Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - WHAT IS GOING ON? Darryn Peterson Misses Texas A&M Corpus Christi Game | Concerning for Kansas?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Darren Peterson already missed his second game for the Jayhawks through five games, including exhibition play. Bill Self said it was precautionary, but what is actually going on is this caused to be concerned for KU? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day.

Starting point is 00:00:28 What's going on? Johnson here. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. And thank you the everydayers catching each and every episode. Thank you so much for making the Lockdown Podcast Network, your number one sports podcast network. And on this bonus episode of the show, we're going to be breaking down the Darren Peterson injury or missed game, whatever you want to call it. Is he not injured? I don't know. What's exactly going on? We're trying to try to get to the bottom of it. We're going to get into how it could potentially affect KU if it is an injury versus if it's not and all that on this episode of the show. If you are looking for just the straight recap, What exactly happened in KU's win over Texas and M Corpus Christi? You can find that as well, and where you're podcasts, including on YouTube. So let's start right here. So in the post game press conference, here's what Bill Self said.

Starting point is 00:01:13 This comes from Jack Ritter, who does work with Michael Swain over at Fogg. Dot Net in 24-7 sports and tweeted out, he said, Bill Self said, Darren Peterson's hamstring was tight this morning. The head coach, quote, didn't want to take, didn't want to risk that, end quote.

Starting point is 00:01:29 He described the move. move as precautionary, though Self looks forward to seeing him on practice on Thursday. Now, we got to hear from Bill Self at a Monday press conference ahead of this game, and he said everybody was healthy for that practice. We know Darren Peterson practiced in that. Maybe tells you, I guess, that it was something that obviously happened between then and now. Again, he said tight this morning.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Does that mean that they did a morning shoot around and I got tight then, or did he get tight in practice after or something, the press conference? the fact that he said looks forward to seeing him in practice on Thursday, that obviously is the most encouraging part that he's not expected to miss time. No, it is interesting because there was a Jeff Goodman report, I guess supposedly from what I've been told to the grapevine on on three and stuff that mentioned him as possibly having like strained hamstring. Now, I will say strained hamstring.

Starting point is 00:02:18 I'm looking at this just one site, right? My Cleveland Clinic.org. So I have no idea. Whatever. But it says if you have a, so there's different grades of, you know, strains. It says if you have a grade one injury, you might need less than a week to feel better. Grade two and grade three injuries will take longer to heal. It can take up to several months. Now, the fact that he's talking about him being practice, being bracket practice on

Starting point is 00:02:40 Thursday tells me that if this is a hamstring strain, it probably alludes more to, you know, the grade one. Now, to that notion, if that were the case, would it make sense for him not to practice Thursday and then not to play in the Princeton game? Maybe it would. But it sounds like something that's kind of case to case and day to day where this does become a little interesting though is like we've gotten all these different I don't want to say they're not excuses because again he's like injured I'm just struggling to come up with another turn different reasons I guess of why Peterson is like missed time we got the cramping at the end of the game in Louisville we got the we thought it was cramping and in the Fort Hay State exhibition it was that

Starting point is 00:03:20 he's you know not feeling well so I guess you would assume like sick and now we get this one in there, it is just, it's, it's either worrisome or it's odd. It's worrisome because there keep being things popping up that is preventing him from playing. That would be one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is if you want to take the, I don't even know if I want to say tinfoil hat theory, because I don't think this is like a, oh, there's aliens in the KU basketball program. No, it's not like that. But it's like, um, do you start to like point things together and be like, you know, I've heard some things here or there about the management team being controlling on this or that. Like, is there a level of load management involved here in

Starting point is 00:04:04 terms of, hey, we don't want our guy who's going to potentially be the number one pick to get injured in one of these silly games. We want to keep them for the real games. And I can see the plus minus of if that were a thing. I would just start right here. I don't think Bill Self would like that. But, you know, if you have the number one player in the country saying, hey, I want to play for you, but I'm not going to play against, you know, this school, this school, whatever, right? Like, you still take it and you kind of deal with it. Bill Self could play a game of checkers against a four-year-old and he would want to win the game. Like, that is how competitive Bill Self is. The pluses are that, yeah, you're not, you know, getting a guy injured in a game that doesn't matter as much and that you should be able to, you won by 30 points. win without him. The other positives is it allows other guys more runway, more minutes to kind of step up and gain some confidence and improve their game. The downside is some of these early games, right? Like college basketball season isn't the NBA season. It's not 82 games where if you miss 10 games, like you're still pretty much there. The college basketball season

Starting point is 00:05:05 is a sprint compared to the NBA season. And that doesn't just mean in terms of taking advantage of every moment you have. It means you have less games to find chemistry together as a team. And these types of games where it's a lower stakes in terms of if you mess up, it's probably not going to cost you as much as, say, the North Carolina game to kind of iron those things out and find chemistry as a team, that's what would be a problem. So I'm not saying that's what's actually happening here. I'm just kind of going through some of the different scenarios if this or that is kind of the case here because it does seem kind of like a peculiar situation to say the least.

Starting point is 00:05:40 So I guess, again, the fact that it is just precaution from Bill's off. If he ends up playing against Princeton on Saturday, then that'll be the case. But then also in the back of your mind, this whole season, you're going to be sitting there going, oh, no, no, is this going to be a Joel Mbid situation for KU, which is certainly uncomfortable and scary in its own right, silly. So let's talk about how this potentially affects KU. What players does it affect most? How does it affect the team if you were to miss any extended time, whether it's, you know, the next game or at later points of the season, if something were to pop back up because this is starting to become more of,

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Starting point is 00:07:41 Again, check out our recap episode where we just kind of more broke. down the game anywhere you get your podcast as well, kind of breaking down the potential repercussions of a Darren Peterson injury here on today's episode. Well, I mean, in the short term, you're talking, if you misses the Princeton game, it shouldn't be an issue for KU. In the long term, or I guess the immediate short term after that would be, you know, what's the status for the Duke game, right? That could be a problem. In the long term, obviously, it's a huge deal because this whole team has been built around the idea of you have basically role players around Darren Peterson's. What are the, is it just a collection of

Starting point is 00:08:16 role players if you don't have Darren Peterson, right? And that's a problem. I was kind of like spitballing in my head when you start to like think worst case scenario. Is he going to be out like a certain amount of time? How good is this team without Darren Peterson? Like if you take him away, who are you taking in a seven game series? Are you taking last year's Kansas team or would you take this year's Kansas team minus Darren Peterson? And I don't know the answer. I mean, I think Hunter Dickinson would probably have some pretty good totals offensively. I think Florey would be able to beat Hunter down the court in other ends. And then I think like the counsel,

Starting point is 00:08:49 DeWan Harris would be a super interesting matchup. That's one guy who's more like slow paced than DeWan, who's a really good passer. Melvin counsel, all the speed and athleticism. DeWan doesn't really score much. Counsel is more inefficient, but he can score more. It's like, that would be a super interesting matchup. K.J. Adams and Trey White, like the fact that this team actually

Starting point is 00:09:09 has a four who can shoot it a little bit. I don't know. Like, this team has Tiller that would be injured. Like, is there a chance? I know you could go other way. Like, is there a chance that this team, even if they didn't have Darren Peterson, just based on having more versatile pieces, more pieces that can, you know, Bill Self can get more out of in a certain way, I almost would take this team.

Starting point is 00:09:33 And I don't know if that's, I don't know, man. And maybe that's like having too positive of a look at it. But anyway, I think in terms of if Peterson does miss more time throughout the season or this is more of it kind of a long term or a bigger deal than it ends up, you know, just being a precautionary thing, who are the players that this does affect most and that kind of need to step up? I think one is El Marco Jackson. We saw that in this game where El Marco ends up starting with Peterson out.

Starting point is 00:10:01 Like that should tell you right there that he'd be in, you know, line for more minutes. and obviously more dribbling and creation would be kind of reliant on Marco Jackson. I think you'd be really counting on Rosario and counsel to have to score more, which you saw tonight for Cole Rosario, we had 16 points, but there'd be more pressure on that to be kind of a night in and night out, a consistent thing for KU, if that were the case. And then I think in general, like, you would need shock creation. I can't help the thing. Like, if Peterson were to miss an extended period of time, do you reconsider having,

Starting point is 00:10:33 because we saw some cool moments from Gingala at the end of the first half, but it still seems like he's behind Jamari McDowell and Jaden Dawson, and I guess, I'll Marco Jackson, if you want to mention that too, and Cole Rosario and stuff in Melfin Council in terms of the guard rotation. But if Peterson were to be out, do you consider jumping Gingala over Jamari McDowell or maybe even over Jad and Dawson because he is more of somebody who can create his own shot? And if you didn't have Peterson, you would need more of the on ball player who can do that, right? That would be kind of a question to me.

Starting point is 00:11:02 And then I would say it would, you know, regardless of that, be a bigger runway of opportunity for Dawson, Ingala and McDowell so that one of them could kind of establish themselves at that point in time. But it really just would be a little bit of everyone, right? It would be counted on, like maybe it's even if Peterson were out in a big game, like, is that a game where you're counting on Bryson Tiller to try to give you 15 points? And you're going to try to bully ball them inside and try to play more too big basketball. Like maybe that's a solution as well. So it would certainly impact everyone, but I think those are the ones that would kind of mainly impact for KU. As far as how this right now, him missing some of these early games and how if he were to miss more games in the future were affect KU as a team outside of the individual players. We get to that next.

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Starting point is 00:12:42 the number one sports network out there. So if he does miss games, how does this affect KU in the short term? If there's more games to be missed, whether it's the next game, whether it's, again, more of this kind of sporadic missing of games that we've seen so far, I think trying to build that on-court chemistry becomes the biggest question here, right? As I mentioned, college basketball season is a sprint. And so what happens if KU, you know, you miss a few games and then the KU lineup without him starts to really play well and everybody's fitting into a certain role.

Starting point is 00:13:12 And then all of a sudden, Darren Peterson comes back and now everybody's role is just slightly different, right? Slightly less usage or maybe you're a little less on ball or maybe you're getting the ball a little less or maybe you're guarding somebody else on the defensive end of the court. Things get a little bit different. And so it gets a little shaky too. and that it's just, you know, this problem of building chemistry on the court.

Starting point is 00:13:33 This is a young team. There's a lot of freshmen, and even the older guys have not played with each other. They're not returning older guys for KU. They're guys who were seniors and transferred in. So building that chemistry in these games, even though they're not as big of games, they are big games in terms of building that chemistry. That's, I think, where it affects it in the short term the most for KU. I think you could at least, like say, the glass half full approach.

Starting point is 00:13:56 It would be in the short term if he's missing games. It would allow some guys like, you know, maybe Cole Rosario to grow because they're going to have to have more shots. They're going to have to have more opportunities and maybe that leeway, that leash that, you know, a lot of people complain about year in and year out that Bill Self didn't give this guy long enough leash. Bill Self didn't let that guy, you know, played to his full strengths. It would at least give you more opportunity to kind of do that with some of those players. I think in the long term, if this becomes a consistent issue that's plaguing KU all throughout the season, this is obviously something where KU is going to have to figure out how to score in the half court. And maybe it just becomes KU tries to ugly up every game and tries to. The problem with trying to be a bully ball inside team where you're trying to get a bunch of offensive rebounds is you better have big depth because they're going to get in foul trouble.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And KU doesn't really have that. So if you do miss Darren Peterson for extended time at some point in the season or miss different games in the season, how KU scores in the half court consistently, that's going to be a huge question for getting them through some of those games. I think just in general, and this goes with that, the shot making, the shooting. Those would be questions. again, do you start to play G and G. And then the positional a little bit more. And then the positional size of the guard spots. Like Kansas isn't an overly big team, but one thing they have going for them is they have pretty good size at every spot. And a big reason why is you have Darren Peterson. Right. So if Melvin counsel is your smallest on the floor at 6.3,

Starting point is 00:15:13 Corradorio is second at 6.4. And then you have Peterson at 6.5 with 610 wingspan. And on and on down the line, you're going to be okay in college basketball. Now, obviously, that's something that's going to stress you against a team like Carolina. But there are many teams in college basketball that can play 610 at the 3, 610 at the 4 and like 7 foot at the 5. That's not going to happen that often. Duke will be one of those that you play upcoming. But point being, that's something that kind of goes away.

Starting point is 00:15:38 Now all of a sudden, no, you're playing another 6-3 guard with L. Marco Jackson with a 6-3 and Melvin Council and a 6-4 and Cole Rosario and a 6-7 and Trey White. Now you're a bit of a smaller team, right? It changes very quickly from just kind of one guy there. Overall, obviously, it makes KU C, you see. much lower, makes their floor much lower if you don't have Darren Peterson. But again, I would at least be a little bit confident in the, like, if they don't have Darren Peters, theoretically, in the worst possible world, then I don't think this is going to happen. But like, if Peterson missed every game

Starting point is 00:16:12 from here on, I still think this team would be an NCAA tournament team with Bill self-coaching it. Might be some ugly grinded out games. They might win 20 games and lose 13. I still think they can get there at that point in time. But that's, how important Darren Peterson is. He could change the trajectory of that to all of a sudden being a team that, you know, could be a three seed in the NCAA tournament. That's how talented he is. So they need to get them healthy.

Starting point is 00:16:37 Again, it sounds like it was a precautionary thing or just weird stuff is going on. But yeah, I guess good news that it is just precautionary. And we'll see if he's back for the Prince game. By the way, I feel bad for anybody who bought tickets like, whether it was last minute or, you know, a few days before being like, oh, we're going to get cheap tickets to go see Darren Peterson. This will be cheaper than going to like a big 12 game or I'm taking my kid. We want to go see Darren Peterson. He didn't get to see him because of the kind of last minute stuff. Yeah, I feel bad for you. I'm sorry. All right. That'll go for this episode of the show.

Starting point is 00:17:06 You can find our episodes anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe. See you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - WHAT IS GOING ON? Darryn Peterson Misses Texas A&M Corpus Christi Game | Concerning for Kansas?

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