Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Takeaways from KU-OU + Early Thoughts on Baylor + KU Basketball Center Position Battle

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

More takeaways on the KU offense, Jason Bean and defense from the Oklahoma game with Nick Schwerdt. Is 6 or 7 wins still in reach for the Jayhawks? Early thoughts on the next Kansas opponent: the Baylor Bears. Plus, what to make of the center battle for Bill Self and the KU Basketball team featuring Zach Clemence, Ernest Udeh, Zuby Ejiofor and Cam Martin.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!SweatBlockIf you or someone you love is experiencing embarrassing sweat or odor try Sweatblock. Save 20% with promo codeLocked On at sweatblock.com. Also available on Amazon.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.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!UpsideDownload the FREE Upside App and use promo code Locked to get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more.Underdog FantasySign up on underdogfantasy.com with the promo code LOCKED ON and get your first deposit doubled up to $100!SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnCollege to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

on today's locked on Jayhawks. We take a look at the KU Oklahoma game, what went right, what went wrong for KU, and maybe a little early look at the Baylor game as we're joined by Nick Schwertz. You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks,

part of the locked on podcast network, your team every day. Hear me as well on Rock Chalk Sports Talk on KLWN and Lawrence from Monday through Friday from three to six o'clock. And you can give me a follow at D Johnson Radio on Twitter. Nick Schwert joins me for today. And of course, you can hear Nick on a six 10 in Kansas city is the producer of Cody and gold. You can also hear him on the wave in the wheat podcast, which you can find with the odyssey app and whatnot. Thanks for making locked on Jayhawks.

Your first listen every day, we're free and available wherever you get your podcasts on today's edition of locked on Jayhawks. We're going to go through some of the takeaways from that KU Oklahoma game with Nick, maybe some of the positives, some of the negatives as well. And actually I do want to get to a few KU basketball things. The late night in the fog was Friday and that's kind of the signaling of, I guess the start, the, the, the lead up to the basketball season here. So Nick, we'll start with this first.

I guess positive from the weekend, the offense still put up 42 points. Jason Bean still put up good numbers for this team. I think Jalen is still clearly the better quarterback there. You saw maybe some, I don't know what I called like processing errors, whether it was missing a guy on the read option, like when to give it, when to keep, whether it was a couple of the interceptions he threw, maybe a couple of dangerous passes that went or a couple of plays where you saw him go kill the play, and then it did not work at all with whatever they changed into.

So clearly there is a difference between Jason Bean and Jalen Daniels, and I think maybe that was lost a little bit with how well Jason played supposedly in camp and how he played against TCU in the second half. But also I think overall you're pretty pleased with what a backup quarterback could do for you in that game. What were kind of your thoughts on the difference between Jason being to Jalen Daniels and what he can be for the offense? Like can he be good enough for this team to win another game or two? Yes, I think he can be good enough for them to win another game or two,

but I think you kind of hit it. The processing errors, to me, it's just turnovers. You know, he has thrown three turnovers in the last six quarters or three interceptions in the last six quarters, whereas Jalen threw one and it was week one against an FCS team. So that is the difference between this offense with Jason Bean and the previous offense that was one of the top 10 offenses in the country with Jalen Daniels. I don't know if that's just going to be part of the equation with Jason that you're going to have to live with the mistakes, which I guess makes sense when

you're talking about a backup quarterback. But I was really surprised with how maybe hesitant he seemed to want to run the football because we know like he might be the fastest guy on the team. Like this is a legit four, four guy at quarterback. And I thought that Andy Kotelnicki would sort of unleash that and leverage Jason being speed against an Oklahoma defense that has been one of the worst run defenses in the country. And I was really, really surprised. Like the biggest surprise that I had from that game on Saturday was that Kansas didn't dominate the ground game like the last three teams who played Oklahoma had.

Yeah, I think that you probably could have also added the complimentary fact of that it's not just, you you know how they could have dominated on the ground, but also that probably would have helped out the defense a little bit. So it's weird because the offense did put up 42 points and, you know, on one hand you have a backup quarterback, you put up 42 points. Why should there be any like negatives to that?

But it felt like there were some missed opportunities with the defense collecting you three turnovers that maybe you didn't take advantage of all of them and also like what she said with with the the lack of running the football felt like there was more on the bone there and that's just kind of a weird thing for me to wrap my head around that they did score 42 but there are some negatives there and i guess bigger picture wise after what you saw from the offense with jason bean i guess the question for me is that when jaylen daniels was in there they looked like one of the top three offenses in the big 12 and whether the defense was you know bottom two or three in the big 12 or not that was enough for you to kind of you know be a bowl contender for

you to be a team that who knows, maybe if Jalen's healthy all year, they do win eight or nine games. If the offense has taken a step back without Jalen Daniels to being, you know, maybe a top three offense in the big 12 to now all of a sudden, maybe only being the fifth or sixth best offense in the big 12. And if you do have the worst defense in the big 12, like, is that good enough to win another game and go bowling? Because I think at this point, that's the only question.

Can you win one more game to make a bowl game? Yeah, I still think they're going to win one more game. I mean, 42 points, which this offense, here's the silver lining, is that even with a backup quarterback, your offense has proven you can score with anybody. You can. Now, the turnovers were there, and Oklahoma had a lot of quick drives, which is why... Oklahoma ran 100 plays. They ran 100 plays. They had 700 yards of offense. So I can understand the idea of wanting to look at it and say, well, the defense didn't hold up their end of the bargain. That's who

Kansas was going to be this year. You were going to be an elite offense and you were going to have a defense that was going to give up some points. Well, now, as you mentioned, when you go from being the third best offense or the second best offense to the fifth or sixth, well, now all of a sudden you're putting way more pressure on the defense to sort of pick up some slack. And I just don't know that that's going to happen this year, at least consistently. But if you can score 35, 40 points in every game, they're going to get another win. I am convinced of that. I still think this is a 7-1 football team. I know that a lot of people want to look at this and say, okay, where are the wins going to come?

That's not how it works in college football. Look at what happened. Look at what happened on Saturday, man. Like there are always surprising losses. It's not always the ones where you circle on the calendar and say, oh, that's where they're going to trip up. That's where they're going to trip up. Sometimes it's the games that you least expect. I still think this is a 7-1 football team. Offense is more consistent than defense. Offense has more control over a game than defense does. I still believe that this is a team that's going to go out there. Maybe it's against Texas Tech. Maybe it's against Baylor this weekend. And they're going to have a turnover-free game. And when that happens, then all of a sudden, it's going to become a track meet to see who can score 40 points.

First to 45 wins. I still think there are games like that on Kansas' schedule. I think when I walked away from that game, from the offense too, I looked at it and I said you know tight ends played well you and Mason Fairchild have the big game offensive line I mean the pass blocking was unbelievable like some of the the the depths of pockets and the amount of time that Jason Bean had to throw was was fantastic the receivers obviously had a great game like Lawrence Arnold goes off and that's been such an underrated unit for this team this year so I guess you know we've

shouted out Brent Dierman so many times for recruiting Jalen Daniels to KU. Should we shout out like Emmett Jones for leaving the cupboard kind of full for KU? I know maybe Luke Graham wasn't someone that he totally wanted, but the rest of them, it's I guess an Emmett Jones thing. And you look across the board like Devin Neal had a big game. Kai Thomas got his first touchdown. I look at like everything offensively and I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty pleased with where that was.

So I guess we just look at this game overall. You lost by 10 on the road. It was another kind of close-ish game. I think the score wasn't totally indicative, though, of that. And that's, I guess, the thing that you're kind of mentioning. Like, over the last five games, the way that the Big 12 goes, probably four of those five games, if not all five, are going to be within 10-point single digits, right? And if that's the case, don't you just roll the dice enough time

and you find your way on top of some of those close games, at least close to 50%? Yeah, I've said this to you before, that I'm still waiting for Kansas to look outmatched on Saturday. Like, you're right. That was a 10-point loss, but Oklahoma had it at a two-touchdown game for basically the final three quarters, right?

But I just want to mention, I did get Kansas at plus 10 right before kickoff. So that means the last two weeks, even though though they lost they covered in both of them they're kind of doing what's expected of them with a backup quarterback for the last six quarters so I don't know I know that people it's easy to see two straight losses and then look at a good Baylor team that you have to play this Saturday on the road and say okay like this like this is kind of where, you know, the story falls apart. And it does to an extent because you lost your starting quarterback who was a Heisman candidate. Like, I don't, I don't feel like this team is all of a sudden being exposed. They're the same team we thought they were. They're still a really good

offense. They're just not an elite offense without Jalen. And this defense is still something that's going to hold them back. But I can go back over the last decade of the big 12 and find a lot of good teams that had great offenses, bad defenses, and still won six or seven games, which is what I think this team's going to do. I want to get into some more from the game. Look ahead to basketball.

Look ahead to the Baylor game a little bit as well here. But first, from cringing at the pump to getting an eye-popping check at your favorite restaurant, inflation is hitting us all where it hurts, and it really hurts. That's why I started using Upside. Upside is an incredible app for anyone who buys gas, groceries, or dines out, which that's everyone. With every purchase, I'm earning cash back thanks to upside i use it all the time when i'm filling up especially and you know it's just super easy to use it's just a couple quick taps on an app on your phone you might think it's too good to be

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That's probably why they have a 4.8 star rating on the App Store. Download the free Upside app and use promo code LOCKED and get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more. That's $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more using promo code LOCKED. Okay, some negative stuff here. I guess we'll call this the negative Nick segment since we have you on. The defense was in shambles in that game, giving up 52 points,

700 total for the game. And again, this is something where you can probably do a little bit of mental gymnastics and say, well, when Dylan Gabriel's playing for Oklahoma, that's a top-five offense in the country, or that's a top-ten offense in the country. Even if that's true, though, I think the level of disorganization and trouble, like lining up and just guys running wide open in the secondary, falling for double moves, that specifically is not something we've seen from the KU defense this season. So is that something that worries you moving forward,

or do you just kind of take it as it was a learning experience and a terrible game? No, I mean, it's definitely concerning because this isn't new. This wasn't something that popped up and we started to say, whoa, where'd this come from? They gave up over seven yards per play last week to TCU. They gave up exactly seven yards per play against Oklahoma. What was most frustrating was that they couldn't get off the field on third down. Oklahoma went 15 of 21, Derek, 15 of 21 on third down. So that is so frustrating to take away from a game where you feel like

if you could just give cotton five stops, five stops, this is a completely different football game, but that wasn't the case. But the reason why it's concerning in that, yes, it's probably going to continue to cost you games. You don't have a good defense. You don't, but it's, it's not new concerning. It's not like now I'm concerned. I was already concerned about this defense because I thought performances like that were possible, and now we just saw it. So, I mean, there's going to be more good offenses.

Oklahoma is a really talented offense. I don't know that they're the best offense in the Big 12. You're going to go up against more teams that are going to move the ball and score. And the formula for this team is always going to be the same. Score 40, score 45. That's Big 12 football. And Kansas is, you know, we're new to this at Kansas where it's like,

hey, this is how a lot of teams in the Big 12 win football games. It's why, you know, so many other people from around the country sort of throw disrespect at the Big 12 because they say it's not the same. It's just high-scoring offenses with no defenses. That's who Kansas is now. They're in the mix with the Big 12, and this is how the game is played in this conference. I think you mentioned on last week's show, you thought that the Baylor game was going to be KU's most winnable moving forward, and now that's upon us. We just

saw Baylor this past Thursday night, they lost to West Virginia. And honestly, if you think about it, it's pretty much the same game that Kansas played with West Virginia is, you know, in the forties close game. It's just Kansas won the coin flip game. Baylor lost it, but that should give you confidence that, Hey, Kansas won against a same opponent on the road that Baylor lost to that. You should be competitive here. I think the spread right now is at seven and a half after it opened at nine points. Do you still think, especially now that Blake Chapin, I don't know if he's going to play or not with the injury, this is KU's most winnable game remaining? I think Texas Tech is probably the right answer. I may have gotten a little carried away when I said Baylor.

I'm just down on Baylor, I think, in general. So I was probably being a little overdramatic with it. I do think it's a winnable football game. What's the current spread? Do you have it? Seven and a half. Seven and a half. That seems like a big spread considering the final line for Oklahoma was 10.

It was at seven, seven and a half. It was kind of fluctuating between seven and 10 all week. I just don't trust Baylor's offense. I don't trust Baylor's offense. They lost a lot from last year. I think we're used to seeing them have a really good quarterback and they don't have a really good quarterback this year. I know they moved the ball against West Virginia, but to me, I kind of view them in the same way. I view West Virginia, at least in terms of talent. Like this is to me, I kind of view them in the same way I view West Virginia, at least in terms of talent. To me, it's a more even matchup.

With Oklahoma, you can at least convince yourself that this is a really talented team that's underperforming because they're going through so much turnover, both in terms of roster and coaching from a year ago and sort of searching for an identity. I don't think you make that same sort of excuse for Baylor. I think you just think this is another team in the Big 12. And if you let go of what you thought they were going to be from before this season,

I think you would come away saying this is a fairly even matchup. They've got a better defense. But even with Jason Bean, Kansas has a better offense than Baylor. So we'll see how that ends up shaking out on Saturday. But seven and a half, it seems like a big line to me. Yeah, and again, Blake Shapen, the starting quarterback for Baylor, had a head injury against West Virginia. You never know what that's going to do kind of on a day-to-day, week-to-week.

Let's say KU does. I mean, obviously, if they win the game, you're accomplishing bowl eligibility, parties, and all that sort of stuff. If KU loses to Baylor on Saturday, and let's say it's a, you know, it's not a blowout, but it's kind of like the Oklahoma game in terms of, yeah, it's like a 10, 14-point game, but felt like maybe it was a little bit more than that. Do you think, I don't know, panic is way too strong of a word here,

but that sort of idea is going to set in that, uh-oh, bowl eligibility is now in question. I think so. And that is more of a nod to who Kansas has been. Because even when they were 5-0, there was sort of this feeling that this isn't real. This is Kansas football. They have been the laughingstock of the nation for the past 10 years.

This is not real. This is not going to sustain over the course of the season. And especially you could have said that before the TCU game, because you knew how tough that stretch of games was going to be playing TCU at home and then back-to-back games at Oklahoma and at Baylor it felt like that was that was conceivable and now it feels like it's happening so it's almost like confirming your worst suspicions that oh once they start playing good teams then they're going to be exposed for who they really are but Derek this is what good teams do you know they beat other good teams now if you

think Kansas is one of them then you would hope to see them go and win but they thought they lost their starting quarterback who was one of the most electric players in the country it's not an excuse it's a fact how many look at what Oklahoma looked like without Dylan Gabriel, with Davis Bevel. That was ugly. What he threw for 38 yards against Texas, Derek. So I'm not trying to make excuses, but even if they lose this game to Baylor, I still think there are more winnable games on the schedule. And I would just go back to what I said earlier,

which is that I'm still waiting for this team to look out classed I'm still waiting for one other team to make Kansas look like they didn't belong because in years past that was every single week and we are now seven weeks into the season and it hasn't happened once all right I want to get into some basketball talk, but real quick here. Our partners at Nissan have worked with us to create a new segment across the Locked On College title, Thrilling Moments, where we highlight the most exciting play from the Kansas game or throughout the history of our alma mater.

This week's thrilling moment from the KU Oklahoma game, I think it would have to be the Lawrence Arnold, the first touchdown. Jason Bean throws it, gets unbelievable pass blocking all sorts of time, launches it downfield, kind of in a double coverage, maybe a little bit of a dangerous throw, but Lawrence Arnold comes up with the catch, gets in for the touchdown. He had a great game. This segment has been inspired by the thrilling new designs featured across Nissan's new lineup of vehicles. Pursue what thrills you in the all-new Frontier Armada or pathfinder today

available now at nissanusa.com okay so nick let's finish up with a little bit of basketball late night in the fog was on friday and i'm not gonna ask you to give me any like big takeaways from late night in the fog because we both know that can be a very unproductive thing to do um but that feels like i didn't watch just i just want to make that perfectly clear i'm glad you didn't because i didn't watch a second of it perfect uh but i feel like that does kind of signal the the start of oh it's it's basketball preseason and whatnot um so i guess the the big question for me because i maybe the biggest takeaway was just something bill self said he said that you know it seems like the starting lineup would basically have grady dick dewan harris jalen wilson and ke Kevin McCuller, which it's not that that's a huge

surprise, but that the center position is the most up for grabs. And for me, I thought coming into the beginning of the off season, like Zach Clements would be the guy. Seems like he hasn't really taken advantage of that opportunity. I know the field of 68 with like Jeff Goodman and three men, we even a bunch of those guys came out with like a basketball preseason PDF called the almanac. And they talked to all the coaches and they have Ernest today as the starting center. I've heard a lot of good things about Zuby edge for maybe being more college

ready than Ernest today. Obviously you have Kim Martin kind of in the background too, after red shirting last season, what do you make of the center position? Who's your pick? Put a claim on it right now. Who's the starting guy? Because there is no obvious choice, I'm going to go with the most obvious

choice and it's Zach Clements. I think we have a tendency to get really cute with it, with starting lineups and rotation predictions before the season. If you're telling me that the year after winning a national championship, Bill Self is going to start a freshman center. I don't see it happening.

I don't see it happening. What do we know about Bill Self? He goes with what he trusts. And at the two positions we're most likely to talk about here, the two most important positions on the court for a Bill Self team, center and point guard, right? The five and the one. He goes with trust. Not just are you the best of the bunch, right? Because Ernest Uday may be the most talented of all the bigs on the Kansas roster. He may be the best scorer. He may be the best rebounder.

Ultimately, it's are you in the right position? Are you doing everything you need to do? Do you know where to be in all the offensive sets that we're going to run? And are you going to do your job to the point where you're not screwing up somebody else's? That was the problem with Remy Martin for a lot of last season. It wasn't that he wasn't the best point guard. We knew he was the best point guard. It was that the coaching staff didn't trust him to be in the right spot consistently enough. So going into this season, I'm going to go with the one guy who is a legit five and B has played the most of anybody at that position. And that's Zach Clements. Like what's the argument against it i mean i think that in a bill self offense like if you're looking at the rim protection aspect and the i don't know physicality of it like being a low block score we haven't seen that from zach

i'm not saying it's not there like it might be we just didn't see a ton of it. Maybe Uday and Ejifer have more of that from that aspect. To be clear, I agree with you. I still go Zach Clements right now. And a big reason why, this is something that I've kind of talked about on RCST, but it's the idea that, like, freshman centers actually don't play a ton under Bill Self. Little trivia question for you. Nick, do you know the only freshman center to play more than 20 minutes per game under Bill Self. Little trivia question for you. Nick, do you know the only freshman center to play more than 20 minutes per game

under Bill Self at KU? Oh, the only freshman center to play more than 20 minutes per game. Does it have to be a full season? Yes, it has to be a full season. Hmm. be a full season yes it has to be a full season i'm gonna say does durell arthur count as a center because that's my guess if so um i don't remember if i counted him as a center or not i don't think i did because they had other guys like you know sasha khan okay so is it is it is it in bead it is mb so the one guy who is because there's only been four who have even done 15 plus minutes and one of those was marquise morris who

like counted as a five on basketball reference as part of this so even four have even got 15 plus minutes but yeah joel freaking mb who's a perennial MVP candidate. He's the only freshman center to get 20 or more minutes. Yeah. So do I think that Ernest Uday is going to join the ranks of Joel Embiid this year? I do not. This is going to be a rotation. It is. I'm just warning everybody now, and this is what's going to happen all year. So I'm just going to go ahead and tell you exactly how the season's going to play out right here. didn't even ask me but here it is um everyone is going to say oh this guy needs to play more why isn't this guy play more and that player will never play more all of these guys will average like 15 minutes per game there won't even really

be a number one five everyone will be frustrated and say that this guy needs to play more that guy needs to play more why is this guy playing at all and it's just going to be a constant conversation until the season ends in march yeah there you go that's how that's how this big man rotation is going to shake out i there's going to be so many comments i feel like where it's like man if only we had david mcc back, which is just kind of funny after everywhere last season. Yeah, no kidding. Well, here's Nick Schwert again. You can check him out on the Wave in the Weep podcast and producer of Cody and Gold on 610 in Kansas City

from 10 to 2 during the weekday. Nick, appreciate the time as always, man. Thanks, brother. All right, that's Nick Schwert joining us here. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we are going to keep up with the KU football action. If you have anything you'd like for the show to talk about, you can reach out at DJohnsonRadio on Twitter

is where you can find me. Don't forget to subscribe to the show, whether you're listening on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. We're now on YouTube. Obviously, if you're watching on YouTube, you know that, but you can check out the audio versions as well. That'll do it for today's episode.

Have a good rest of your day. See some of you on Rock Chalk Sports Talk later today. Deuces.