Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Stay or Go: Kansas Jayhawks Await Decision From Kevin McCullar Amidst NBA Draft Combine

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Will Kevin McCullar return for one final season with the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team or go pro as he continues on with the NBA Draft combine? Where things are at, his NBA Draft stock/rankings, combine results, why it would make sense to go or stay, how it would impact KU and Bill Self's team either way, and final prediction on what McCullar will do.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!BirddogsToday's episode is brought to you by Birddogs. Go to birddogs.com/lockedoncollege and when you enter promo code, LOCKEDONCOLLEGE, they’ll throw in a free custom birddogs Yeti-style tumbler with every order.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. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, we dive into Kevin McCuller, who is in the midst of the NBA combine. Where are things at? Is there any chance he comes back? What would it mean to KU if that does happen? As we check in on the latest with Kevin McCuller. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. From 3 to 6 p.m. on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get any of your podcasts.

You can also find us, like us, subscribe to us on YouTube. On today's edition of Locked on Jayhawks, we're talking Kevin McCuller. Kevin McCuller is in the midst of the NBA Combine, going through the NBA draft testing process, but he still technically could come back for another year of school. What would that all mean for KU? What's the likelihood of that happening? All of that on today's edition of the show.

So let's start right here. Where are things at with Kevin McCuller? So McCuller entered the NBA draft process. Even though he has been in college for really four and a half years, he joined Texas tech and red shirted a year when he joined at the like kind of second semester and red shirted that year on the team that went to the national title game and lost. So if he comes back,

it would be his sixth year of school and because of the red shirt and then his COVID year be his last at that point but he does have one more year should he want to do it and I think the idea all the way along for Kevin was that this was going to be like this past year his last year basketball and he came in you know with his good friend with Jalen Wilson and then had a really good season KU gets a one seed obviously it doesn't end the way that he wanted it to or that you know KU fans wanted it to do Arkansas but you're talking about um for Kevin having a good enough season that he was able to really supplant himself in these kind of second-round range

on a lot of these mock drafts. And I think what we heard from Bill Self, I don't know, a month or two ago, whenever that was when we last heard from him, a month and a half ago, was that he had last year when he was in the draft, he got invited to the G League Unite Combine and then didn't get up to the NBA Draft Combine,

but he was dealing with an injury, which kind of prevented him from doing that, was that he had two way contract. He had multiple two way contract guarantees. And so that kind of tells you that he is someone who like if he gets a contract guarantee from somebody, that's not going to be enough for him necessarily to be like, yeah, I'm firmly in the NBA draft. Now it might just be, he's just tired of having to go to class, right? Like he might just be like, you know what, how about I just get paid to play basketball and just only do that. Right. Like, I don't know, like maybe I don't, I don't want to have to deal with this and that. Like, I just want to play basketball. Right. And I want to get paid for it. And obviously KU, he would get paid very well from Nil and he might even get paid more if it's a two-way contract he probably would get paid more

of nil money than he would off a two-way contract so maybe that comes into play um but i think that if you are viewing that comment from bill south that does mean that ideally for kevin it's pretty much if he gets a guarantee of a real contract when he would get drafted he's for sure staying in the draft i think it would become interesting if he doesn't get that and to be clear you might be thinking oh if you're drafted you get a guaranteed contract no that's not the case usually so if you're a first round draft pick you get a guaranteed contract if you're a second round draft pick the team has the option do they want to give you a two-way deal do they want to give you a guaranteed contract do do they want to term deal whatever two-way deal? Do they want to give you a guaranteed contract? Do they want a short-term deal?

Whatever it is. So it's very interesting because usually the first half of the second round guys are getting those guaranteed contracts, right? It might be a two-year deal or something. The guys on the latter half of the second round, even their second round picks, a lot of times they end up getting two-way deals and not the guaranteed contract. So it's not as simple to say that if Kevin McCuller is projected to go pick 50, he's going

to get a guaranteed deal. It might be a two-way contract. And if it is a two-way contract that wasn't good enough last year, would it be good enough this year? I don't know that Kevin wants to be a six-year college basketball player. So that does kind of apply. But again, as you get closer to it, if the NBA options aren't as good as you might have thought and KU's coming at you with all this NIL money and they have extra NIL money from McKenzie Mbako not picking KU and you have this big opportunity to be on a really good team, does it entice you a little bit more to possibly come back?

Who knows? Now, as far as where he's being viewed these are rankings for his NBA draft for the combine on ESPN he was ranked 55th on CBS 33rd on the athletic he is ranked 44th so I mean if you just average out the median it would be in at 44 between the three of those which would put you firmly in the second round but right kind of on that borderline of do you get a real contract or do you get a two-way deal right so it'd be very interesting as far as how the combine has gone for him um i did not see him do any like measurements or any of the like agility or jumping drills i don't know if that's because they only have a certain amount of players do those things

or if he opted out of them or like his agent opted him out of them for certain reasons i don't know but that was certainly interesting because you can find some of the results on oh zach edie measured this or jason or grady dick measured this or that but you can't find anything on kevin mcculler you can't find anything on kevin mcculler how he did in you know shuttle runner the lane agility which i guess that would mean he just didn't do them. I don't know. So maybe he opted out of them. So we didn't get to really see that.

One of the things he did do, though, was the three point contest isn't the way of putting it, but they have like a three point drill. And I think you take like five from the corners, from the wings and then up top. And so then you see how you do. Well, Marcus Sasser had the best percentage there. He shot 80%, he went 20 of 25 on those threes. Then Grady Dick was tied second. He made 16 of them with Seth Lundy, Omari Moore and Leonard Miller were the next two after that.

Drew Timmy actually went 12 of 25 there, along with Jordan Walsh from Arkansas. And then the next best three-point shooter to round out the top eight three-point shooters that participated in this drill, Kevin McCuller, shot 11 of 25 from three. Now, that's obviously smaller sample size than the overall amount of threes he's taken in his college game. But when that's his big question mark for NBA teams, how is he going to shoot it from three?

He did shoot it well at the NBA Draft Combine. So that's very interesting. He played in one of the scrimmages on Wednesday. Obviously don't look into like, oh, his team lost by 30 or he was a minus nine on the plus minus. It's a one game sample size where guys have never played against each other. Like I could care less about the result. You're more just looking just what did you do individually he had six points five rebounds two steals and with three of five from the floor oh for one from three and 18 minutes of the combine it wasn't like a wow look at this guy but it wasn't like a bad performance either I do think that from Kevin's perspective because he is more of a team connector type piece right he's he's a selfless teammate really good team defender really good at picking up other guys mistakes a situation like that a scrimmage where you haven't played

with these guys before and there is no like team set structure or scheme that you're trying to implement or scouting report on the other guy that's not going to be as beneficial for a guy like kevin mcculler usually those scrimmages are better for guys who maybe are really good athletes and they get up and down in transition because that might be really all the game is kind of doing. They're really good shooters. So I don't think it was a scrimmage where it tanks his value. I don't think it was a scrimmage where there's going to be scouts going like, oh, man, we have to draft this guy now.

But certainly the shooting performance was good. Some of the other stuff, obviously, like I said, just either wasn't publicized or he opted out of. But I don't think that I look at this combine so far and what's happened as of me recording this right now and be like, well, it's for sure that this or that is going to happen now with his decision. All right, let's get on to why it would make sense for him to stay versus why it would make sense for him to go and the impact on what it would have for KU, regardless of which

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So why it would make sense to stay or go for Kevin. I think why it would make sense to. Well, I guess when you say stay, stay in school or stay in college, but I guess the reason it would make sense for him to be in the nba draft he has done five years four and a half years whatever you want to say of college basketball and what more does he have to prove uh over the last really three years of his college basketball career he's kind of i don't know plateaued like i'm sure there are certain ways he's improving but statistically it has kind of been the same guy each and every year like are you going to all of a sudden get so much better next year that it's going to raise your draft stock? Right. Is your draft stock as high as it's going to be?

Because if you come back another year of college and you are the same guy and you're still shooting in the high 20 percent, it's going to create more questions about can we fix the shot? Right. So to that notion, you are leaving maybe as high as your draft stock would be. But then again, there is a case where if he does come back and he shoots 34, 35% from three and continues to be one of the best defenders in the country, then maybe you are talked about as being like a late first round pick in what a 2024 draft is seen as being weaker than this year's draft, even though, you know, this year's draft, like at the top with when Benyama and scoot Henderson, it looked as like very, very, very good top two, but it doesn't have a very good depth of the draft. It's still looked at as being better than the 2024 draft through that goes. So, uh, that would be an argument for either side of staying or going. Um, but for him again, maybe it's, maybe it's less about that type of stuff. And maybe it's more about just wanting to start your basketball career where you just get paid to play basketball and go work out and play basketball and then have your downtime after that. And maybe you're done with the class stuff and the tutoring and the organized stuff that you have to do from the college level.

Maybe that's just not something that's appealing to you anymore, and you're ready to move on. You're ready to move forward with that. You can't blame a kid. If that's what you want to do, you did your thing in college right and you're ready to move on you're ready to move forward with that you can't blame a kid like if that's what you want to do you you did your thing in college basketball you're ready to move on you're ready to go try something else um but obviously for him to come back you would have a real opportunity i mean you're talking about if he does get a guaranteed contract then maybe this would not be the case but if it's only a two-way deal most likely i would think he would make more NIL money at KU than he would on a two-way deal so that would be one pro of coming back additionally he would have the chance to do

kind of what and I don't necessarily mean being a first team all-american or being you know 18 19 20 points per game like Ochai and Jalen did but the same path in terms of I was close to going pro I decided to come back for that one last year I I was the leader of the team. I was the best player on the team, and we had a ton of success behind me. I think that could be the case with Kevin. And you come back and you get to have Hunter Dickinson down low. It's going to open you up for some more of those threes to which maybe you can improve on that. And if you do improve on that three-point shot to, like I said, the mid-30s, it is a risk because if you don't, it hurts your draft stock. If you do, it could very much help your draft stock for next year.

But obviously, he would have a huge opportunity to really be a, I don't know, missing piece might not be the right answer. But right now, KU doesn't have any small forwards on the roster. I guess maybe Jamari McDowell is a small forward. I guess Marcus Adams, you could count him as a small forward. I think I view him more as a four in KU's modern offense. But if you were playing a two-big offense, he would be more of a traditional small forward. Kevin McCullough would be that guy.

He would fill in for you at the three and four position. I think that's the impact on both. If he ends up staying in the NBA draft, I continue to be under the expectation he's going to be. And I think the KU staff has been that way all the way through too so it's not like it would change things up if he stays in the NBA draft to where you'd be shocked or you'd have to completely change what your plans are at this point to be like oh no what happened here um and I think you would just be continually at that point you'd be looking for if you can get one of those big wings you can play the three and the four for you because that's what Kevin could do otherwise you're looking at maybe bringing on like a six foot four six type of shooting guard that can

basically you play nick timberlake and that type of player at the three and then your entirety of your four minutes are going to like kj adams and marcus adams and i guess if you really get in a pinch maybe jamar mcdowell can slide down there or maybe parker brown you play too big basketball i don't know you would be a little bit thinner on options for what to do at the four necessarily. But yeah, if he comes back, you're talking about,

we're back in the conversation of right now, KU is seen as anywhere between number one through number 14 in the country, pretty much everywhere you look. Kevin McCuller comes back. Now you're being seen all of a sudden as number one or number two with a bullet, right? So it certainly impacts things.

And you know, the KU staff wants him back. Bill Self said as much about a month and a half ago at that press conference. We saw that Bill Self, and I forget if it was Curtis Townsend or Norm Roberts, was out at the NBA Draft Combine. It was funny.

That was a report from Adam Zagoria of Zag's blog. And it's funny because it mentioned in there that they were there for Jalen Wilson. And you're sitting there going, well, maybe you are a little bit for Jalen Wilson. Like I'm sure you're there to watch Jalen and see how it's going and be supportive and help them out in any way you can. But are you there for other reasons too? Probably.

Are you there to try to, you know, convince Kevin McCuller to come back? Maybe a little bit. Are you there to try to see what the deal is with like Grant Nelson and Arthur Kaluma and Julian Phillips and see if you can convince them to schedule a visit or something if they're going to come back to college probably a little bit of of everything there so you know KU wants him back and if you did if you if you were able to add Kevin McCuller back to the team you would obviously feel like you have Hunter Dickinson to lead the offense with DeJuan Harris's ball handling and pick and roll ability with KJ Adams and Dickinson Nick lead the offense with DeJuan Harris's ball handling and

pick and roll ability with KJ Adams and Dickinson, Nick Timberlake's three-point shooting and the creation opportunities with the athleticism of Elmarco Jackson and Artario Morris. You would feel like Kevin McCullough. I mean, toward the end of the season, Kevin showed a little bit off the bounce, showed that spin move on drives to the rim that you'd have enough offense there. And you feel like you would have the base for a great defense once again, because you'd have DeJuan Harris and Kevin McCuller, two of the best defenders in the country and in the conference. You'd have athletic guards with Artario Morris and Elmarco Jackson. You'd have KJ Adams, who's a solid defender.

You'd have Hunter Dickinson, who's at least a good rim protector and good kind of post up versus post up big that you could have a very, very exceptional team at that point in time. So we'll wait and see what happens. Let's finish up here with locked on Jayhawks with the verdict or prediction, I guess, would be another way of putting it on what exactly is Kevin going to do. Finishing things up with locked on Jayhawks. I think that if Kevin ends up coming back to KU at that point in time,

you would probably be done at that point in terms of filling out your roster. Now, if you get to a point where it's like, hey, this good play, this Grant Nelson or this Arthur Klum or Julian Felt, whatever, they're like, I want to come too, and Kevin McCuller comes back, you would still have the scholarship open, and you're like, okay, cool. We'll make it work, and we'll figure out the rest later. We'll figure out the playing time later. It'll, it'll work itself out. But I think realistically after KU landed Parker Brown, you're sitting on 10 scholarships. Um, you basically have right now when you, when you look at the rotation, okay, you have DeJuan Harris, Marco Jackson, Artario Morris, Nick Timberlake, KJ Adams, Hunter

Dickinson. That gives you six players that you feel like for sure are going to be members of the rotation. And then are you going to have Parker Brown as like the backup big at that point, who's like the eighth guy in the rotation who occasionally plays? Realistically, there's a spot for one more guy in the rotation. Could it be a transfer from somewhere else? Could it be Kevincculler coming back so i think from that standpoint if you bring back basically you're looking for one impact guy a guy who can either start or play starter level minutes or have that big impact on your team as

part of the rotation and so if you just have one of those you're kind of looking for because i don't think you want to necessarily bring two in again if two people want to come in you figure it out but like if kevin decides to come back i think at that point the ku staff is like okay we're good we're good at this point we're just going to call it and recruiting for this offseason um and we'll just leave that extra one open and that would knock out one of the future ones that we would have to leave open as part of the self-imposed sanctions so then either in in 2024 or 2025, we would have a full 13 scholarships. In the other year, we would have 12, and that certainly helps us out.

And we think we have a deep enough rotation now that we're going to be just fine, and it would kind of figure things out that way for you. It would also, I think at that point, if Kevin McCullough did come back, your starting lineup projection, you would, see, that would be actually very interesting. You have DeJuan at the one.

I think KJ, you'd start at at the four at least to begin the season and then 100 dickinson would be the five kevin mccullough would be at the three would you start arterio or el marco at the two like it's kind of being projected now or at that point because you need more shooting on the floor would you start timberlake at the two i think that would be uh very very interesting and maybe you start mccullough at the four and kj would be coming off the bench i. I think that would be a very, very interesting. And maybe you start McCuller at the four and KJ would be coming off the bench. I don't think that would be how you start the year. I think Bill self starts the guys he trusts at the beginning of the year. So that's a story for another day though, if Kevin McCuller ends up wanting to come back to KU, but now to prediction time, does Kevin McCuller end up coming back? Uh, I thought that Grady Dick, I think I put it at a

10% chance, 15% chance that he was going to come back. That didn't end up happening. I feel like in theory, when you look at the stuff for Kevin McCuller versus Grady Dick, just from an NBA profile, Grady Dick's expected to be a lottery pick. Kevin McCuller might be a mid-second round pick. It obviously makes more sense to have Kevin McCuller higher up there in terms of the percentage for him possibly returning to KU. But I also don't think it's very likely at this point. I have been under the assumption all offseason. I was under the assumption really all through this past season that that was going to be his one year at Kansas, and then he was going to go pro. So I'm not changing from that

now, but I guess because I'll give a higher percentage than the Grady Dick one, I'll say 18% chance that Kevin McCuller comes back. I guess he wore 15, so I'll say 18% chance that Kevin McCuller comes back. I guess he wore 15. So I'll just 15% chance that Kevin McCuller comes back. I don't think it's very likely. I don't think that's in the cards. I don't think it's something he wants to do, but I'll leave a possibility open there because there are enough things that we talked about that do make sense.

And when you have convincing people like Bill Self and convincing things like NIL money coming at your way, I guess it's not totally impossible either. That'll do it for this episode of Locked on Jayhawks. I don't know if we'll have a show on Monday. I'm going to be out of town this weekend. So next show might come at you on Tuesday, but we'll see from there. We still got to get into some deep dives on like Arthur Columa, maybe some other players,

Grant Nelson, maybe Julian Phillips. If those guys are still, by the time we talk next week, available and not firmly sticking in the draft or not committed to another school or something like that. But still plenty of options out there for KU, and we'll talk about them in upcoming shows. This has been Locked on Jayhawks. You can find us anywhere you give your podcasts. You can find us on YouTube.

Like and subscribe to the show. See you next time. Later. Have a good weekend.