Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - The Bill Self Dog House, 30 Point Scorer for Kansas Jayhawks Basketball, KU Football Concerns & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 On today's Locked on Jayhawks, some KU basketball most likelies for the upcoming season, including who's most likely to be in the Bill Self doghouse. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. He's Nick Schwert. Thank you for making Locked On Jayhawks your first listen every day. Thank you to the everydayers catching each and every show.

Starting point is 00:00:33 We are free and available anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also find us on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. We're going to be going over some most likelies for some superlatives for the KU basketball season. Who's most likely to be in the Bill Self doghouse? Who's most likely to score 30 points in a game this season? Those kinds of questions. We get into a little bit of KU football talk and a little who's stat line is. Anyway, this episode of the show is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook.

Starting point is 00:00:59 Place your first $5 bet and you'll get started with $200. And bonus bets guaranteed. Visit FanDuel.com to get started today all right so uh nick uh playing some fun superlatives is the basketball season is is almost here i mean a week from friday we got late night in the fog uh then the following friday we get that ku arkansas exhibition game which that one obviously will tell us a lot let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. Yes. Let me stop you right there, Derek. It is basketball. It is.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Is here. At least how much of that is because of the new football? Well, yeah, that's what that's my point for one fan base for one school. Basketball season has officially erupted. OK, so here's some superlatives. I'm going to state a topic. You tell me who is the most likely who is the most likely player to be in the Bill Self doghouse this season? Well well we talked about this uh last week i think it was

Starting point is 00:01:50 but can you in the doghouse because if aj store still ends up starting like can you still be in the doghouse i don't know well the doghouse is not permanent nor is being out of the doghouse is not permanent, nor is being out of the doghouse. I guess LeGerald Vick was in the doghouse, and he started a lot of games. I mean, think about Brandon Green. In, out, in, out. Tyshawn Taylor, most of the guys who go into the doghouse get out and then go back in. It's a very fluid situation.

Starting point is 00:02:23 So I don't even know who the close second is. I don't know anything about these freshmen. So like personality wise, I don't really know anything about any of these guys. All I can base this off of is what I know about how some of these guys like to play basketball. And if I'm going off the tape, AJ Storr is a slam dunk answer.

Starting point is 00:02:43 I think you could make a case for rylan griffin i mean the idea that you have this guy who's a three-point shooter who came from a system that was run and gun that was hey you get it even a semblance of an open looking three don't even worry about running the offense launch it up like we want to play fast we want to get those types of shots and i don't know like who knows how that translates over. I do tend to agree with you, though. Let's clarify here, though, because there's a difference between not playing and being in the doghouse.

Starting point is 00:03:13 And I think to be in the doghouse, it comes with a certain level of expectations, and there is, like, this idea that you are good enough to be great. And A.J.'s store, I think from a talent perspective, he's probably top two or three on this team. this idea that you are good enough to be great. And A.J. Storr, I think from a talent perspective, he's probably top two or three on this team. He can score. He's probably one of the best pure scorers in the country,

Starting point is 00:03:32 certainly in the Big 12. And when you come in with this idea and mentality of, I'm just going to score, that's what I'm here to do, and you look at guys in the past who have been in the Bill Self doghouse, Brandon Green, as we mentioned, LeGerald Vick, as we mentioned, Remy Martin, I think all of those guys had a semblance of that which is they just wanted to shoot and they didn't want to do all the little things right they they didn't really know the offensive system they're messing up plays offensively they're going rogue off script they're not assignment sound defensively so that is what will get you in the doghouse. It's like, no, we want to play you,

Starting point is 00:04:06 but you're pissing us off by not doing the little things. So now we're not gonna, there's a difference between that and just like, yeah, you're just not, you're not good enough to be in our rotation. You're not good enough to be in our starting five. Right. Those guys don't get any house.

Starting point is 00:04:19 So I guess it's better to be in a doghouse than just homeless. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of the case with some of those other guys. I do think it is AJ Store, though. But yeah, I think Rylan Griffin has a chance for that. Okay, who's the, this is my favorite. Every year, there's usually a guy, maybe it's two guys, right? There's part of the fan base that's like,

Starting point is 00:04:38 why isn't he playing this guy off the bench more? Why isn't the bench playing more? And a lot of times it gets, it's almost like this simple idea that just like, oh, if that guy played all of a sudden, everything will be fixed. Who is that guy on the bench who you expect the fan base to be like, why isn't he playing more?

Starting point is 00:04:55 I think last year, this one's the last year was last year was rough though, because last year the talent was just not what we're used to seeing. So it didn't really ring true to being like, oh, Jamari McDowell, he's the difference between you being a title contender. I don't think so. This is really easy for me because it fits the mold of the guys that we've seen in this position before. It's Flory Badunga. It's absolutely Flory Badunga because I go back to Sheck Diallo, Alexander, five-star freshman big man.

Starting point is 00:05:31 Why isn't he playing? I don't know, but they never do. They never do under Bill Self. So I don't care how explosive he is. I don't care about how active he is defensively. And this is what's going to happen. Like, to your point, there will be people on Twitter who are going to pull his per 40 numbers, like his defensive locks per 40 minutes.

Starting point is 00:05:51 And they're going to say he's averaging five and a half blocks per 40 minutes. Imagine if he was actually getting run. Yeah. Let's imagine that number would go down. He wouldn't be having four blocks a game. That is going to happen. That is my lock of the year.

Starting point is 00:06:05 That's more of a lock than AJ Storr being in the doghouse. KU is going to lose a game where like TCU or some random Big 12 team is going to get whatever they want inside. They're just going to kill KU offensively down low. Hunter Dickinson is going to be getting blown by scored over and ones. And everyone's going to start saying, by scored over and ones. And they're, everyone's going to start saying, put Florian, come on. Like this guy is so much better defensively and he'll get like six minutes. And then everyone would talk about it. We'll talk about it on here. And that's going to kind of persist throughout the season. Because one thing we know

Starting point is 00:06:39 is you have to be a special, special talent to be a big man as a freshman and to get run in year one under Bill Self. Again, I think that's the right answer. If I want to throw an honorable mention, I could see it being Zach Clements. You had all these glowing comments from Bill Self in the offseason. He's the most improved player from last year and all this stuff, and then he's just not going to play because he's going to be behind Hunter and Flory, and people are going to be like, what't he playing why isn't he getting run you know i i

Starting point is 00:07:09 could see that being kind of that's what's so funny too because those those rhetorical questions that you just tossed out there are really easy to answer because he's not as good as the other guys that's why yeah yeah okay uh next one i have up here is best chance to get Bill Self to cry during their senior day speech. So I think the seniors on the roster, I think Hunter Dickinson spoke last year, so I don't think he'd be speaking this year, right? DeJuan Harris, KJ Adams, Zeke Mayo, David Coit. I don't know if I'm missing anybody, maybe some walk-ons.

Starting point is 00:07:40 I'll tell you what, if little Diggy Coit gets Bill Self to cry on senior night, then I think we're in store for a very special season for him. So it's between two guys. It's between DeJuan and KJ. And I could really go either way here. Both of those guys were unheralded. DeJuan certainly more so, I mean, less heralded than KJ was in terms of recruiting rankings, but neither one of them have prototypical size for the position. Neither one of them are

Starting point is 00:08:12 going to be playing in the NBA next year. And those are the types, right? Those are the guys that just grind it out, fight for everything, play the right way with can i go a duo answer can i say they both make bill self cry because i think that's on the table yeah i mean kj has the the mom story uh dewan just you know where he was i i know he has kind of a crazy story without bringing everything i i think it would be dewan but yeah i could see both kind of being the case well because he he's got a thing for point guards. He's got it. Bill Self has a type.

Starting point is 00:08:52 We know the type, whether it's Frank Mason, Devontae Graham. Like that seems to be sort of his soft spot. This one, and then we'll finish with the 30.1. There's always a point in the season, whether the season ends up being good or ends up being bad, that like KU hits a rut and it leads to freak out time, right? And again, sometimes it ends up being a proper freak out because they end up just not being good after it. But many other times, I would say a majority of the time,

Starting point is 00:09:15 they end up moving past it and being just okay. Is there a point in the schedule? I don't know if you have the schedule in front of you. I have it in front of me. I'm pulling it up now. Is there a point in the schedule that you could see being the freak out mode because for me i i noticed two right away freak out mode point of the schedule well i see a stretch here where ku goes and this is the this is the right time like to me it's more about what time usually it's like january yeah

Starting point is 00:09:40 yeah so that's why and then i think the opponents match up well with the time of the year you got to go on february 1st you got to go play at baylor come home play iowa state and then you go on the road and play k-state that's three games in a week against like three major programs in the big 12 so that's that's my number one off, off first glance. Yeah. And then like a week after that, you're at Utah at BYU, which on its own, I don't think either game is very tough, but like you look at it and a lot of times that pack 12 teams, when they'd have to do that two mountain road trip with the altitude going at Colorado at Utah or whatever, they'd lose one of those. A lot of the times they get upset, like Arizona's of the world. So that's one of them. I know this one isn't January, but I could actually see this one being the one.

Starting point is 00:10:27 You play Duke at the end of November. Then you get back home against Furman, should win that one. You're at Creighton. I mean, that's going to be a very losable game. Creighton's got a very good team. Then you're at Missouri. If you lose at Missouri, your rival, after you have lost at Creighton and against Duke with Cooper Flagg, you're going to be losing three of four

Starting point is 00:10:44 in the non-con. I don't expect them to lose all those games, but if you do, that will lead to a major freak out at that point in the season. Yeah. That's one thing that's so weird though, is because like we always talk about, we always get so fired up for these big non-con matchups against blue blood programs. But at the end of the season, we never talk about them. Like we're never talking about the champions classic. And if we we do it's like a throwaway comment i remember so and so had 22 in the champions classic win over michigan state it's like i hardly i hardly remember that but if it happens in conference play it starts to kind of make you think oh maybe that's just who this team is like you have enough time in the schedule to

Starting point is 00:11:25 bounce back from a rough stretch in November you do it in February that's what starts to kind of raise the the alarms a little bit all right most likely to score 30 points in a game this season I think it's AJ I think it's AJ's store Hunter's weird maybe it's because you're a big guy I know he does shoot threes. So, but he doesn't get into the line enough. I think that's one of the things it's like, can you do get really hot from three, hit six threes, hit seven threes, and then get to the line 10 times Hunter on paper should be getting to the line a ton. And we talked about this last season, but for whatever reason, as many touches as he gets down low and as much as he

Starting point is 00:12:06 is going through contact he just never gets to the front line and you got to do that to have like a really special offensive night any chance it'd be like Zeke Mayo or Ryland Griffin just goes off from three like they hit like seven threes in a game or something like that and i mean that's still yeah i think i would say zeke more than rylan zeke is and i think that this is a learned skill that can be translatable like yes i understand that zeke's competition last year much worse than rylan's competition but getting kind of run the show and be the guy for a couple of seasons, I think that's a learned skill of just not feeling like you need to defer. Like as bad as Nick Timberlake was last year, he did have a couple, like he wasn't afraid, like he wasn't

Starting point is 00:12:56 afraid to go out there and shoot. And there was that game, I think against UCF where, hey, you actually lost. I think it was UCF or maybe it was West Virginia. They lost the game. He was the only one doing anything offensively. So Zeke has that. He had some really big offensive outings. And if he gets hot, then I think he just lets it fly. So I would put him ahead of Kylan, but I still think AJ Storrs is my number one.

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Starting point is 00:14:13 Alright, continuing on. A little KU football that I wanted to touch on here. Obviously you drop another game, now 1-5 the lost Arizona State. Is there a world where we look back at this start start where they have lost four one score games or their point differentials still well in the positives I guess well ish in

Starting point is 00:14:31 the positives that we look back on this and whether it's in a year from now whether it's at the end of the season we just say yeah you know what they were just super unlucky like they they've had six straight one score losses now dating back to last season? Or do you view it as they have a fatal flaw that there is something seriously wrong of why they can't come through consistently in these one score games? Yeah, I think there's definitely an element of luck, but I don't think that will ever be the big conclusion, whether it's at the end of the season or next year, because I think winning is a skill. I think knowing how to pull out, I don't want the idea that we just chalk everything up to luck.

Starting point is 00:15:09 I got, you just didn't have things bounce your way. No winning. Look at the chiefs, right? The chiefs. Yeah. They're,

Starting point is 00:15:15 they're a champion team, but they're a championship team because they know how to win these close games. And it goes from the top down. It's not just a quarterback thing. It's not a play calling thing. It's not just a head coach, game management, top down. It's not just a quarterback thing. It's not a play calling thing. It's not just a head coach, game management, clock management.

Starting point is 00:15:27 It's everything. It's everything. And this team does not have that. Now, why they don't have it, I don't know. But I also think the idea that regardless of if there is luck involved or not, the ripple effects of this start

Starting point is 00:15:44 and losing these games are going to be very wide-reaching and it's kind of scary i think if you're a ku fan or if you're involved with the program maybe it is some bad luck but that bad luck is going to cause i don't know how many but a non-zero amount of players to not come to KU. Like recruits who are between KU and another school, and they're going to look at that and say, maybe I don't want to go there. People are going to lose their jobs.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Fan support's going to dwindle. There's going to be less money coming in. So with those results coming from what's happening on the field, I think it will be difficult to look back on it and say, oh, a little bad luck, like seriously derailed the trajectory this program was on. What betting odds would you need right now? If I told you, you need to bet on Kansas to make a bowl game in 2025.

Starting point is 00:16:45 What were their odds this season? I mean, this year, the over under wind total was eight and a half. So just to make a bowl game probably would have been like minus 300, maybe even more than that. But I mean, you're going to be losing,

Starting point is 00:16:56 but 30, whatever seniors coming into next year. You do have that good recruiting class, obviously wait and see what happens with the transfer portal, both coming in, coming out. Five to one. I mean,

Starting point is 00:17:09 I mean, they were like five to make the playoff this year. Yeah, but it's, it's a college is college and you can see teams swing and big swings in both directions. So I guess in that regard, if we're just saying that Kansasansas is a bad team this year

Starting point is 00:17:25 maybe they could swing back in the other direction next year but um this is this is not a team that's inspiring a ton of confidence right now and especially knowing that nobody's going to be back none of your starters that we thought were good um maybe there are upgrades but you're not upgrading at running back you're not upgrading at either one of your starting cornerback positions. The only thing you could talk me into is maybe because of the way that Jalen's been playing this year is that whoever is your starting quarterback next year could be a slight upgrade, but I don't think that would be enough just to say that like,

Starting point is 00:17:56 Oh, well, Jalen's no good. Well, the next guy would be marginally better, but you still are losing so much experience across the board. I think no matter what you thought about this team we all knew there was going to be maybe a little regression coming

Starting point is 00:18:10 this year and with the way that they're playing i just i don't know what the argument is i don't know what the argument is that like oh yeah this could be a much improved team next season i think the hope is just that it's one of those like addition by subtraction things. Not that the subtractions are good players, but it's just like, I don't know, something's wrong. And you just need fresh faces. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:18:32 As I, as I, as I talked to that answer, I realized I'm probably being a little hypocritical here because to act like this team's issue this season is purely like a talent issue is a little short-sighted. Yeah. It's not.

Starting point is 00:18:50 There has to be like a major step back, reassess where did we go wrong from the coaching staff and from the athletic director to say like, what happened? Why did, why did you guys take such a massive step in the wrong direction? And I'm sure with Lance, that's going to require a lot of looking in the mirror and saying like, okay, we thought we had good players. We thought we had a good scheme, but clearly there is not a

Starting point is 00:19:17 culture. And the idea of like going back to when Lance was hired. And we always talk about this with new coaches. It's like establishing a culture establishing an identity we thought he'd done that two years and then in year three that culture completely disappeared how and why did that happen that to me is more important to figure out than like who's going to be your starting quarterback in 2025 all right right, let's finish up. Whose stat line is it anyway? This episode is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. Did you know you can get Kansas 11-1 to win the national title in basketball? You can get Hunter Dickinson a plus 550 to win the Woodland Award for National Player of the Year. You can do that and bet on any of the action, whether it's MLB, college football, NFL coming

Starting point is 00:20:04 this weekend. When you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats of you live play by play and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet that is at fanduel.com, the official sportsbook partner of the Locked On Podcast Network. Finishing things up, a little whose stat line is it anyway here. We're going to go over to KU basketball. As you said, to open the show, it is KU basketball season. According to Ken Palm, so I don't think Ken Palm counts like games

Starting point is 00:20:37 like the Chaminade game, which like some other sites do. Anyway, it doesn't matter. KU's top three in defensive rebounding rate a season ago were Hunter Dickinson, 27.5%, Johnny Furphy, 16.3%, Kevin McCuller at 15.7%. Obviously, Furphy off to the NBA draft, McCuller off to the NBA draft and graduation, Dickinson is back. So based on last year's college basketball stats, so this isn't just players at KU, but the players that they brought in who were at other colleges, but obviously doesn't count the freshmen coming in since they weren't playing college basketball, who had the highest defensive rebounding rate of any player on the 2024 to 2025 team based on last year's stats besides Hunter Dickinson. I don't think Rylan Griffin was a strong rebounder at Alabama.

Starting point is 00:21:31 I don't think AJ Storer was a strong rebounder at Wisconsin. So now I'm just going off the board here. I'm going to say just because of the competition and his role, I'm going to go with Zeke Mayo. Ding, ding, ding. You are correct. Zeke Mayo mayo a 15.7 defensive rebound rate which was what kevin mcculler had last year again different competition aj store would be next at a 12.5 and then nobody else returning players the transfer they brought in are even into the

Starting point is 00:22:00 double digits is that scary yeah i mean yeah it's scary i mean going like when bill said that he thinks aj store needs to be like a top offensive rebounder in the country yeah that tells me that like there's an emphasis on rebounding right now because they're saying oh none of these guys want to do it it's not the pant it's not that they can't be a rebounding team because i think with like bill's always said that with with defense and rebounding it's it's not about skill it's about like do you want to do you feel like being a defender do you feel like rebounding the basketball so I'm sure with all these dudes coming in here thinking like oh I'm gonna be the man I'm at Kansas I'm gonna have a good year gonna go off to the NBA it's like hey guys let's all

Starting point is 00:22:43 take a step back here and uh maybe reassess some roles here. So yeah, it's, I mean, that's going to be one of the big questions coming into the season is like, okay, you're going to get better offensively, but what about all the other stuff? Yep. And if you're playing too big basketball, you better be a good rebounding team, but we will see. All right. He's Nick Schwert. I'm Derek Johnson.

Starting point is 00:23:00 That'll do it for this episode of locked on Jayhawks. You can find the show anywhere you get your podcast. See you next time with LOJ.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - The Bill Self Dog House, 30 Point Scorer for Kansas Jayhawks Basketball, KU Football Concerns & More

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