Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - WHO WILL LEAD? WHO'S THE ALPHA? Key Questions for Kansas Jayhawks Basketball's Young Roster

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Kansas Jayhawks basketball face a pivotal leadership question: Does incoming freshman Tyran Stokes need to be the team’s alpha, or will returning guard Kohl Rosario—or another veteran—step up? Derek Johnson breaks down the challenges of relying on a freshman for both leadership and late-game heroics, explores the impact of past KU teams led by young stars, and analyzes key names like Leroy Blyden, Keanu Dawes, and Taylen Kinney as potential leaders in Bill Self’s dynamic roster. On the football front, Kansas’ revamped wide receiver corps generates excitement as Nik McMillan is poised for a breakout year alongside veterans like Cam Pickett and Nahzae Cox. Johnson compares this year’s group to previous lineups, highlights high-upside freshmen like Corbin Glasco and Tyren Parker, and assesses how the new talents might offset potential growing pains at quarterback. Plus, get the latest KU basketball scheduling news, including a marquee home-and-home with Villanova and the anticipated Diamond Cup event. 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 one-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.

Does Kansas need Tyron Stokes to be their alpha leader this season? And if not, then who? 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 up, Derek Johnson here on another episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We'll get into some of the latest news, some KU basketball scheduling notes to get to. We'll get to our wide receiver preview for KU football. and we'll start right here with KU, who's going to be the leader on this upcoming KU Hoops team?

Because as much as I'm liking the way the roster looks, I think that is a real question to kind of have of who's going to be that alpha, who's going to be the leader. And maybe those are two different conversations. Does it need to be Tyrant Stokes? And is that a lot to put on the plate of an incoming freshman? Let's start right there. Does KU need Stokes to be the alpha and the leader? And again, I think those can be two different questions. I think you can be the alpha where you're kind of the go-to option, where you're kind of the killer, you're the guy closing out games.

And that can be different than the leader necessarily, right? And in a perfect world, your best player, your alpha is the leader as well, right? But I think, you know, sometimes that's just not always the case. Like sometimes your leader ends up being somebody else. It obviously behooves you if that leader is, you know, at least a starter or at least a kind of player on your team. So it can come from different areas, but it just makes it easiest when that is the case. And another part of it, too, is like there can also be a difference between, you know, being a leader and being an energy suck, so to speak, where you are sucking the energy out of

everybody else as the best player on the team, right? If the best player on the team isn't the leader, because they're just more reserved and quiet, but they are the alpha in terms of their play, and somebody else can be the leader, then that's fine. But if you have somebody else who's the leader, but then your best player is the energy suck, then it negates the leader. There's a lot of a complicated terminology we're going over here. But I guess point being is this, right?

It would be a lot to put on an incoming freshman to be the leader of the basketball team, as good as I think Tyron Stokes is going to be. Add to it that, again, as good as I think Tyron Stokes is going to be, there have been some, I guess, maturity questions would be the way of kind of putting, it with how some of things have been handled for him to this point. Now, you know, it seems like he has learned from some of those things. And the hope is that he continues to get better

with some of those things and that he's going to have a great year from that perspective at Kansas. And just because you make an immature decision, you know, potentially like off the court or whatever, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be the leader on the court. But it is something that, again, And like if you're Kansas, that's, like, is that a dangerous road to go down that that would be the way that you're kind of looking to, right? And so I do expect Stokes to be the alpha on the court in terms of performance and being KU's best player and being their closer and being their killer in those key situations and late situations.

But just how many times have we seen a Bill Self team actually have, you know, a situation where a freshman was their leader, you know? let alone the best player on the team. I mean, if we're just talking the years that the freshman was the best player for KU, you'd probably look at 05-06, you know, you'd have the conversation between Russian Chalmers, but I don't know, maybe you would say Chalmers was the leader. I don't know, it might have been Russell Robinson or something, right?

And that team ended up losing in the first round, so that's not a great comparison, right? 2012-2013, you could argue Ben McElmore was KU's best player. You know, you could argue between him and Jeff Withy, but if you wanted to say McElmore, that would be the freshman. Then again, Maclemore's a redshirt freshman. So again, it's a little bit different there. Now, that team did get a one seed made the second weekend. Probably should have been further, if not for, you know, some things we don't need to rekindle here.

But 2013-14, you could probably say, well, you would say KU's best player was a freshman. I think when healthy, it was Joel Embedd. Otherwise, you're looking at Andrew Wiggins and obviously an early exit there too, though, you know, if Embeddd doesn't get hurt, maybe not as much the case. And then this past season, I think you would say, obviously, the KU's best player was a freshman with Darren Peterson. Again, an injury kind of throws a wrench in the things, but again, it's kind of a first weekend exit.

So if you're just looking at the years where KU's best player is a freshman, that's not a great lineage in history in terms of deep tournament success or teams that absolutely just killed it, right? But that's still relatively small sample size of four. Again, you could say if Embedd is healthy, that that team ends up going deep in that NCAA tournament. If Darren Peterson's healthy this year, like, do they get a better seed because of the, because maybe they mesh a little bit better, right?

I do think ideally, like the best Bill Self teams, I've always pointed to you have a vet leading the way, right? You have your Frank Mason with your incoming top end freshman like Josh Jackson, right? And so ideally it would be nice to have a Frank Mason to pair with Tyrant Soakes. It doesn't seem like that's going to be a case. I'm high on Leroyd-Blyden, what he's going to bring to the table. I'm not going to expect him to be Frank Mason, right? That would be ludicrous to expect that, right?

So it makes things a little bit more complicated. And then it also complicates things because a lot of KU's veterans are players that are also new to the program. Like if we're just talking about who's going to be the veteran leader, because, you know, and that can happen too. Like Tark Black was a leader on that team with Wiggins and Embed, and he was a transfer coming in a newcomer, but he was an older player in a veteran, right? So could it be Leroy Blyden? I don't know. He's a sophomore coming from Toledo. Maybe that's part of his game. Kianu Dawes, maybe he has leadership qualities. But again, you're

talking about a guy from Toledo and a guy is coming from the worst team in the Big 12. So it's like, it's just kind of an odd situation, even though I do like both guys, right? Dennis Parker seems like a great teammate and a very coachable kid. So maybe he takes over some leadership role here. But if he's your eighth man, how impactful is it if your leader is playing 10 minutes per game, right? Going back to that conversation. So I think this comes down to a couple things. I think just inherently, Tyrant Sokes is going to have to assume some sort of a leadership position on the team. And then I think you're looking at the returning guys and you're saying, okay, well, you know, Cole Rosario is the natural one you would point to. We heard the nicknames

last off season. People were calling him Captain America. he's a player who we're expecting a big step up in his level of play this upcoming season. I kind of think Col Rosario needs to be one of the leaders on this team. And so again, that puts pressure on him to perform this season. That puts pressure on Col Rosario to have a good season because if the season looks similar to what it was this first year, it doesn't work the same when your leader is out of the rotation. But if Rosario does make that jump and he's playing key minutes and he's making hustle, making hustle plays and setting that lead by example with those hustle plays and hitting

threes and making key like that would go a long way and yeah he's like it's it's a little frightening because you're projecting on what the role in the level of play is going to be and even at the end of the day he's still just a sophomore but by being just one of two players returning to the team and on a team that like half the player i think it's seven of the 13 players or freshmen he he does have a bit of seniority over some of those guys by being a sophomore. So I kind of look at it and say, Colrosario needs to be one of the leaders on this team. Now, just inherently, when you're the point guard,

there's some leadership duties that seem to come along with that. So you would think Taylin Kinney will be able to take some out. And Kenny seems to be a kid with a lot of bravado and outgoing personality. So I do think that's something that he'll be able to do a little bit here. And maybe it's just kind of a leader by committee thing, right? But it feels like a lot of times that stuff gets sorted out. If it doesn't, you know, and there is no chain of command, how does that affect the team season? Is that a big negative or is that something you can survive, right?

And so I look to Cole Rosario, I look to Taylin Kinney, I look to Keanu Daz, I look to Tyrant Stokes. Those would be the guys that I would kind of look at and say, okay, I feel like I'm expecting one of those to emerge as the leader, but there is a big question of which it would be. And will any of them assert their position kind of dominance and give KU that leader that you need throughout a season to kind of maintain course through the ebbs and flows of the year. All right, let's continue on moving over to KU football, get to our wide receiver preview. I think this is an exciting position for KU. I love me some Nick McMillan. What about the rest of the room?

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We can get the ad free version of the show at locked onjahawks. Dot supercast.com. That is locked on Jayhawks. That's up.com. Okay. Let's get to our wide receiver preview. Really interesting position group here for KU. because you're talking about one that had all these veterans in the room for, you know,

three straight years basically for KU with the core of Grimm, Arnold, and Skinner. And then you get a new crop this past season. And in the 2025 season, Emmanuel Henderson had a really good year, broke out, had that huge game against Cincinnati with over 200 yards, wasn't as effective at the end of the season when teams just basically said, hey, we're going to take away the deep ball on him. But still had a really productive, strong season for KU. You have Kim Pickett who had to battle some injuries last year.

He's back down and is a good yard after catch and slot receiver for KU. And then there were a couple nice catches and plays here and there by Levi Wens. Same with King Quebec, but it wasn't super consistent for either guy. Bryson Canty was supposed to come in and maybe he was the one who was supposed to take down that other starting role. But joint late was injured and it just never kind of came about for Canty when they were hoping that he could be a potential impact. for them on the outside. And now I look at this room compared to last year's room. And I do think this is an upgraded room for KU. Here's a big reason why. So let's just get to the depth chart here to kind of explain this. So the way I look at it, three starting receivers for KU,

Nick McMillan as more of your Z. Your Z is going to be the guy that you might move around a little bit. You might play off the ball a little bit. The X receiver is more of kind of your big bodied receiver and then the slot receiver as far as your starters. Nodze Cox is certainly the guy who'd be the X, the bigger body receiver going to win downfield. Cam Pickett, your slot receiver, and then Nick McMillan as your Z. I think the two deep is wide open as well. I look at Tate Nagy, Keaton, Quebec's guys that I probably expect to be on there. It will be Jackson Cook, we'll be Tyron Parker, Corbyn Glasgow, Bryson Hayes, Nate Sims. All those guys are freshmen kind of competing for that other two-deep spot that is up for grabs here.

But here's what I mean where I like this room better than a season ago. And it's important because as you're breaking in a new quarterback, you want to have reliable targets. So first of all, if we just compare Cam pick it this year to Can Picket last year, you're taking Camp Picket this year, right? He's a year older. He's theoretically you're stronger. another year in the system, even though Colan Licky Backs are slightly different, but slightly the same.

You hope he's healthier this year than he was a season ago. So you're taking picket, slight check mark there. Cox compared to Levi Wendz slash, you know, Canty or whatever, I think that's an upgrade there. I think Cox has the ability to win

downfield and contested balls even more. I think he's kind of a better, like he's basically a group of five version of what you, like, Levi Wentz you brought in from the FCS level, who was kind of the similar idea. Cox, you're getting at a higher level of ball with production. And then I look at Nick McMillan, I say, man, Emmanuel Henderson was really fun and exciting and a nice player for KU. I do think, like I said earlier, as teams started to, especially after the Cincinnati game, started to kind of adjust like, hey, we're just going to try to take away the deep ball.

And he still caught some deep balls. Like, you look at a couple that he caught against Utah. But it wasn't like, I wouldn't say it was the most diverse route tree for Manuel Henderson. I think with Nick McMillan, you get more of the route tree available and more that you can do with him. I think he's just a really polished receiver. And so I do think that is an upgrade overall for KU with Nick McMillan, who I think can technically be maybe a junior, maybe a senior. We'll see what kind of happens there. But point being, I like the starters as an upgrade here.

Then when you look at the backups from a season ago, maybe that's where you would have questions because we don't know what the freshmen are going to provide this year. And that's a big part of what the backups look like. But at least with the starters, I feel better at the room. I do feel like McMillan and Pickett would be guys that I feel like are locked into that starting role for KU. I do have Cox as the starter there. But that is one that could easily change to Keaton, Quebec. I did think that there were some plays Quebec made last year that I really appreciated and liked. He's somebody who will try hard as it run blocker, you know, had the occasional night. He had a really nice route run on key play against Cincinnati late in that game, but also he had kind of a rough finish. I forget which game it was that there's a ball that goes off his hands for an interception later in the year. I forget if that was Arizona or K-State or something, but not as good of a finish there. So I think with Quebec, he has the edge of knowing the system and the scheme and everything, and I could see him taking another step up. But, that would be kind of an interesting battle with them too. And then, you know, which freshman does kind of step up for not just that position potentially on the two deep,

but also to put them in a position to where, you know, because Nasey Cox is a senior, can't pick it's a redshirt senior. McMillan might be in his last year, depending if he gets a waiver for one of his seasons or not. Depending on what happens there, you're going to be losing a lot more at the receiver position. So if you are one of these freshmen and you're in a spot on the two deep, that's kind of indicative that you could be. a projected starter in 2027 if that is kind of the case here, right? My guy here is Nick McMillan. That's not going to be a crazy answer because McMillan is the guy that's going to be

everybody's guy, right? He's going to be projected to be the number one receiver for KU. I guess there's a world where Cam Pickett ends up being the number one receiver out of the slot for KU, but for my money, Nick McMillan is kind of the guy there, right? I will say this young player to get on the field early. I don't even know if this guy will be the one that wins the two deep spot, but I definitely could see him getting a fair amount of snaps as a true freshman. And that's Corbyn Glasgow. This dude can absolutely burn in the open field. I mean, this is going to be one of the

faster players in like legitimately all of the big 12. And so being like elite at one trade, especially when it's a trait like speed, which can be very important. It doesn't mean that you're going to start. It doesn't mean that you're going to play like a ton of snaps. But it at least gives you the opportunity for a team to just be like, hey, let's just have. You have a lot. You have a couple plays where we use his speed, whether that's a jet sweep or receiver screen or, you know, having him run a deep ball out of the slot or something like that. Like using that speed in a couple ways, it would not surprise me if he ends up registering a fair amount of snaps just from the standpoint of like using that speed to your benefit in some different

ways. Again, it might only be like a max of like five snaps, seven snaps in a game. but the snaps that he's out there, I think, are going to be very targeted to using his speed and getting him the football when that is the case. That would not surprise me there. Now, the future piece to kind of watch here, I'm going to be really interested who wins that battle potentially if it comes down to one of these two guys for that last spot on the two deep. Jackson Cook and Tyron Parker, Cook is Redshirt freshman comes in as kind of a bigger receiver. Tyron Parker comes in as a bigger receiver. Both can win downfield.

Both have good speed. I'm going to be very intrigued to see what happens there. And specifically, if I'm picking a future piece to watch, that's not Corbyn Glasgow, I will go Tyron Parker. I really liked his tape. He's a local kid from Kansas against 6-3 receiver with really good straight line speed, wins 50-50 jump balls. He feels like kind of in the mold of like a Quentin Skinner type.

And obviously, we saw that have a lot of success at KU. But yeah, I do think this is an upgraded room for KU from where they were a season to go. The interesting part is because you could have worse quarterback play, worst quarterback production, the stats might not show it in terms of like the counting stats, the receiving yards, the receptions, the touchdowns. Those things might not show it as much, but I do expect this to be a better unit for KU from that perspective. And I think it's more in line with like, if you view just the plain styles of like,

okay, going back to those core guys, like you had Luke Graham who was your, slot receiver who could win on routes you could get the ball to underneath that kind of becomes can't picket you have your you know quentin skinner type who can win down fields and when contested balls on deep balls and stuff that becomes you know Cox potentially and then you have your kind of all around receiver with LJ Arnold if we're talking you know 20 to 23 when Codolnicki was last year and I think that kind of becomes Nick McMillan and they all are slightly different and have different skills right and I think that is something that Andy Codlenicki does very well with and can utilize to a high level.

I also think the Codal niki offense probably caps how much like the leading receiver is going to get. Like I'm not going to expect Nick McMillan, especially with the QB situation, to go for like 1,200 yards. But I think he's going to be really productive. And I think he'll be one of the better receivers of the Lance Lighthold era with a chance to have the best season of a Lance Lighthold receiver, right? I'm trying to think the most yards by a light pole receiver.

I always forget this number. It's like high 700s, maybe low 800. I think 800 would get the mark. So that's possible for McMillan, right, even with some of those other questions there. So I do like this room overall, but the depth thins out fast unless some of those young players are going to be ready to go.

All right, KU Basketball has some new schedules or new scheduled games that are out that are very interesting against some really good opponents. We'll get to that, our trivia question of the day and more next. Don't forget. Join the everyday air club at locked on jhawks. Dot supercast.com. that is locked on jhawks.supercast.com.

Okay, so some scheduling news for KU basketball. This one will come as soon as this year, and that is that KU will be taken on Villanova in a home-and-home. The first game will be in Allen Fieldhouse, and that'll be on November 27th this year, which is Black Friday. So they announced that the players-era tournament was going to be the week before. They have two brackets for the players-era. KU is going to be in the bracket.

That's the week before Thanksgiving. That means KU has the week of Thanksgiving open. So this allows them to still have a game during Feast Week because they'll take on Villanova in Allen Fieldhouse. And then come the following year, they'll travel on the road to Villanova. Now, this one probably an even bigger deal. This was sent out by Matt and Orlando. I know Mike Vernon was all over this a couple days ago as well.

A big new event is in the works called the Diamond Cup. to begin in 2027, potentially with like Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Michigan, Indiana, Yukon, Gonzaga. I don't know how they would make this whole thing work, potentially. Mike Vernon's kind of talked about there being games in like Kansas City and Chicago. So that'd be cool, kind of a bit of a local flavor here. We've seen Kansas City do really well with the Big 12 tournament and maybe it would do as well in this situation. So keep an eye out for that.

That would lead to a lot of really good games. And obviously that's potential that, you know, if you saw Duke what they did where they sold some games to, I think it was Amazon Prime to get a little extra money coming their way. I'd imagine a lot of these other schools were like, hey, what if we did that with like a big event, you know, and make ourselves some extra money to use on our basketball teams? Meanwhile, KU baseball plays today their first game of the Big 12 tournament and the Big 12 quarterfinals. Again, they'll be without Brady Bollinger. Also, there was a really cool feature piece in the, on ESPN by J. Jeff Passon talking about KU baseball and how they've made Juko baseball there, their home.

There's also a really good, strongly worded email coming out from Travis Goff earlier, I guess post article email, whatever you want to call it, basically like talking about the need for like donor support. And I found that a very interesting because they're going to go in the off season here. And clearly they need facility upgrades and they're seeing that with the potential to host here. Clearly they know other schools are going to be after Travis Goff. they know, like, this is Travis Goff starting to put up the fight to keep Dan Fitzgerald and to make this KU baseball program a thing that is going to stay for the foreseeable future.

So you can check that out, I think, at KUathletics.com. Our trivia question of the day, here was yesterday's answer. We talked about Villanova earlier today, so fitting, it's a Villanova answer. Kansas won 72 to 57 in the 2008 Suite 16 against what 12-seated school. That was Villanova. and that was the famous game that Jay Wright was the coach of like some USA basketball event and took Scotty Reynolds point guard over a couple of Kansas players. And yeah, they let them have it.

That's kind of how the story goes there. Here's today's question that we'll give the trivia answer to tomorrow, or you might just know the answer or you might Google it, whatever. But Kansas made just three total three-pointers in the 2008 national championship win over Memphis, obviously the big one from Mario Chalmers. who made the other one. Mario Chalmers made two. He made the big one.

He made one other one. Who made the other three for Kansas in the O.A. national championship game? All right. That'll do it for this episode of Lockdown, Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere at your podcast, including on our YouTube page, where you can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time for a football Friday.