Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - WHAT IF Tyran Stokes DOES or DOESN'T Pick Kansas - Defining the Kansas Jayhawks Offseason

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Kansas Jayhawks face a pivotal moment as the pursuit of Tyran Stokes heats up—will Bill Self secure the high-ceiling recruit to complete the starting lineup, or must KU pivot to alternate targets like Allen Graves, Juke Harris, or Milan Momcilovic? Derek Johnson breaks down the latest twists in Kansas basketball’s off-season, from Stokes’ unpredictable recruitment and social media drama to the strategic challenges posed by NIL budgets and the possibility of the NCAA’s new five-for-five eligibility rule. Key discussions include top transfer portal options for the Jayhawks, the evolving market for Big 12 talent, and how a potential Stokes miss could reshape KU’s roster and rotation. Plus, Derek Johnson spotlights fresh transfer news, new center prospects, and a revealing look at Kansas football’s roster-building success, highlighted by an impressive influx of career starts. Can Kansas stay ahead in the ever-changing college athletics landscape? Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get two-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It'd be really nice if Kansas could land Tyron Stokes, but if it doesn't happen, where do they end up and where do they pivot? 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? We're going to be breaking down Tyron Stokes on today's episode of the show. What happens if he doesn't pick KU? Where does KU go to? And if he does pick KU, where do they? go from there. Then we'll get to a little bit of KU football as well with some recent news,

as well as a kind of an interesting stat that would be a positive thing for KU. Let's start right here with the latest on Tyrant Stokes, which I guess there really isn't a latest. He's just kind of having a fun time trolling people on social media and enjoying what we assume is going to be an upcoming decision, but I guess we don't entirely know or really know at the end of things here. Who knows what he is going to decide at this point? And I think all the way through this commitment has been very difficult to kind of gauge where it's going to go. It's been very wild and wacky all the way through. When is he going to commit? Is it going to be now? And then it's like he gets pushed off. And then it happens, you know, who's the leader? Oh, it's this team. Now it's

this team. Right. So it's really hard to figure out, right? The most ideal world is that Kansas lands Tyron Stokes and that you're able to move forward in the offseason. Stokes comes aboard for KU. He's your number one option on your team. He can be one of your leaders, if not your leader in scoring per game. Passers on the team, he's initiating the offense, he's one of those rebounder, like he would just be one of your best at, like everything that you would have on the team, right? And he would come in and provide a level of ceiling and potential to try to raise the

team to the next level. It would be a gigantic win for KU to get him, right? It would also put you in a position where if you can land Tyron Stokes, you would feel like you would have your starting one through four and you would just be needing to grab your starting center. And then basically like one other player who, can be in the rotation as a backup, likely a guard. And then from there, just be kind of filling out the roster.

So if you can land him, your both success and completion of the offseason gets really close to being done. And what if you don't land him? Because it does feel like there has been an element of the success or lack thereof of this offseason for KU is going to be very, very dependent on whether they land Tyrant Stokes or not. And there's, you know, some good players, star players that are in. the transfer portal still. So it's not like you couldn't replace him with somebody who doesn't have

some sort of ability, but Stokes clearly has the highest ceiling of those options. It would obviously be a disaster if you don't land Stokes too from the standpoint of like you've almost had to wait this long and work your plans around it and then it ends up being something else in terms of what you maybe could have done with a higher sense of urgency in the off season, right? So if you don't land Tyron Stokes. I think some of the top ads that you could use that money on. Could you, could you get Allen Graves to not go in the NBA draft? Like, that would be the immediate one where I'd be like, I'm all over Allen Graves. Could you make that happen? Maybe he just stays in the draft regardless. There's a couple wings that are available if you want to fill that specific spot,

two and a yes of who now from Baylor is somebody who's in the transfer portal, average 18 a game in the big 12. There's some warts to his game, but he clearly has proven he can do it at the big 12 level. and you could try to just develop a big 12 all-star team with Keanu Daz and, you know, potentially him and maybe go out and find a center. Who knows? But Duke Harris, another one, we just did a deep dive on Duke and very talented score and player for you. Milan, Momchilovich would certainly be one that unbelievable three-point shooter. I don't know the likelihood of that one. In fact, I don't think it's very likely.

And then you have the kind of international options, right? There's guys that I don't know about or that maybe we'll know about later or whatever that maybe the international, you know, experts or recruiting experts are going to have a better idea on. The two that come to mind for me are Luis Suigo, who is the like 7-2-7-3 center that could give you a little bit of what like Michigan had with a day, Mara. I don't know that he's that good of a rim protector as Mara is, but just in terms of having that big center international prospect that can do a lot for you on the floor. The other one that I don't know if it makes sense for KU's current roster construction,

but just if you're just, you know, if you don't land Stokes and you're just trying to get the best player available from a money perspective, Gene Montero is a former like OTE guy who went overseas and he's been one of the best players overseas in Europe. He's only 22 years old. He's more of a point guard though. So it would basically have to be like, hey, we'll start you. We're either going to play a three-guard lineup or more like one of Kinney or Blyden will be coming off the bench. But would either of those guys be happy with that?

Or could you potentially get a decommit situation if you brought on Montero? That would be the challenge of doing that. Whereas if you lose Stokes, you're maybe more than. looking for the wings and then your options get a little bit more limited, right? Or do you go for like, because here's the thing. Let's just assume the number that I've constantly heard of floated out for KU in terms of their budget is 15 million. But the thing with these budgets, it's not a salary cap like the NFL or the NBA. These budgets can move. If donors lose faith in a coach, it can move the opposite direction. If a donor,

is approached about, hey, you know, I need an extra $2 million to close this deal, then the budget can go up for that year, right? So $15 million could be a loose number, right? You get the donor in the right mood for the right player. Maybe it's $18 million that year, right? You don't entirely know. But if we just assume it's at that figure of $15. Let's assume Paul and B and Colorsario are combining for about $2 million.

Let's say Blighton, Dawes, and Kinney are combining for about six, right? that would assume Kinney's making one, one and a half somewhere in that range, and that each of Dawes and Blighton are making like at least two, right, which I think is fair based on some of the other numbers that we've heard kind of come out there. Let's assume Adkins, Perry and Barnett are on the cheaper end for high school players and total up like a million dollars, right? For those players alone, that's already $9 million. And maybe you think some of those are on the high end.

Maybe you're like, well, this is a million and a half and that should be $5 million. Okay, let's say it's $8 million. dollars. Let's say they've used $8 million or the 15. That would only leave them $7 million to work with. And if we're talking about one of these players, Duke Harris, Tunei Yes, Fu, Milan, Mabitch, Alan Graves, Luis Suigo, Jim Montero. These are probably guys that are at minimum going for $3 million, if not four, maybe even five, dare I say $6 million. Like, there goes your budget on one player. And you still would need a starting center. You still wouldn't need to fill out your roster, and you still wouldn't need at least one more quality bench player that can be in the rotation, right? So the

Money goes very quickly is I guess kind of where I'm at, right? Which I almost wonder like if KU doesn't land Stokes, are you in a position where you do have to move the budget to like 18 million? Can you fundraise to that point to make it work if you are KU? Because if you only have six or seven million dollars left and you don't land Stokes, what the heck would I do? I would probably like do everything in your power to get one of those. I mean, okay, most ideal thing in the world. If we're just assuming my money can sway whoever, I'm taking Alan Graves in that situation. And then I'm figuring out a wing from there who can maybe like I'm probably taking like a Dwayne Aristode who is more of like a three and D wing who's more of like an off ball player like still developing but has some talent.

And I'm I'm going to cheap out a little more at the three. I'll have Graves and Dawes as my four or five and I'll feel good about that. Right. But then you're out of money, you know? It goes very quickly. Are you better off, I guess, maxing out if you don't land Stokes at the center and having a cheaper wing, or are you better off maxing out at the wing and having a cheaper center? Like, that's a question that you can kind of have here too.

Versus if you do have $18 million and you do have another $9, $10 million to work with, now you can be like, okay, even if you don't land Stokes, you can get one of those wings and you can get one of the top centers and you can get somebody to come off the bench. So the difference in the budget of what KU is going to have is going to play a pivotal role, obviously in whatever they can kind of do. But it also feels like right now there's there's this unknown element in all this in the roster build of the potential five for five that the NCAA could pass a new rule allowing for basically players to play five seasons over five years.

There would be no more red shirts. So everybody gets a fifth year. Whether you don't play or you do play, you get five years. And the fifth year or the countdown, the clock, I guess, would start. as soon as you either start school, start college, your collegiate season, whatever, or you turn 19. So, you know, there would be, and then it's like our players are going to be grandfathered in. That would cause some chaos for a couple of reasons. One, current players who would be eligible to do that, if they come back, does it lead players who

committed to a school being like, wait, you're coming back? The spot I thought I had as a starter, now no longer a starter because this player came back for his fifth season, I'm going to transfer somewhere else. And now some of those names we thought were off the board are back on the board again. Or do some of the fifth year players enter the portal and now they're on the board. And the prospect pool deepens for KU. And by having more availability, the price that you have to pay for those players goes down because the supply is like right now it feels like the demand is higher than the supply, especially a center, right? There's a ton of demand for good centers and there's not enough good ones in the portal.

And so the price is just jacking up. if you get a bunch of new players in there with the five for five and their grandfathered in, then maybe it goes the other way. Then maybe there's more good players than there is demand for the players, because all these rosters are overfilled with the guys. For what it's worth, if that did happen for KU, if the five for five does happen and gets grandfathered in, the only player who would outside of, like, I'm sure, I don't know, Justin Cross, maybe, but for like non-walk-ons, the only player who would qualify for this for Kansas would be

Tray White. Melvin Council would not qualify. He still needs the waiver because he had the two years of Juco or whatever it was. And then the three years, I think, of college ball. So he would have been, he would be on his six year next year. So he would need a waiver regardless. Tray White would would qualify. And honestly, looking at the roster now, if you said Tray White was on the roster, I would say either Tray White or Leroyd-Blyden or Keanu Daz, those would be your three. You'd be in contention for who's the best player on the team. So honestly, it'd be a good thing if Tray White could come back. But it feels like if you don't land Stokes, you're really relying on that rule to pass. Ideally, you land Stokes, and then we kind of go from there.

So we'll see what happens. It's been a whacking wild recruitment and obviously one that we're going to have to just wait and see what happens. Even after he does commit, I think there's going to be a portion of me that's just like, wait, when is the other shoe going to drop? You know, that's kind of how it feels at this point in time. All right, we got some other transfer portal news. Some last minute entries came in that I think are kind of interesting names and some other

portal news that could have a relation to KU. Plus, we get into a low KU football, a really good stat to point to, and some KU football news losing one of their receivers. We'll get to all that next. This is locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Fandul. The NBA playoffs are here where every possession matters, every magnified, and every game can swing a series.

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get college basketball futures for the upcoming season. Head to fandwell.com. That is Fandual play your game. Today's episode is also brought to you by the everydayer club, which you can join at Locked on Jayhawks. Supercast.com. You can get the show ad-free, locked on Jayhawks. dot supercast.com. All right, some other transfer portal news. So some last minute portal entries

that I find kind of interesting here, James Scott, who is a center for all-man. I mean, anytime I see a new center enter the portal at this point, it's like, oh, what's going on? Wait, new center, what? And that is the case for James Scott, who this is actually is one that's interesting. If you just look at the box stats,

four points, four and a half rebounds per game, you're like, what's the big deal? Here's the thing. As we've been looking at some of these guys, like Christian Reeves and Anton Bonk, those guys were playing smaller roles at power fives, went down to the lower level and then blew up. So the fact that James Scott's averaging four points, four and a half rebounds per game at a power four level, you know, if he were to drop down like those guys, he would probably blow up too, right? So don't necessarily hold that against him.

He has a really good defensive rebound rate. He's got a solid block rate. He shot 73% on twos, more of a. you know, I'm going to dunk it or take the open shot. Ole Miss was about seven points better per 100 possessions when he was on the floor, like all of that coming from the defensive end. He would be one that, you know, again, I can't imagine it's going to cost too much. But if you were saying, hey, would you rather have James Scott or Christian Reeves or Anton Bonk,

I think in that point I would rather have Scott. So that would be one that I would be very interested in. Another interesting name, one that beat Kansas this year is Jordan Burks at UCF. and Birx is a wing shooter. He's like 6-9. You can play him at the 3 or the 4. The problem here is if you're landing Jordan Berks, because Kew already has their 4 with Keanu Dawes.

If you're landing Jordan Berks, it probably means you didn't get Tyrant Stokes. And is Jordan Burke's enough to replace Tyron Stokes. No, he is not. Now, maybe you can convince yourself if you want to play small, if you want to play Keanu Dawes at the 5 and play, you know, if you did land Tyron Stokes, him at the 4 and Berks at the 3 or vice versa,

then you could make that work. Berks is an excellent shooter. I will say really weird thing on Birx. Again, excellent shooter, a really good offensive player, has a good offensive impact and offensive efficiency numbers. UCF was oddly like 11 points better when he was off the floor than he was on the floor per 100 possessions, but at least another interesting name there. And then another name, which is another center here, is Damon Wilkinson.

And Wilkinson will be a junior. He's from South Dakota State, 610, 2.45, 14.6.5 rebounds per game. So a little interesting there. A decent offensive rebound number, solid defensive rebound number, not a rim protector, not a good shot blocker, not a good defender in general. It does have some good touch and skills on the offensive end of the floor. But that's one where it's like if he was coming in as a backup, I could talk myself into it. If he's coming in as your starter, I wouldn't love that for KU.

So we'll see where that one ends up going in if KU has some sort of interest. The other portal news to get to is so Christian Reeves visit wrapped up, with KU. And I think he's visiting Louisville now, which becomes interesting because like, okay, if he ends up picking Louisville and going to Louisville, it means one of two things. Either KU completely backed off and didn't want him anymore, or if KU still did want him and he picks Louisville over Kansas to be the backup to Flory Badunga over being, if not the starter at Kansas, at least like splitting minutes or in real contention to be the starter at Kansas, that would be very, very bad, you know, for what that would mean in the off season. But I did find this one

interesting, Andrew Osasui, who we just did our top 10 center rankings. And I had Osasui in at number 10, incredible block rate developmental center from St. Bonaventure. So, you know, that's just one more center off the board. But Georgia was one of the teams in the running for Christian Reeves and one of the teams that could potentially offer him a starting spot. Now that Osasui's there, that's maybe not as clear. So, you know, maybe he goes to Louisville here, but that would be one potential less school that you'd potentially have to worry about for Christian Reef. So the center position certainly has dried up a little bit here, and maybe that five for five can come in clutch for KU.

All right, let's get to a little KU football, and there's really good stat that I think is encouraging for the upcoming season. They also will be without one of their receivers, and its NFL draft week. Can we see any Jayhawks drafted on day two or day three of the NFL draft? We'll get to all that next. This is locked on Jayhawks. This episode is brought to you by Indeed,

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at Lockdownjahawks. dot supercast.com. You can give us a follow on Twitter at L.O. underscore Jayhawks or at D. Johnson Radio. All right. This is a really encouraging KU football stat here. So this was from the athletic where they were going over some of the big takeaways from portal season in college football. And so this stat, here's the importance of this. LSU, Indiana, Texas, Miami, Texas, A&M, and Penn State. What do those teams have in common? Well, for one, you know, you look at it and starting experience is something those schools added a big amount of in the transfer portal, right?

Those are all schools that are expected to have good college football seasons as well. That would be the other common denominator there, right? But those were all schools that were also ranked in the top 10 of the athletics portal rankings as a team. So, you know, and we've talked about this before, the starting experience. thing is as big as anything that you're adding in the transfer portal. It was super, I don't know if predictive was the right word, but you can draw a big conclusion and line between the success of the teams that added the most portal starts and their success last year. Like Indiana was one of them. There were other schools that were the case. Well, if we're looking at most career starts gained in

the portal, this according to the athletic, Penn State gained 206, second was Oklahoma State at 201. Third was Texas Tech at 189. Fourth would be your Kansas Jayhawks at 181. And that's followed by Arkansas at 179, A&M, LSU, Kentucky, and Florida State. First of all, pretty interesting that you get a lot of big 12 schools on there, right? Oklahoma State at 2, Texas Tech at 3, KU at 4, UCF in at number 8. But, you know, obviously, I think the starts per edition are probably more pertinent because you do have a school like Oklahoma State who brought in, what was it, I don't know, 40, 50 kids via the portal. So it's going to be easier to add more career starts when you're adding 50 kids as opposed to Kansas, which was how many of you can't said? I don't know. I'm just guessing off top

my head, 30 or whatever it was, right? So that's a little bit different in what you're doing. But point being, it is a good thing to be on this list. It is a good thing to be on this list and adding a bunch of career starts because at the end of the day, football is a very physical sport. Football is a very strength-based sport. And so having more experienced players not only means they've gone through the gauntlet and understand what to expect, but it also probably means they're more physically and mentally and emotionally mature players, which can be a good thing in college football. Again, Indiana's average age of their players was like 22, 23 years old on their too deep this past season. And I'm not saying KU, you know, has those expectations, but like, can you get back to a bowl game?

That's the right step into doing it, gaining a lot of experience. So I think a really good stat there to maybe give you some confidence in what KU football could do this offseason. Now, they'll be doing it without Jada Nickens, who is no longer on the team. Now, Nickens, if you would remember, was a pretty highly recruited receiver who was like in Oklahoma and then a senior year went to Southern California was a two sport player. And the idea was he was going to come to KU play both. But then he never played basketball. And I was honestly pretty surprised when you didn't enter the portal in the off season because I was like, okay, you never got to play basketball, which you came here for. and it always seemed like he likes basketball more than football.

Well, now we find out he has left the team and he's going to focus on his basketball career. So KU basketball needs some players. Do they look for, no, I'm just joking. But yeah, he won't be on the team anymore. So there's that bit of news. I don't know that I was expecting him to be on the two deep or anything. So I don't know that it has a huge impact, but, you know, long term developmentally, we're hoping to turn him into something.

And obviously, you won't be able to have that opportunity anymore. And then the thing here, the NFL draft is this weekend. So Thursday was the first round. Friday is rounds two and three. And then Saturday is the rest. Rounds four through seven. I don't think we'll see any Jayhawks picked on day two, but day three could see some more Jayhawks picked.

We've seen some picked in recent years. And then we've seen others be picked up as undrafted free agents and even like Kobe Bryant's getting playing time late in the season this past year. So if you look at consensus big board rankings, Enrique Cruz, Kobe Baines, Jalen Daniels, all ranked in the top 300. Then you have Emmanuel Henderson and Bryce Foster just outside of the top 300. So all those guys that put them in range of either being drafted on day three or being

scooped up as an undrafted free agent. If we look at Dane Bruegler, who does the beast on the athletic, does really good work over there. He has Enrique Cruz all the way up at 222 and the number 17 offensive tackles. That would be definitely in draft range. And then the next closest, Emmanuel Henderson at 299 and the 40th overall receiver. Laith Marjohn is the number six kicker. and then he has both Bryce Foster and Jayland Daniels top 20 at their position.

So if I was setting it over under how many Jayhawks are going to get drafted, I don't know, it might only be 0.5. Maybe I'd up it to like 1.5 this year. But I think there's going to be a lot of Jayhawks that get invited to, you know, camps, get to play in preseason. And I think some of these players are underrated to where I think KU is going to have a couple players of that list that go undrafted. sign undrafted free agent deals and end up earning their way onto the roster.

You know, that would not surprise me at all. All right. That'll do it for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time.