Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - UNSTOPPABLE: Flory Bidunga Propels Kansas Jayhawks With Elite Performance Against Princeton Tigers

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

Kansas Jayhawks crush Princeton behind Flory Bidunga’s dominant double-double. Can Bill Self’s rotation tweaks propel KU past Duke in the Champions Classic?Derek Johnson breaks down Kansas’s 76-57 win, spotlighting Flory Bidunga’s 25 points, 10 rebounds, and defensive presence. The episode explores Tre White’s surge, Melvin Council’s reliability in transition, and Kohl Rosario’s rising confidence. Key topics include Self’s strategic lineup changes, KU’s defensive identity, and concerns about three-point shooting and second-half lapses. With Darryn Peterson still sidelined, questions mount about KU’s depth and readiness for elite competition. Kansas faces a formidable test ahead: Will their improved aggression and paint dominance be enough against a towering Duke squad? Don’t miss this analysis of the Jayhawks’ evolving strengths and their path to national relevance.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!DoorDashWith DoorDash Streaks, you save every Saturday you order — stack it up all season and you could save up to $250. Order this Saturday. Keep the streak alive. Fuel your gameday — only with DoorDash. Terms apply. Promo period through 11/18.SupplyHouseJoin the free TradeMaster program today and score serious perks like priority shipping, lower prices, and a dedicated support line. Visit SupplyHouse.com to sign up for free and use promo code SHCOLLEGE5 for 5% off your first order. GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.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.

Flory was phenomenal, his best game of the season. What does it mean for KU moving forward as they berate Princeton in the end, 76 to 57? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. What's going on? Derek Johnson here. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. And thank you every day.

Here's catching each and every episode of the show. And thank you so much for making the Lockdown Podcast Networking number one sports podcast network. On today's edition of Lockdown Jayhawks, a little game recap, KU beats Princeton 76-57. Kind of flirted with being a close game for a little bit there. KU pulls away at the end and Flory Bedung Goat was absolutely phenomenal for KU. We're going to break down his game, KU's game, what went well, what went wrong. And our favorite moments, stats, awards of the game.

game, we'll give out game balls and take a look ahead to what's next with Duke coming up on Tuesday as well. So let's just start right there with Florida Budunga. He was, like I said, fantastic today, 25 points, 10 rebounds. So you get a double double. You get 25 points. It's a new career high for him. His previous career high was 23 points. But it's not just the 25 and 10.

It's the 10 of 11 from the floor, right? It's the efficiency of getting the 25 points for him. And for instance, not the biggest team in the world. but to do it against a real D1 opponent and who, you know, this has been a team who's won the Ivy League regular season three of the last four years. This is the type of team that if they were to win the Ivy League, you know, if you're a four or five seed,

you might be playing a team like that in the first round of the NCAA tournament, right? And it's not just those with the stats for Flory to go with, I guess, the three blocks and the one steal. It's the highlights. It's the athleticism. It is the just unbelievable like moments that he had throughout this game that really reminded you of last year when you saw some of those moments and flashes as a freshman and we're like, oh, this dude has the chance to be

special. And you saw some of that specialty where if he can carry that over into other games for KU, they're going to be cooking with something. Like that is the floor. But again, if you have that performance instead of against Princeton, let's say it's against, I don't know, like a middle of the pack, big 12th, like in Oklahoma State. for instance, right? If that is who Florey has that performance against, maybe it's not 25 and 10, but could it have been 19 and 8 in that game or something? You know what? It's those types of

performances that if he can string together and be consistent with, you're cooking with an all big 12 center. Therein lies the big question, though. We have seen a little of the dips. We have seen a little bit of the ups and downs with Florey this year where it's like one game, he looks great. another game, it's like, eh, there were a few issues there or whatever. I've kind of said all the way along, like, it makes sense to me that there's going to be some inconsistencies. He's a young player, not just that he's a sophomore who's at the beginning of his sophomore season, but also this is the guy that, what, didn't start playing basketball? What is it, like three, four years into his, like before college.

So it makes sense. There's going to be some inconsistencies. The whole goal for me is that if you can iron away some of those, to where the peaks and valleys, if it can be a tighter range by the time you get to January, that's, huge. But in the meantime, while you're trying to get there, it's nice to be reminded of what the potential, of what the flash can kind of look like. And the more that you can string those games together, the more you can get to a point where you are kind of in that range that is close together. So we saw a peak of what if Florey ends up being that, you know, dominant center for KU the rest of this year or at some point this season, that's the guy that you're looking to see.

and those are the special moments that you were looking to see. And certainly, like, that Flory with Darren Peterson is as good of a dynamic duo in the country. Again, that's kind of a big question. Can you get the consistency? I also thought this is a fun game from a standpoint of almost a little bit of a send-the-message game from Bill Self. I thought, especially early in the game, like, he was trying to send a message to his team. So KU is up 3-0. Princeton hits the 3.

And it was clearly some sort of scouting, like, that's how I interpreted it. It was some sort of probably scouting report thing that they probably went over a bunch and continually said, like, do not leave this guy. I don't care if you give up like a, whatever, do not leave this guy from three. And they left him from three. And I think it was Tiller on defense and they hit a three and they tied it a three. And Bill Self immediately time out. So early in the game, it's not like the game was out of hand.

It was tied three to three for Bill Self to call time out. Clearly was trying to send a message to his team in that instance. we saw a little bit of sending a message in terms of the rotation shakeup because it had always been El Marco Jackson as the first guard off the bench. In this game, it was Jaden Dawson as the first guard off the bench. So maybe sending a bit of a message to El Marco Jackson, maybe even sending a message to Jaden Dawson to be like, hey, you've been working hard in practice, like let's get you out there. So maybe a bit of the shake up there because, again, I think that was the earliest Dawson's been in a game. It was around the 17 minute mark. And then we also saw like they ended up start.

the the jumbo jahawk lineup, I like to call it, where you start Tiller at the four with Flory at the five and Trey White at the three. And that's kind of sending a message to, again, maybe El Marco, who started the previous game, like, hey, we will go to this, this big lineup. But then also the jumbo lineup got a message sent to them because that was very short-lived. They did not stay in the jumbo lineup for too long, quickly turned in a small lineup. In fact, in the first half at one point, we saw Samis Calderon playing the five. so it was and maybe that's even a message like paul and be i don't know it just a lot of messages being sent here

and then this is maybe the one i should have led with because this is the one that is probably the most messagey of them all from bill self is that wilder evers who was one of the walk-ons on the team came in around the 13 minute mark of the game for k u and i thought he was fine out there like it wasn't something where you know he looked like lost or anything he didn't really do anything either that like popped off the page as being like oh my god like this kid should be in the rotation but you know he survived out there he was fine for the three minutes it just to me was more about the message and i'm sure part of it with bill self he probably turned him and said hey the you know all these players like we're not paying attention to the scouting

report everybody keeps leaving this guy open well you just listen to my scouting report go out there and do it and show the other guys what we're doing and i can send a message and i think he had that trust in him to do it and so that becomes an extension of the coach in what he's performing to do and took good on Wilder Evers for, you know, doing that for Bill Self in a way that allows to continue his coaching message in kind of a different way. So I think kind of a send the message game from Bill Self, which I think honestly the fans, like, I think they love it. Like, I don't know, I love seeing it. Like after you get to a certain point where when you have some recent like dips in your production where KU has been a little down comparatively over these past couple of seasons. and you kind of want to see people like come out like like okay do something about it you know do

something bill like yell at someone right and and i think fans can get endeared with that and kind of seen that uh beyond that some of the biggest positives of the game i mean we touched on florida but he was the biggest positive to me of this game for k u but i think other than that some other ones to walk away i mean trey white was fantastic and this is really the first game that i've it's like tray white's had other solid games you look at the box score he's you know will have like a quiet 10, 12 points or something. This is the first time that, like, I noticed Trey White imposing his will, so to speak. This is the Trey White that I want to see.

Aggressive Trey White. Like early on in the game, Trey White goes in on a missed shot and gets a tip in, jumping for the offense rebound, tipping it in for the bucket. And it's those plays for a guy who was a good rebounder, Illinois, but it hadn't translated to the early part of the season for KU. The numbers have been up the last couple of games. And I want to see that aggression for Trey White. And I think we saw it in this game.

That's one of the biggest positives. It's not just the fact that he had eight rebounds, which is gigantic for this team. Although that continues to make me believe because they, again, they went some jumbo lineup. They went some not. But he had a better rebounding game and they went to that. So I don't know, maybe there's something there. But 10 of 13 at the free throw line, he was consistently attacking. He was consistently getting to the line.

This is the Trey White that Kansas needs to be a successful team, the aggressive Trey White. And then I think Cole Rosario's confidence. Like you wondered, okay, how is he going to back up his 16 point performance from the previous game? And again, going back to the idea of consistency. Well, you're going to look at the box score if you didn't watch this game and go, he only had six points. He had four fouls.

You have four turnovers. Like, what do you mean the confidence was there? The thing is, the production is going to dip in and out for a freshman, for a player who's a complimentary piece out there. They're not going to be the guy who's taking, you know, the primary shots all the time. The fact of the matter is this to me. Cole Rosario did not look like a confident player,

the first three or four games of the season. In the last game, he had the 16 points. And in this game, even with the foul trouble, you saw him confident. First bucket of the game is KU hitting a corner three with Cole Rosario that, you know, it was decently contested by Princeton. And he just said, no, screw this. Like, I'm a good shooter.

I'm going to knock it down over you. And he did. And it's that confidence that I think he needs to be. successful. And yeah, of course, I love the five rebounds to kind of go with it as well. So I actually liked the process there for Colrizario in this game. And I liked it kind of backing up the previous game. If you're looking at biggest negatives, I would say like, yes, you let Prince and hang around for a while. This was a game that they were leading for a decent amount early on in the first half. And then you let them back into it at the start of the second half.

You want to see like that get tightened up a little bit more in future games. We've seen KU now several times this year struggle at the beginning of second half. That's something they're going to have to tighten up, kind of moving forward, especially going into Tuesday night. Good response from there to pull away at the end, but that certainly was a negative. I think the three-point shooting was a negative here. This is a game where Princeton certainly was stacking inside, so to speak, where they were going to say, hey, at times we're going to try to make you beat us from three. And KU only went five of 21 from three for 24%.

Now, the overall samples, KU's actually shot it well enough from three on the season, but that'll be something to watch moving forward. And then the other negative, obviously, Darren Peterson is still. hurt not playing in this game um so what does that mean for the duke game what does that mean for the early part of the season what does that mean for the rest of season right there's all those kind of questions that come about that but just overall like nice to see tray white nice to see florrie budunga just kind of showing those moments and having those strong games today and nice to be able to run away with this one in the final eight minutes after for a while there it looked like

okay maybe this could be you know a four six point game at the under four at the under eight and he ended up pulling away and making it kind of an easy win at the very end. So overall, a good tune-up, so to speak, over these last two, you would think, gets ready for the Champions Classic, but a different beast upcoming in Duke. So we'll get to that, as well as game balls, game awards, all that next. This is Locked on Jayhawks. And today's episode of LOJ is brought to you by Door Dash. It is the weekend.

Let's look back and crown this week's MVP on Who Delivered, powered by DoorDash. just like you can win every Saturday with DoorDash Streaks, saving more every time you order, these players delivered when it mattered most. Let's break it down. For Kansas, we got to go with Floribunga. Flory delivered in a big way, whether it was one of the many dunks he had on lobs, whether it was the donkey had off the pivot foot and the post, whether he had that kind of chase down on the loose ball and then ended up scoring on the layup in the second half at the end.

Well, there's one of the marks that he had in the game. Flory continued to deliver all throughout the game for KU, 25 points on 10. 10 of 11 shooting. And just like Florida Bedunga delivered for Kansas, DoorDash delivers your Saturdays with DoorDash streaks to save every Saturday order, stack it up all season, and you could save up to $250, including $100 in DoorDash credits. Order this Saturday, keep the streak alive, fuel your game day only with DoorDash.

Terms apply promo period through November 18th. Thanks for joining us on Lockdown Jayhawks, and thanks again for making the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network. And again, you can find us here on Locked on Jayhawks anywhere. You get your podcasts. We just had a recruiting episode talking a little there. We had a little KU football episode.

This next week, we're going to have the Champions Classic, funny content coming out there. And we'll have a little KU Iowa State football content coming out this week as well. Okay, let's get to our moments, plays of the game. We'll get to our stat of the game and our awards of the game here before we give out our game balls and look ahead to Duke. So I think the, I don't know, my favorite moment of the game is honestly a stretch of, like there were a lot of fun highlight plays, I think from Florida Bedunga specifically. There were a few like really fun highlight plays I thought from like Melvin Council even. But my favorite, I guess this is both of these players.

There's other guys that stick out, right? But is really those two guys and overall KU as a team defensively? This is my favorite moment of the game because it's the one that I've kind of been harking on, the idea that I think for Kansas to be a good team this year, you need to be a defensive first identity team. And it's going to take some time. I think we've seen flashes and moments. I mean, holding Prince into 57. That's a good thing there. But it's the defensive flash moment. So it goes from, I think Kansas is down 18 to 14 in the first half of this point. And Flory jumps a passing lane. It causes a deflected ball that goes like on the court, on the ground.

It's rolling. He's able to beat the. the guard to it or whatever other player he was guarding. And then he picks it up off the ground, dribbles it to the rim and dunks it. Like that on its own are not normal plays for a center to make. And it's the defense leading to offense. Then moments later, you're down 1816. They throw the ball away because of some defensive pressure and a bad pass. And Melvin got it almost looked like like, like Princeton threw the ball away.

And it almost looked like, I don't know, eight of the 10 people on the court, seven of the 10 people on the court were like, well, that's thrown away. That's clearly going out of bounds. That was thrown way too far. And Melvin counsel's like, nah, I'm really fast. I'm going to get to the ball. And he sprints to the ball. And in a ball that a lot of other guys don't get before it goes out of bounds,

he gets there, which allows KU instead of just having the ball against a set defense to have a, I think Trey White might have been running with him too. So it ends up being like a two on zero and he scores it to tie at 18. Then moments later, Flory blocks one on. off the backboard, and then at the other end, and a half court set, Melvin Council scores an and one. So that little stretch of your defense turning into your offense, I think showed everything that you want this team to be and the identity to be. And even though it's early in the game there, that to me is the moment of this game. Now, honestly, if you want to pick like an athletic finish by

Florey, the loose ball he tracked down in the corner that he ends up driving up to get the layup, I think for me, my favorite dunk of the game was the one. It was toward the end of the first half. He catches it in the post and he works around on a pivot foot. And then he throws down a left-handed hammer over the dude. That was a lot of fun. But yeah, I think my favorite moment overall would just be that kind of sequence there with the defense leading to the offense.

All right, stats of the game here. I think the biggest stat of this game is points in the paint. You ended up leading 40 to 12 in points of the paint. Now, part of that is Princeton wanted to be a three-point shooting team. And also that you had Floyd, but doing up patrolling the paint and making life difficult on them when they did get the ball inside. But also you were able to establish the ball inside. And so that ends up being a huge difference in this game.

But I think it also showed up in the aggression. KU shoots 28 free throws. Princeton shoots 16. And I think the difference is, again, like KU was shooting more shots in the room. KU was the aggressor in this game. So they're going to shoot more. So I think those are two kind of coupled things that come together as one. I would say if we wanted to throw another stat out there,

the fast break points being 15 to zero is I think we talked about Prince and struggling in the half or in the fast break so far this season coming in in Kansas has been good in those areas and that was something you took advantage and that's something that's kind of been one of your calling cards so far this season and it showed up in another big way here in today's game I guess you could also look to the blocks five zero but that just kind of goes back into the the points in the paid conversation are there awards here the jumbo jhawks award that goes to the starting lineup it was very short lived though and ended up not being the thing. My 100% trust award, that's going to go to Melvin Council when he's in transition. So Melvin Council finishes this game with eight points, only four of 11 from the floor, but six assists, two rebounds. He only had one turnover, did that in 28 minutes. It just feels like in transition, he is in complete control. There are moments when he is patient and he's kind of jogging up the floor if he doesn't see it. There are moments when he's like, I'm just going to attack right away. There are moments when he's trying to sprint his way to get an easy bucket for KU. And then there's moments where it just feels like, I think KU missed the three. I mentioned this in last game,

there was a moment that Melvin Council, like, sprinted up the floor, and it felt like the whole way he was just trying to get the defender to knowing that they would have less numbers down there to come up on him so that he could kick it out for somebody hit a three, and they did. And in this game, it was like a very similar play, but I think KU missed the three, if I'm recalling correctly. And so with Melvin Counsel, it's just that he knows what he wants to do, but also he's good at, like, adjusting when you make, I don't know, he's just such a good transition player. I have full trust in him whenever he has the ball in his hands in transition. Now, unfortunately, my zero percent trust award right now is with Melvin

counsel when he's taking a jumper. So he came into this game just four of 16 on shots that were not at the rim, four of 16 shots not at the rim coming into this game. And today he went 0 of 2 from 3. He went 0 of 2 at the free throw line. This is a potential possible future problem. They're going to need him to start making some jumpers because we saw a little bit of it from Princeton. At some points during this game, it's not just that Princeton was going under screens on three-point shots. Princeton was going under screens if he was getting him in the mid-range. There were moments where he had five feet in front of him, like where the free throw line was. They were basically just being like, no, we are not respecting any jump shot here. So that'll be

something that they need to get ironed out right now. If you're putting the jump shot right now on a scale of KJ Adams to Marcus Garrett, I don't know that you would like the answer to that one. I do have confidence the long sample size has always been that counsel hasn't been the most efficient shooter but he's at least been able to hit them at a decent volume i think a hot streak ish could come at some point where you know maybe he has like a stretch where three of five games he hits two threes and three of the games or something i think that's entirely on the table but it does need to happen and certainly needs to happen from a scouting report report perspective uh before some of these teams start really just sagging in the paint all right let's uh finish up here with

the little game balls and what is next for KU with Duke coming up on Tuesday. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks and today's episode of the show is brought to you by Fanduals Sportsbook. College basketball season's back and the NBA's back as well. There's no better place to get in on the action than with Fandul, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you miss the start of the game or just want to ride a hot hand, Fanduel has live bets on everything from who's going to score next to fourth quarter comebacks. So you can build your parlay of who's going to score 20. plus points tonight in the NBA.

And you can even get to that very easily with their parlay builder on the NBA side of things of Fanduel. Plus, you can even combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. It keeps every game exciting, especially when your team is making that late push. Right now, Fanduel is given new customers $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. So head to fanduel.com to sign up and play your game with Fandul, the official sports spending partner of the NBA and the Lockdown Podcast Network. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks.

Again, you can find our show anywhere to get your podcast, including on our YouTube page. And thank you so much to the everydayers catching each and every episode of the show. Okay, so Kansas wins 76 to 57 over Prince in. Let's give out some game balls. Let's start with the offensive game ball for KU. It has to go to Florey, 25 points, 10 of 11 from the floor. He also led Kansas with three offensive rebounds. Now, the one kind of bugaboo there, you could say, would be four turnovers.

I did actually appreciate there were a few times where Florey like slung a pass to the opposite side after he was double teamed. And I did appreciate like some of the potential vision there, right? But yeah, you want to nail down on the turnovers. And maybe for that if you wanted to, if you wanted to say Trey White with 18 points on just seven shots, I could hear that a little bit. But yeah, Flore was the most important offensive player for KU in this game. And certainly he gets the offensive game ball for KU. The defensive game ball for KU, I'm also going to go with Florida Padunga because he had three blocks.

The rest of the other players on KU plus Princeton combined had two. So he out blocked everybody else on the team. He also ended up with a steel in the game. But you go back to those in the paint numbers. Yes, a big part of that is that KU is not making threes. They have to score inside. And that KU has a size advantage and that Princeton has to make threes. And that's, you know, part of their philosophy.

They want to shoot a lot of threes. So that is part of it. But even when Princeton tried to go inside, a lot of times maybe they just didn't even take a shot because the presence of Florida Bedunga. Or maybe they did and they just didn't make it because the presence of Florida Bedunga. And so I think his impact was very clear in this game on both ends of the floor. We'll give him the offensive and defensive game ball. If we did want to switch it up just to give somebody else's name, we can have Trey White the offensive and Flory the defensive. And then I guess Flore the overall game ball in this one for KU.

So what's next now for the Jayhawks? It'll be Duke in the Champions Classic. Duke right now is rated second on Ken Palm. They just hammered Indiana State after smashing army, after blowing out Western Carolina. Their only like real game, I guess you would say so far, is Texas. They beat by 15 in a semi-home game for them.

Texas is 42nd on Ken Palm, or at least they were when they played them. So this will be interesting because, you know, for Duke, this is kind of a like just how good is Duke. I have no question in my mind. this Duke team is extremely talented and is going to be a very good basketball team. But it's like, are they close to the level that last year's team was, which was like an all-time great team until that crazy Houston comeback?

Or is this more of like a, okay, yeah, they're going to be one of the top 10 teams in the country, but maybe they're not going to be like last year where it's like, yeah, they're definitively up until again that comeback like the best team in the country. So I don't know, it'll be kind of interesting to see. I will say this. I do think that game is a little scary for KU. I think as we look early in the season, it almost feels like to me that, the more it's weird because in some years past it's been the opposite it almost feels like right now and

this is small sample size the guard oriented teams to think like louisville right the kew matched up better with them than they did against teams with a bunch of size i.e north carolina well the problem with duke is that they have a ton of size throughout the lineup uh patrick and gongba's 611 250 Cameron Boozer 6-9-250. Malik Brown, 6-9-2-25. They've got another center is 6-11-2-40. I'm just going to call him Mr. U because the last name is a wild one. Domey-Sar on the wing is like 6A. Comania, who's like a five-star crew to 6'8. Even their guards, Caden Boozer, Caleb Foster, Isaiah Evans, that's 6-4-6-5-66. So this is a big team. Kansas is going to have to handle the size.

And will Darren Peterson be back for the game? That's obviously a huge question because it's hard for me to see KU beating Duke without Darren Peterson. I think even with Darren Peterson, it's going to be tough because you're going to be welcoming him back if he is back to the first game after maybe you've established a little bit of chemistry. Is there a little bit of rust to shake off? I think KU can beat him with Darren Peterson, even then you're going to be underdogs. And so if you don't have Darren Peterson, you're definitely underdogs. You might even be like nine or 10 point underdogs without Darren Peterson.

So I think we're going to learn a lot about this team on Tuesday night, especially about what is the fight, what is the grit after the last half we saw against North Carolina, the last time KU played a really good opponent. 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 see you next time with LOJ.