial for their 2026-2027 roster. Derek Johnson breaks down Corbin Allen’s departure and what it means for Kansas Basketball’s depth chart, while analyzing the challenges of recruiting backups in today’s NIL landscape. The episode also covers the latest buzz on Vyctorius Miller, updates from the diamond as KU baseball notches another key series win over Oklahoma State, and KU softball rebounds from a tough week. How will the Jayhawks’ offseason decisions shape their NCAA Tournament future? Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get two-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL 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) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Another slowish weekend for KU basketball in the transfer portal of recruiting front. Seems like things are happening behind closed doors. Also, Corbyn Allen is no longer a Jayhawk. We'll get to it all. You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. How's it going? Derek Johnson here for another episode of the show.

And we're going to be breaking down on today's episode, KU Baseball, staying hot. We'll get to Corbyn Allen departing. some of the latest portal news of current or former targets for KU basketball on the portal. And we'll start right here with what seems like another slow weekend for KU basketball on the Transful Portal front. It does seem like maybe a little bit more happening behind the scenes than you'd think. But even then, it was like the results are not happening as quick as many thought was going to be the case.

Now, over the weekend, it was a Leroy-Blyden visit. Blighton, a really dynamic and excellent shooter, a guard from Toledo, one that I would love for KU to land and one that, you know, I would have high helps for if he does end up being in Lawrence. Now, um, as of right now when I'm recording the show, he has not committed or anything, but, uh, the visit went over the weekend, um, you know, usually visits go pretty well and everything. And again, I think he has the same agent as I think it was Keanu does. And so those seem to be kind of good things for KU, but, um, I guess you never entirely know what's going to happen at the end of the visit, right? And it would be one where if KU does not land the commitment of

Liden after Terrence Hill got away and ends up taking the offer at Tennessee, you're starting to run out of some of those options for yourselves at the guard position. And things get a little bit more worrisome there, right? Beyond that, we just saw, you know, visit for KU Anton Bonk come through and he gets away to a visit to Michigan State and East Lansing. I don't know what's going to happen there. It doesn't, you know, haven't seen anything in terms of commitment there. You have that one. Then you're looking at the center position further with Bonk, and you have Mustafa Chom, which according to John Rothstein, he mentioned the following players that or the following teams

are giving him interest. St. John's, Yukon, Gonzaga, Arkansas, Duke, Kansas, Michigan State, Texas, A&M, Tennessee, and UCF. Visited St. John. Sounds like he's going to be visiting Michigan on Monday, which, you know, we'll see if they wrap that one up. There are also some of the questions with Chom about how much you have to pay his handler to basically go away if he's not going to be an assistant and that is a very pricey thing you have to factor in how much just charm you know love the sport of basketball and stuff like those are questions

that are common coming up so um you know you're you're kicking tires you're getting certain answers and then you're losing out on other answers and it just kind of feels like this this spinning wheel that goes on and on and so we're now both in the situation of okay where does k u pivot if they can't get Roy Blyden. And ideally the answer for KU is they don't have to, right? Victoria's Miller sounds like he's going to be visiting for KU today and we're going to do a deep dive on Miller like that, somebody who could come in and give you a little bit of pop the guard position certainly. But what are you going to do at the center position too? Like that's kind of another big question here too, right? If Bonk got away and that's not happening

and if Chom is now going to Michigan and all these other centers have committed other schools, what do you go with? Well, enter the news of Christian Reeves visiting for KU. And to me, Reeves and Bonk are kind of very similar, right? I think Bonk has, you know, he has the ability to shoot the three a little bit. I think Bonk probably a little bit more mobile than Reeves. I think Reeves is probably a little better of a pillar down low. And I think with Reeves, you have a better idea of how it translates up a little bit more than bong but both are going to be question marks about how they do translate up at the same point in time and so we'll see what happens with reeves as well but k u continues to go down this line of like okay what are they going to do at center what are they going to do at center what are they going to do at center you know and then um beyond all that we hear some news from the portal report which is a um a social media you know, whatever aggregation sort of site or sometimes they have their own reports and stuff.

And they send out a tweet of Dantrez Williams. They're being interest from KU on his end of things. And that would be more of your kind of backup standpoint. We've heard several different guards that have popped up from them in major level that KU has shown interest in. How much interest are we truly talking about here? Is that to come in and be a backup? And they're just going to go somewhere else to be a starter at a smaller school. Like who knows exactly?

But it does feel like things are much slower. this offseason. I do wonder, like, is that intentional? You know, is KU at a point where they feel like they have, because, okay, I'm trying to think about it. Two years ago, did they feel like they jumped the gun and went too fast with the Rylan Griffin and the AJ store stuff? And then you go back to last year, right? I don't remember when on the calendar Trey White picked Kansas. Melvin Council came a little bit later in the game, you know? I don't know. that was a couple weeks, maybe a month into the portal being open by the time they landed council and that one, you know, worked out well for Kansas.

Again, the Trey White one worked out for Kansas and I don't remember exactly in the calendar, but I know it wasn't like right off the bat. The quickest one, I want to say the first one for KU in the portal season last year was Jaden Dawson. And that's the one that didn't work out for Kansas. So is there an element for KU saying, hey, we're going to miss out on some of the targets, but we feel like we can, A, get a better deal money wise and B, we really want to do our due diligence on these guys.

We really want to get up all the information we can on them to make sure we avoid that Dawson-Timberlake type situation. I don't know. Maybe it is intentional or is it not intentional and they're having trouble, you know, identifying the right players or is it they're having trouble getting them to get over the line and commit? Like there's a lot of things that we don't have the answer to. But I think at the end of the day, if you fast forward a moment,

month and the roster is to your liking, you know, maybe maybe we revisit and go, okay, it seems like this, this or that. I will say in general, like the, the lack of commits, am I worried by it, right? I was getting a little worried. They got the DAs commit that kind of got me, backed me away from the ledge, so to speak, just to get somebody on board and get the momentum going. And so I'm not, I'm not to the point of worried right now, but I will say this, whether it is, again, the lack of ability to get some of these quick closeouts,

or I don't know, the fading interest of players we've seen connected with KU, it's at least like a tad worrisome, right? I mean, it could all go to plan and they could wind up with a roster and get all the top guys that they kind of want to. Who knows? But here's the little bit of worry for me. It's just the idea that they have to be so efficient at this point. With the number of players that have gone off the board,

the number of potential targets that have gone off the board, they can still get a lot of their guys, but you better land them because now you're at, you're basically like KU was batting in, I don't know what inning we're in, bottom of the sixth inning, bottom of the seventh inning,

you're down a couple of runs, you know, you've still got some outs to work with, but you are running out of time a little bit here. And so, you know, a strikeout in the second inning isn't as big of a deal.

If you strike out now, it's going to come under the microscope a little bit more because your outs, your other options are running a little bit lower. So like, you know, ideally they get blight in and they get Stokes and they figure out what they're going to do at the center position and they figure out the bench, right? What if they don't land even one or two of those? What if they don't get Stokes? What does

this roster look like? What if they don't get blighton? What does this roster look like? And you know, by the time you're listening to this, maybe they have a commit from one of those guys and it looks silly. But you get what I'm saying here. Like they've just gotten to a point where because we are later in the game, you better not miss. And if they don't miss, it doesn't matter. It's a moot point. But that's, that's the, the sort of slight worry because as I'm recording right now, there have been 52 transfer portal commits in the big 12th. Kansas only has one of the 52. There have been 217 power 5 commits. I'm counting the power 4 plus the big east. 217 power 5 commits. Cannes only has one of those two 17. So yeah, I'm not overly worried,

but like, is it, is at least a tad worrisome that you have now set yourself up that you have to nail this next, whatever it is, couple weeks or however long this takes or these next whatever targets you have, right? And you can point to other big schools to, to be fair, right, that only have one or two commits that are big schools or schools that are supposed to be good to basketball. It does feel like the difference to me in a lot of those, you know, maybe this isn't the entire case, but I feel like the majority of the cases, it's a lot of those schools have a lot of, maybe not a lot of, but at least have like one or two or three returning players who are in the rotation or who are potential starters.

Kansas doesn't have the returning, you know, luxury thing, right? And then you have the talent drying up thing that I've mentioned, like Field of 68 only has 12 of their top 50 left, 24-7 of their top 50 only has 11 left. Evan Mia Cowell only has 14 of his top 50, on three only has 13 of his top 50. And of course, like, you know, some of those rankings aren't going to bear themselves out. We saw like Trey White and Melvin Council,

I don't think we're ranked in the top 50s. And they ended up being top 50 transfer additions. Right. So I don't know. The transfer rankings are probably even less accurate than the high school rating, certainly. But, you know, even then if you're talking about it, and that's to 50, right? What if we went to 100?

I don't know. But even then, some of those numbers are probably than you think because a couple might be testing the NBA draft process. Several have no links to KU. Several are team with other schools as the leader. So you are running out of options, right? And that's the scary part here. You have opportunities to make this work.

But if you just miss one, does the entire domino train track stop before you get the whole thing knocked over? All right, let's get on to some of the latest other portal news. Corbin Allen, no longer, Jayhawk as well. And we'll finish up a little KU football, KU baseball, KU softball. This is locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode is brought to you by Indeed, workplace chaos, deadline stacking up, inbox overflowing, and the one position you have to fill is still sitting open. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs,

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jobs and listeners of the show get a $75-sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast just go to indeed.com slash podcast right now support locked on jhawks by saying you heard about it here indeed dot com slash podcast terms and conditions apply need to hire this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs thanks you for joining us here on locked on jhawks and don't forget you can join the everyday or club as well we can get the show ad free it's it locked on jahawks dot supercast dot com locked on jhawks. supergast.com. So Corbyn Allen is transferring away from KU. Now, this one, I like, it doesn't have an impact on how we view the rotation or anything.

I don't mean to say that to sound crass. Like I wish Corbin Allen well at his next stop, you know, go to a smaller school, go ball out. Like, do your thing, man. And, you know, I don't know where that'll be. I've seen some rumors about UMKC. Obviously, he's a Kansas City kid. Like, that'd be great. Like, go do it. You know, Mark Turgeon coach in there. That'd be cool, right? But, you know, at the same point in time, he wasn't projected to be in the rotation. So it doesn't have a huge rotation impact. The thing I'm surprised about this is more so from the standpoint of like, I don't know, I was under the understanding.

I think everybody was. I don't know. I guess things change over a year that like him coming in was under the guise of, hey, I'm going to try to develop. I'm going to work hard in practice. We'll see where it leads me. You know, I'll redshirt this first year and then we'll see where it leads me in the road of development. none of those things didn't come true.

This wasn't a situation of like, you brought in Corbin Allen and told him, hey, you're going to start and then he ended up redshirting. And he's like, I felt like there weren't promises met. I was like, you came in and this was the expectation. The expectations were met.

So I don't know what changed there. Maybe in his mind, he just, you know, you just kind of have a change of heart. You sit on the bench and you redshirt a full year after your state champion and one of the best players in your state. And you go,

yeah, I'd rather go to a smaller school and play. And I wouldn't fault him for doing that. So that's what kind of ends up there. I think what it more so means is they'll just be looking for, you know, more of these developmental pieces or, I don't know, developmental like roster fillers, guys who can practice with them and kind of be at the end of the bench that are cheaper additions for KU, that they can fill the roster, whatever it ends up being 10 through 15 or 11 through 15 or 12 through 14,

however many guys deep they go. It just creates one extra one you have to add, but it's not one that should, you know, create too much money for KU there. So wish Gorbin Allen the best and we'll see where he winds up. But other portal news that is, I guess, in some way tied or connected to KU. I mentioned that Terrence Hill argued for KU, who they brought on for a visit,

ended up committing to Tennessee, and that just means you have one less potential option if you're looking for the guard position or whatever. Now, if you can land Blyden and Miller, then it doesn't matter that you didn't land Hill. Well, I mean, I guess they still could because I think Hill is really, really good, but just in terms of like the numbers of what you're looking for, right?

Amari Evans, who's a player who sounded like got connected with KU very early in the border, process but that seemed to dissipate pretty early on kind of a defensive stopper a wing from Tennessee who's a tough player looking for the shot to come around would have kind of been a probably I don't know more advanced version of Trent Perry for KU to bring in he ends up actually going to Texas which Texas man has killed the portal with Sean Miller so they'll be a really good really interesting team this year I guess good thing they're no longer in the big 12 now Corey Cotton who's somebody who popped up with some early, you know, that was one of the tweets who was like received interest from these schools,

which again, those tweets, you don't actually know like what that means or if they're lying because the school's not going to like quote tweet and go, no, this didn't happen. That's just like bad PR for them. But Corey Cotton anyway, he was one that I actually would have been like game with KU bringing on as long as it was to be, you know, a bench guard. Now, maybe from his standpoint, because he ends up going to DePaul, he's probably thinking, I'd rather go have a chance to start at DePaul than come off the bench in Kansas. And that's where I do have questions here. I don't know this for sure. This is just me spitballing because I think of like Duke for instance. Duke these past couple years had a blanking on the kid's name. Malik, is it Brown. Malik Brown, the center who transferred from Syracuse,

like starter at Syracuse. He's been coming off the bench for two straight years at Duke. And I don't know if he's exhausted his eligibility at this point or not. But like point being, he stayed on the bench at Duke to impact winning. And because what I always heard was that he was getting, I guess a boost in payment to be coming off the bench. Does that make sense? Like, Brown was in a situation where, okay, let's say, just thrown out a random number just to say, let's say Brown, you know, could have made a million dollars to start at another school, and he had the option to be a backup at Duke for $1.3 million. And he's going, yeah, I mean, I'd like the extra money, but I'd rather start somewhere for the extra 300K. And Duke just oversells it

and goes, it will give you $2 million to come off the bench. And now he's viewing 1 million to start or 2 to come off the bench. And he's going to take the two at that point. I wonder if KU is not doing that. I wonder if KU is more so viewing it as, well, you're coming off the bench so you make less money, as opposed to, hey, we're going to pay you extra so you come off the bench for us because we want to beef out our bench and we want to make you happy to come here and be in that

potential situation. I don't know if KU is doing that. I'm wondering if they're not. And I think that would be, I don't know, it's, you have, limited money resources so there's only so much you can do potentially you might not be able to afford it but I don't know that that's just one thing that kind of caught my

but anyway with Cotton he going to DePaul very analytic darling like I'm talking elite defensive rebound rate for combo guards elite block rate for guards I had a good free throw attempt rate just some of like really good metrics

there he goes with Adda Popula who was like a three point marksman from Tulsa who KU had a bit of brief interest in. And the thing that stinks for KU is I'm sure both of those guys, Cotton and Papula, were sold on the idea that you can compete to be a starter. At the end of the day, one of those probably is going to be coming off the bench. And you're sitting there if you're Kansas going, well, that stinks because just the hope

for them of one of them being the starter, you know, led to them possibly both going there as opposed to one of them, if one of them knew they were going to be coming off the bench and ball, they would have rather just come off the bench here, you know, so that kind of stinks there. And then here's the last one. My sweet prince, Deshaun Good, got away from Kansas out of the visit. They end up getting, you know, Keanu Dawes, which I think Daw's the better player than good. I would have still loved for Kansas to land Deshaun Good.

But it seemed like for that to happen, it would have been good accepting to be able to come off the bench, which I understood because it seems like he's going to go to Miami and start now. So Miami's been throwing bags around. They've had a good portal season two. Jay Lucas doing a good job there over at Miami. Also, a little bit of brief news from, I guess the recruiting game, Seon Ceda, who is a international center. He, been with Barcelona. He's like a seven footer.

Apparently, he, I didn't understand the wording of this tweet. This came from Lion Trees, who is like the inverse name of Tiger Woods, basically. And he's basically, I don't know, it's like he's trying to be another Trilly Donovan. I don't know the validity of any of this stuff. But apparently, again, okay, this was from last summer. He visited Kansas among five other schools. So I don't know, maybe there will be some sort of interest with Kansas there. If you're looking for a center, you know, Barcelona is one of the best European clubs that's out there.

Like that maybe makes some sense. And then Tyron Stokes competed at the Jordan Classic and played really, really well, nearly had a triple double. And we'll see if he's any closer to committing now. All right. Let's get you some KU football, KU baseball keeps rolling, KU softball. is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks you for joining us here on L.O.J and a little KU football news. Brandon Shelby met with the media recently for KU football.

And just one thing I wanted to bring up here that he really praised Taylor Davis and kind of leading KU. They have this like point system, which is based on past breakups, limiting explosive, tackle for loss, stuff like that. And he's leading KU for the DB. So I think that's a really good sign about him improving because, you know, one thing we've talked a lot about in the off season so far is that could Davis move back to his more natural position as opposed to kind of playing out a position last year,

help him get back to the trajectory. It felt like he was on as a young player who was going to excel and be a big piece for KU. And I think that gives me hope that that can happen. I think it also with the competition KU brought in via the portal at the safety room, KU needs to improve on their DB room this year from last year. You're putting bigger challenges in front of these guys to where if he wins the job, it's a tougher job to win than last year, and that would also be a good sign for KU. So I at least wanted to bring that up.

KU baseball keeps rolling over the weekend. They actually lost their first game of the series at Oklahoma State, 13 to 2. And boy, did they respond, 13 to 3 victory. These are on the road and Stillwater. Oklahoma State's 24 and 16. So this is a solid team, top 50 in the RPI. They went 13 to 3. And then they win 9 to 6 on Sunday. They hit a grand slam that helped kind of lead the way. The Friday game was crazy because you get Dom vaguely. who went for 15 strikeouts in the game. And now over his last two starts, vaguely has 25 strikeouts in 14 innings with a 145 batting average against.

He has been incredible lately for Kansas, and they're going to need them to keep rolling and kind of push them through the postseason. But another series win, it keeps them atop the Big 12, and now they're going to be back home on Tuesday against that same top 25 Nebraska team where it might be a little bit of bad blood there. They also won at Nebraska. So a big opportunity there. They're top 15 in the RPI.

Then they're at Kansas State, Friday, Saturday, Sunday at Wichita State, and then their next home Big 12 series. Friday, May 1st through 3rd, they'll be hosting Arizona. Only two more home Big 12 series. Obviously, everybody hoping that they can win enough that they get a host a little bit in the NCAA tournament as well. But, yeah, another good weekend for KU baseball. Meanwhile, for KU softball, they are now sitting as a 30-win team on the season.

and 30 wins to just 15 losses. They did only win one of three games at UCF. They also lost earlier in the week against Missouri. So not the best week for KU softball going just one and three. Good news is they've built up kind of a nest egg that, you know, you don't want them to limp to the finish line, but they are 30 and 15, 11 and 7. Just find a way to grid out some more wins.

And you'd think they should at least be an NCAA tournament team. But, you know, if they can kind of get back on their right way, then maybe they can be a dangerous one at that, one that we saw went in some big games earlier just weeks ago. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. We'll be back at you with a deep dive on Victorious Miller. Any breaking news to make sure you're subscribe to the show right here on LOJ.