Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Who Starts? Who’s in the Rotation? | Too Early Minutes Projections for the 2025-2026 Kansas Jayhawks

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Kansas Jayhawks basketball rotation takes shape. Will Darryn Peterson lead the charge as a potential #1 NBA draft pick?Host Derek Johnson projects the starting lineup and minutes distribution for the upcoming season. From Peterson and Flory Bidunga's locks as starters to the battle between Melvin Council, Elmarko Jackson, and Jayden Dawson for remaining spots, Johnson breaks down every aspect of the rotation. The episode explores lineup flexibility, situational play, and the team's participation in the Players Era tournament. Plus, breaking news on pitcher Cooper Moore's expected entry into the transfer portal away from KU Baseball.Tune in for expert analysis on how Kansas's diverse skill sets could reshape their game plan and impact their season objectives.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!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.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE at www.monarchmoney.com/lockedoncollege for 50% off your first year.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.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)

the rotation. Who's in the rotation? Who plays? Who doesn't? For KU, we project the rotation. The minutes played, all that on today's episode of Locked on Jayhawks. 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 the everydayers catching each and every episode of the show we are free and available anywhere you get your podcast including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe to the show. On today's LOJ we're talking the KU basketball rotation. This is going to be

our 1.0 edition of trying to project the starting lineup, the rotation, how many minutes everybody plays, where are the biggest position battles in the offseason now for KU basketball get to all that on today's episode of the show, which is brought to you by Game Time and get tickets for summer baseball with the Royals see if they can score a run in the game you go to download the game time app creating account use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase with game

time. Okay, so we're gonna get into all sorts on the KU basketball rotation. On today's episode. Let's start here with what we expect the starting lineup to be and where are the competition points for who's going to be a starter. I think you start right here and say who are the locks to be starters. Darren Peterson. That's a lock that he's going to be a starter. I mean, you're talking about a guy and Darren Peterson, who could potentially be the number

one pick in the NBA draft. Like, I don't think I really need to get into much more like a Kansas built this thing around Darren Peterson, he is a lock to be in the starting lineup don't need to get much more into that floor. Butunga is a lock to be in the starting lineup, right? From him entering into the portal coming back out. I mean, it was always set up when he initially came to Kansas for him to be the starter post Hunter Dickinson. And then with how the portal thing went,

like that just feels even more guaranteed that like he's going to be promised a big role. Flord Badunga is going to be a starter on this basketball team. So realistically, I would say though, I don't know, I would include this guy in the locks as well, even though it feels like a different tier. Like when you're talking Darren Peterson and Floyd Badunga,

you're not just talking about probably locks to start. You're talking about players who are realistic, like big 12 award candidates, right? First team, big 12 candidates. And maybe, you know, there is room for that third Kansas player to grab that sort of thing. And maybe that is a Trey White. Maybe Trey White averages, you know,

13.6 rebounds this year, and that does, with some good defense, get him on one of those lists. But I would put Trey White as basically a lock to be a starter. Again, it doesn't feel like it's in the same category or maybe even the same zone as Peterson and Flory necessarily, but you don't have a lot of other fours on

the roster like Samiz Calderon can play the three for Trey White can play the three for but Calderon is he going to be in the rotation or not? We'll get to that, you know, coming up here. But with Trey White, it just feels like it's hard for me to see to envision him not being a starter for this KU basketball team. So he would basically be to that lock point as well. And then I think it's really competition for two spots. I think between Melvin Council, Elmarco Jackson and Jaden Dawson, those three players are realistically in

competition for two starting spots. Now, if you want to have a conversation about what does the starting lineup look like in January, you know, we're two months, three months into the season, some of the young players have more time to get experience under their belt. Is there a chance that a guy like Cole Rosario has that Johnny Furphy type of rise and enters the starting lineup in January where his three point shooting athleticism and transition play is something the team doesn't want to miss out on and he becomes a good fit in the starting lineup for

Kansas. Is there a chance that you know Bryson Tiller gets healthy and looks like the skilled big man and Bill Self wants to go to a two big starting lineup to open up games? You know those are possibilities I guess if the moons line up in those situations. But it's not something I'm going to be projecting, right? Especially when you have enough, at least what you would think on paper, dudes coming into the season in front of them. Now, that said, you've thought in some years past, you had enough dudes to, oh, who's going to

be the starter? And you thought it was going to be, oh, good competition. Like, is AJ Storr going to start? Is Zeke Mayo going to start? Is Ryland Griffin going to start? And turns out the answer for some of those like, Oh, who's going to start AJ store, Ryland Griffin? The answer was no, you know, so you never really know how it's going to play out. But to me, it really is those three guys, Council, Jackson, and Dawson. And as we just talked about on a recent episode, like, I think Dawson is somebody who fits in in a real way that helps this team with his three point shooting ability. He's still not going to like you still a good defender on that end too, which

is going to help you there. I view him as the guy where it's like, I think it just makes a lot of sense for him to start there. But that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Bill Self might just go with the guys he feels are the five best players, right? Dawson might be one of the guys who's part of the five best fitting lineup. But he might not be one of KU's five best players. And early on in the season, Bill Self might say, you know, I'm going to go

with the five best players and hope by playing the five best players together, they sync up, they figure things out playing with one another and the five best players becomes our best lineup as well becomes our best fitting lineup. And again, Phil Marco Jackson ends up being a 35% three point shooter or Melvin Council is his best three point shooting to you know, the season of his career and Darren Peterson is shooting well from three, then that stuff matters a little bit less with what Jade and Dawson can bring to the table with that three point shooting. Right now if I was projecting the starting five, we'll get to that here in a second in terms of the minutes played but I would be projecting a marker start I think the fact that he's been in the system for a couple years, the fact that Bill self had some of those comments that he gave CJ more about him basically

being a starter, he would have been a starter on last year's team, kind of makes me think he's going to be a starter on this year's team. And then you get into a point if you do think it's going to be El Marco. And again, there's a long way to go here. That's why this is the projection 1.0. Because there's going to be a 2.0 that'll probably come I don't know during boot camp week, there'll probably be a 3.0 that comes around late night in the fog, there'll be a 4.0 after the exhibition game there'll be a 5.0 when we get to our first game of the season or something. I don't know. Like there's a long way to go. There's a lot of practices. There's a lot that can happen between now and the season beginning for where these guys kind of order themselves out. But yeah, it does feel right now that, you know, maybe Marco does have one of the legs up there.

And then you get to conversation. Okay, Dawson or council. I have a hard time believing Bill self's not going to start Melvin council from a standpoint of like, he just feels like a Bill self guy. wiry, athletic, lengthy point guard, who's gonna really get up and down the court pressure the basketball and fly in transition. He's going to defend his butt off. And he's got that dog mentality in him. So that would be my starting five projection right now. It would be Flory, Darren Peterson, white, El Marco and counsel with Dawson then coming off the bench. But again, do you get into January and one

of the freshmen breaks out? Do you get into January? And you say, okay, in the same way, Isaiah Moss became a starter for that team later in the season? Do you say Jaden Dawson just makes more sense and is a fitting player? And to be clear, I would be, you know, proponent of Jaden Dawson, you know, playing big minutes. This is me projecting what I think is going to happen. And just based on right now, again, this stuff changes very much. So that would be my early guess on that. Now who would be in the rotation?

Where would the minutes kind of line up for everyone? Let's get to that next. This is Locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Game Time. Have you ever decided last minute to head to a ballgame with friends or family? Maybe it's game day, you suddenly realize you want to be in the stands. That's exactly where Game Time comes in. It's the easiest way to grab last minute tickets without the stress. With the money you save on tickets, you can splurge on food,

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on college basketball. Your second listen every day here. Okay, so we have our starting lineup projection for the time being with I guess, Darren Peterson at the one El Marco and counsel as other I guess lead and handling guards for you Trey white at the four and Florida but Dunga at the five. Who else becomes part of the rotation here for Kansas. So obviously, as we said, Council Marco and Dawson like those three are in competition for two starting spots on the team. Whoever does not get that

starting spot becomes your automatic choice for probably sixth man. And so that is where I think jayden Dawson would come into the fold being the sixth man for KU, then you would have the battle for the backup big spot can Bryson tiller beat out Paul and be a now they might not be a direct competition because maybe tiller is more of a four, five, and maybe they want to use him more as a four next to Mbia or Flory.

Whereas with Mbia, maybe he's just locked into that backup big spot. But theoretically, if Tiller outperformed Mbia in a big way, maybe he has the leg up in terms of the backup big spot. And he's not only getting four minutes, but he's also getting the backup center minutes. And that would lead to pretty big minutes overall, if Bryson tiller were

able to do that. But yeah, seven spot would be your backup big, whoever it is, then your eighth man. So most years, Bill self is running out about a seven minute road, or a seven man rotation in terms of the everyday guys. And then the eighth guy is usually like spot minutes. Now that differs in certain years. If they have a deeper team, they'll play a little bit deeper. Like I always like to go back to the 2011 team where they had 10 guys playing 10 or more minutes per game.

They had nine guys playing 12 or more minutes per game. So Bill Self will, if they have them, they'll use them. But a lot of times, like for instance, if you're looking at 12 or more minutes per game as you're cut off for your part of the rotation, so to speak. And I guess if you want to look at games played too, because you might play 12 minutes in a game, but you don't play the next game.

So you have 2024, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2007 through 2010. All of those years, they were, for the most part playing guys, seven guys in the rotation, if you're looking at guys playing 95% of the games or more, if you're looking at 12 or more minutes per game, every year from 2020 to 2024 2018. So I mean, he's been doing a lot recently, with that kind of being the narrowed down rotation a little bit more. I do wonder with this specific team with having, you know, different pieces that it's not just about

like, are they good enough? And this like that's going to matter. And are they in the Bellself circle of trust and stuff? But it just feels like this is one of those teams where there, there really are specific pieces for specific things. Like if you want to play with more of the big wing, you play some East Calderon. If you want to play with more of the shooting wing, you play Cole Rosario, you want to play more of a four or five big man, Mormonist Bryson Teller, you

want to play more of a true big man, it's Paul and Bia. It's not a lot of like, okay, these are both like at the end of the day, Rikies Passmore and AJ Storr were both wings who were the idea of both players was to be like scoring wing who is an athlete, you know, it's kind of similar roles and what you would be asking them to do. If they are in the game, whereas with Rosario and Calderon, it might be a little bit different role when they're in the game with tiller and and be it might

be a bit of a different role when they're in the game. so I do wonder if that lengthens the rotation in some way or another and so I have the is the eighth man basically if you want to go with big wing you would go with some east calderon if you want to go with the four or five you go with bryce and tiller if you want to go with a bench shooter col rizario I guess you could go with tomorrow mcdowell or no Noah Shelby. I think right now my pick would be for that eighth man. I would be going between one of Bryson Tiller or Cole Rosario. But I think Smiths Calderon would be in there as well. And then maybe it's even, you know, especially early in the season, early in the season, it probably will be an a man rotation where the ninth man is getting spot minutes. Once we get to the bigger games, right, if they're playing Yukon or Duke, that'll probably tighten it up. Once you get to the 12 play, it'll probably be seven guys with the eighth guy getting spot minutes. Once we get to the bigger games, right, so if they're playing Yukon or Duke, that'll probably tighten

it up. Once you get to the 12 play, it'll probably be seven guys with the eighth guy getting spot minutes. That's usually kind of how it works from game to game. So in terms of what I am projecting in terms of what I have for this, I have Peterson again, starting at the point I have been playing 34 minutes per game at the point guard and realistically between Peterson, Jackson and counsel, it doesn't really matter if you list them as the one, two or three. There's going to be times where each of them handles the ball.

Each of them brings the ball up. Each of them guards the opposing team's point guard. There's going to probably be more times where Peterson's guarding the opposing teams two or three man. But Peterson is going to be initiating the offense the most. But again, it's kind of interchangeable. So realistically, you could say oh, Peterson's playing 20 minutes at the one and 10 minutes at the two and this at the three. Whatever. Maybe the better way of looking at this is just if we look at this from a

standpoint of guard minutes. So I have Peterson playing 34 minutes of the guard minutes. Again, there's 120 if you're looking one through three minutes available Peterson just for the sake of it 34 at the point card though, the other six minutes that go to the point card. I don't know if that's going to be one out by okay, when Peterson is on the bench is Melvin Council going to be back a point guard because he has really good like he had

really low turnover numbers at St. Bonaventure. So ander for that matter so i i think that could be something where maybe it's him or maybe you view elmarco jackson as being the point guard of the future and you want to get him those reps when darren peterson is out of the game so i just split it up each get three minutes per game as the backup point guard but then i have elmarco jackson starting at the two playing 21 minutes there so total it up. I have Peterson playing 34 minutes, Amarco playing 24 minutes, Melvin Council getting some minutes at the two and the three total it up.

Council playing 30 minutes. Keep in mind, Council's been playing like 36, 38 minutes per game at his previous stop. So he's a very conditioned player that can play heavy minute loads and minute totals. And I haven't played in 30 minutes. You can convince me it's more, because if Bill Self has a guy who can play heavy minute loads and minute totals. And I haven't played in 30 minutes. You can convince me it's more because if Bill Self has a guy who can play high minutes,

we've seen it before that he will gladly play that guy 34, 35, 36 minutes in a specific game. But I have him at 30 minutes. And then Dawson takes up some more two, three minutes off the bench with 22 minutes. I'd be more of a proponent to have him closer to 30, but that's just how this kind of projection worked out. Now, something I like to leave always is spot minutes.

I think it's easy for people just to project and say, okay, we're going to give all these minutes to this guy and that guy. Realistically, there are a decent amount of spot minutes that are given out. And I have 15 spot minutes, 10 available, uh, kind of the guard minutes, and then five available at the four spot, right? So it's basically 15 total spot minutes 10 available, kind of the guard minutes and then five available at the four spot, right. So it's basically 15 total spot minutes. And realistically, you can move it around any way you want that you can move all those minutes up or down and just one guy plays more at this position as opposed to

that position. But those 15 spot minutes per game, they could go to some combination of Rosario Calderon McDowell and Shelby Ive Corbin Allen as a redshirt candidate. I don't know if that'll be something that happens or not. But when I look at the 15 spot minutes per game, like maybe one guy just takes those over and he is part of the rotation. Like maybe Cole Rosario is just playing 15 minutes per game for Kansas. Maybe Smith Calderon is playing, you know, 15 minutes per game.

But I think what realistically is going to happen is one game, you know, maybe Rosario plays six minutes and Calderon plays nine one game, maybe Rosario plays 11 minutes and Calderon place for maybe one game Calderon gets a DNP a do not play and Rosario does play 15 and he hits a couple threes and earns more minutes in that game. I think for some of these players, they are going to be more dependent on how they're doing that specific game. What is the matchup? How are you

defending your opponent? Are you hitting shots that game? Those are going to kind of be the big things. As far as in the front court, I have Flory playing 25 minutes per game, which I think anywhere between like 24 and 28 would be a fair projection for Flory. Paul Mbia, I have taken up 12 of the backup big minutes. I think you could probably bump up Mbia if you wanted to a little bit more if because I think Bryson tiller by the time he starts playing it'll be like a year and a half since he has played like live real five on five basketball in a real game setting.

So maybe if you wanted to say MB is going to play, you know, if you want to say MB is going to play 15 minutes per game and maybe we take tiller into the spot minutes and maybe we swap tiller out with Rosario or Calderon like that is entirely possible. I do have tiller getting at least a few minutes is the backup five and getting seven minutes as the backup for if you remember, thank you, they're already caught this episode where we talked about how much can display too big basketball made the comparison to the 2019 2020 team which also had just basically three big men with big Dave, Silvio, and Yudoka Aizabuke. And that team played on average about seven minutes, a little over seven minutes of two big basketball

per game that season. So I have this team at playing seven minutes of two big basketball per game this season by playing tiller. Those 10 minutes was seven minutes at the four. So overall, Peterson, Jackson, Cowan-Solewite, Budunga starters, Dawson and Bia,

Tiller in the rotation, and then spot minutes available for mostly Rosario and Calderon, but maybe it's McDowell and Shelby in a given situation where you have 34 minutes for Peterson, 24 for Jackson, 30 for Council, 28 for White, 25 for Badoonga, 22 for Dawson, 12 for Bia, 10 for Tiller, and then 15 of those spot minutes available. And again, if you want to pull five of those spot minutes away and say, okay, tiller is going to play 15 now, or I don't know Dawson is going to go up to 25

and Trey whites going to go up to 30 or counsel is going to go up to 32. Right? These are not necessarily meant to be exact. It's hard to hit these things on the nose. It's more to try to get within a general range of where we think things are. But it's also 1.0. So there's a good chance that a lot of this is going to be very off all of a sudden by the time we get to the start of the season. Let's finish up here the players era the tournament KU is going to be playing in Vegas for

a little NIL though, has announced some of its schedule or at least it got leaked out. Let's discuss next. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks. Again, you can check out Lockdown College football or Lockdown College basketball every day. So the players era, which is the tournament kid who's going to be playing in in Vegas over Thanksgiving week, there's it's weird because there's 18 teams in it. So it's not like a traditional bracket, you can't do. I mean, you could but it wouldn't be like a fair bracket,

some teams would randomly have to play more games than others. So how it works is there's like a round robin, which will happen on Monday, Tuesday. And then based on how you do is, I still don't have total clarity on everybody's gonna play a third game, or you have to do well enough to earn the third game. It's also like the winning team of this all gets like a million dollars in NIL. I think in general, all the schools are getting paid NIL, which therefore is going to the players. So this is going to become a really popular tournament that honestly Kansas and a lot of these other big schools are probably just going to be in each and every year.

So Kansas is going to be playing on Monday, that'll be November 24th. They'll be playing at 230 Central time against Notre Dame, which Notre Dame has not been very good. Shrewsbury, I think, is a good coach, but he hasn't been able to get any traction at Notre Dame his first two years after coming over from Penn State. And then Tuesday, November 25th, Kansas is going to be playing Syracuse also at 230. And then Tuesday, November 25, Kansas is going to be playing Syracuse also at 230. The both those teams not expected to be like that great this year, nor were they this past season. In fact, let's take a look at what Bart Torvik has both these teams and obviously not a exact science to use Bart Torvik right now, because I don't know,

still some of the raw, it's still so early in the season. Nobody really knows and also like in the case of Kansas, for instance, like it doesn't have Colver's areo and Paul and be or know the the impact necessarily but Syracuse is listed at 64th and Notre Dame is 66. So honestly, like I thought this was going to be a great opportunity for kids to get like a bunch of Quad One opportunities. Sounds like it's going to be more Quad Two opportunities for Kansas with some of those games. But with as difficult as their schedule is both in the non-con and Big 12 play, I don't know, maybe that's a good thing that they have those

opportunities. So third game of the tournament, it's going to be held either Wednesday, November 26th or Thursday, November 27th. So I guess it just kind of depends on how you do. And the top six get into like pool play for a third game on Wednesday. Well, the bottom two teams will play the last game of the tournament on Thursday. I don't know. It's all very confusing. Again, I'm not entirely sure. Does everybody play or is it just the championship? So the tiebreakers though, for the pool play standings are going to be one head to head, two is going to be total point differential, which each game is going to be capped

at plus or minus 15. So there is incentive to be total point differential, which each game is going to be capped at plus or minus 15. So there is incentive to like you want to try to win by like if you're up by nine with a minute to go, you want to keep playing the game. Three is total points scored. Four is fewest points allowed and five is AP ranking coming into the week. So if Kansas can score some big wins before that, that would

actually help them in this. It's kind of interesting how that's going to work. I don't know that I love that. I wish it was just like an actual bracket format or maybe you just can't do that because there's too many teams, but we'll see. Maybe for the third game, Kansas will be playing somebody really good in a possible quad one game, but got to be honest, I'm a little let down by the the teams they're going to be playing in that event.

The last piece of news I wanted to mention before I go here, this happened earlier in the week, but this was from Jacob Rudner Rudner of Baseball America. Kansas right-handed pitcher Cooper Moore is expected to enter the portal. Moore is a draft eligible sophomore and pitched to a 3.96 ERA and 85 strikeouts to 19 walks over 88 and two- innings immediate weekend arm if he doesn't go pro So you might go pro and it might not matter in the end But that certainly is a big loss for KU I guess regardless because it sounds like at that point you're either losing him via the draft or Via to another school the draft one you can handle a little bit easier, I think. But that's not I mean, Kansas has done a good job

bringing in some good addition so far in the portal. And we talked about on our earlier episode this week kind of lengthening out their pitching, but now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, you lost one of your big starters. So you've lengthened it out, but you lost your big stud. And they've been able to backfill and find guys. And that's something that Dan Fitzgerald has done so well, but really a big blow because it felt like when you

were, I don't know, talking about the potential returnees for the upcoming Kansas team and how good they could possibly be in 2026. Like yes, Brady Ballinger leads that charge. And then you have players like Dominic vaguely and Cooper more that were part of that kind of core you were hoping to see back really, I don't know, bringing Kansas possibly to a big 12 championship in 2026, but a big loss there, not having Cooper more.

All right, that'll do it for this episode of Locked on 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 for another edition of LOJ.