Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - Will Crazy Offseasons Be the Norm for Kansas Jayhawks Basketball & How Will This One Affect 2023-24?

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

The 2023 Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball offseason has been crazy and wild with players transferring in like Hunter Dickinson and out like Bobby Pettiford with even freshmen like Chris Johnson and Marcus Adams asking out of their National Letter of Intent. Will this be the norm for KU and Bill Self moving forward, and how will it affect their win total and team success in 2023-2024? Plus, Whose Stat Line is it Anyway with guest Nick Schwerdt talking KU Football, Jason Bean, Jalon Daniels, LJ Arnold and Craig Young.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Locked on Jayhawks, joined by Nick Schwert, and we're going to be talking KU basketball. The Wild Hot continues. Marcus Adams leaving the program. Is this one of the most unsettled rosters that KU's had at this point in a season that we've ever seen? How's it going to have any effect? And we'll finish up with whose stat line is it anyway on today's show. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Derek Johnson. You can hear me as well, Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m.

on KLWN in Lawrence with Rock Chalk Sports Talk. Thanks for making Locked on Jayhawks your first listen every day. Make it all the everydayers out there listening in to all the shows. You can find us wherever you get any of your podcasts. You can also find us, subscribe to the show, like the show on our YouTube page with Locked on Jayhawks. So on today's show, we're talking wild basketball offseason for KU. We're talking, you know, I guess kind of what's next or is it going to be like this moving forward in future years with the way the transfer portal is and all this stuff.

And we'll finish up with another fun edition of who that line is anyway i guess first things first uh nick can you think of another offseason that even rivals this one for how crazy it has been with the combination of players leaving players coming into the program freshmen not signing like is this just bar one or by far number one yeah because none of it was necessarily predictable like there have been other off seasons where you had to replace a ton of players and there was a lot of roster turnover. But it was usually because guys were leaving for the draft or guys were just running out of eligibility. So when that thing when that sort of turnover happens, you can see it coming. Like, you know, going into the year. OK, this guy's going to be a lottery pick. He's probably going to go or these guys are okay, this guy's going to be a lottery pick. He's probably going to go. Or these guys are all seniors.

They're going to be gone. This offseason was different because even though we had sort of an inkling of who might leave and who might go to the draft or who might transfer, you didn't know the sheer volume of it. And that's what kind of makes it weird. It's like the roster turnover is not due to the fact that you just had a bunch of upperclassmen and a bunch of lottery picks. The roster turnover is due to the fact that either the coaches didn't necessarily love the talent that they had in play or the fact that there's just there's a lot of guys who were in situations that they didn't want to be in. So I can't really think of one that comes to mind just in terms of the sheer unpredictability of it. Yeah, and I guess the natural response to that is what kind of effect is it going to have? Obviously, we know that the best Bill Self teams are the ones that have experience and experience playing in his system, right? Now, you do have three-year starters back, so maybe that kind of alleviates some of that question. And even though you have

some newcomers like Nick Timberlake and Hunter Dickinson, they are at least experienced at the collegiate level to where I would imagine the learning curve is going to be a little bit shorter. But is there any like possibility

in your mind? I don't know. Would you put like a some small percentage on it on the fact that what if this doesn't work for Kansas? What if the talent doesn't come together because of a lack of continuity and constant changing I think you

and I talked about this at the beginning of last season because last year think about this Derek last year was a relatively new roster other than DeJuan and Jalen and then to an extent KJ. None of these guys had played together. Even though Grady was really advanced for a freshman and Kevin McCullough coming in as a senior, you kind of felt like you knew what he was going to get. But that rotation was new. And I think we talked about just going back over the history of Bill Self at Kansas. His best teams have been ones where you had guys who had played together for a year or two, played in the system for a year or two. And over the course of his history, the ones that are the youngest teams, the ones that are the newest teams typically haven't performed as well.

We always go back to that 2013 team with Wiggins and Embiid and Selden. Incredibly talented. One of the most talented rosters he's ever had. Two seed, 10 losses, got bounced in the second round to Stanford. So there is always going to be that underlying concern that new team, new roster, we can talk all we want about upside and potential and how good they could be. But typically the ceiling is a little bit lower for teams that are new because I always think about this. Like we talk about what makes a great coach, and some coaches are better at playing with new rosters. Some coaches are better at playing with just raw talent

and getting them to play up to their ability. We used to say that about Kalapari. I don't know if we would say that anymore after the last three to five seasons at Kentucky. And I think that's just because it's always going to be harder to do. It's always going to be harder to play with a new group of guys, especially if they're a young team, especially if those new guys are 19, 20 years old than it is to play with guys who know the system.

There's a reason why Bill Self's so good at what he does. And it's not because he runs the easiest system in the world. I talk about this with the Chiefs all the time. Andy Reid, great play caller. Rookies don't ever play under him. Why do you think that is? Because his offense is very advanced. It's an advanced system, and that's what makes it so good when players can execute an advanced system at a high level. Bill Self's the same way. You don't become one of the greatest coaches ever by running a super easy system that anybody can learn. So there's always going to be that concern. I do love that there are three guys that you know are going to be mainstays in the

rotation in DeJuan, McCuller, and KJ, who all played together last year. And then you bring in Hunter Dickinson, who in terms of a plug and play player, he will probably, at least as of right now, be the best plug and play transfer that we've ever seen in college basketball. There is no concern. I don't have any concerns whatsoever that that guy's not going to come in and be one of the top five, 10 players in the country. So now you're talking about four guys of a rotation. That's what?

Probably going to go seven deep deep maybe eight in certain games so that does quell some of my concerns just a little bit but the rest of the pieces around it are the difference between Kansas being a good team and a national championship caliber team that's the big question for me going into the year yeah I definitely think it'll be interesting in terms of you know because as crazy of an offseason as this is to your point about having basically your top four of your top seven um figured out or well known or well documented it out being three starters back like it won't always be that easy like there could be future off seasons where maybe it's not quite as wild but if it's similarly wild and you only have one starter back or you only have you know two rotation players back i i don't know that'll be interesting

to see how like bill self i guess if if things stay this way which we don't know if they will or not um how he'll kind of adapt and adjust to that and obviously he continually uh adapts and adjusts to everything so i i want to get more into that coming up here in a second and specifically if we think this is going to be how it usually is going to be moving forward as far as these off seasons at this point. First, though, this episode of the show is brought to you by FanDuel Spook. Take your first swing at betting MLB on FanDuel and get 10 times your first bet amount in bonus bets up to $200. You heard me right. Bet just 20 bucks and you'll land $200 in bonus bets.

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in the transfer portal, with guys going pro early? Do you think this is just what college basketball construction is going to be like year in and year out for Bill Self and just coaches in general? It's tough to answer. I think to an extent there will always be an element of this that will make it different from the version of college basketball that we've seen prior to the last couple of years. But there's a couple of things that are going to

cool off as years go on. I think the first one is that guys are going to run out of options to transfer. I know we talk about the freedom of movement in college basketball, but you transfer once with that immediate eligibility rule, you're not going to be able to continue to do that over and over again. The other side that I think we're looking at right now with Kansas was that you had a lot of young guys on this roster coming in over the off season. The freshman stuff, that's only going to happen when it happens. Now, Kansas is going to have more roster turnover than the average team because you're going to send more guys to the NBA. Or if you have a top 100 freshman in the country, and then he comes on and doesn't play, then, yeah,

he's going to want to go play at a lesser program. So when you're at the top of the top, like Candace is at, you're always going to have guys who think they deserve to play, but ultimately the coaches don't think that they're good enough to play in a given year. So I think there is an element of it that's always going to stick around, but I do think there will be plenty of years where, hey, we like the roster. We just didn't get the results we wanted last year. It's important to remember that while the coaches are the ones that are actively complaining about this and saying that this

is ruining college basketball and ruining college roster construction, they're just as culpable in this roster turnover as the players are. What do you think Bill Self and his coaching staff was saying after last season, which was a disappointing year, all things considered? They were saying, we got to change, right? We need to get more athletic. We need to get more shooters. We need to get whatever. They, I don't want to say they ran guys off, but they told guys like, hey, if you come back next year, I'm not, I'm not really seeing a big role for you. You might be better served to go play somewhere else. So I'll be, that's the part I'm most interested about.

We focused on the players and, oh, they're not happy. So they're going to leave right away. These coaches have very honest conversations. At least you know they do at Kansas to say, hey, we love you. Thank you for your time. But if you're hoping to play next year, I'm not thinking this is the spot for you. So it'll be interesting to see how much coaches learn. Because if you were to fast forward three or four years and if we would just want to look at Kansas in a vacuum and say hey the years they've went more in on transfers it hasn't exactly panned out don't you think that would cause Bill Self and his staff to take a step back and say is this really the right way to go about it because we've been going all in on the

transfer portal and we haven't necessarily seen the results that we've wanted. And one thing I'll kind of be tracking here over these next couple of years, because I do think something you hit on earlier about, yeah, like eventually guys are going to use the one-time transfer. Also, we're still phasing out the fifth year guys, like that'll just lessen the amount of players that are available to this point. But is teams transfers in year two in the program, like how much does that help? Because I think back to Texas last year and Texas obviously had, I mean, there was an elite eight team that probably should have made the final four.

I mean, they were up what, 12, 13 points or like nine minutes left on Miami. There was a really good team. And you think back to that, it was, it was like, I don't know, six of the top seven, maybe in the rotation were transfers at one point, but they were like all second-year guys in the program. Like Timmy Allen was in his second year with the program. Dylan Dessoux, Tyrese Hunter, or not Tyrese Hunter. I think he was the exception in Dylan Mitchell.

Maybe five of the top seven. You had the other point guard, Marcus Carr, right? Like these were all guys who transferred in, spent a year, then came back for another year. And if that's the way that this goes, then it makes me wonder if those are the types of guys you target. Then again, I think back to like what Chris Beard did at Texas Tech, and those were a lot of one-year transfers. Like you think back to the team that played for the national title game,

I think it was Matt Mooney who was like a one-year guy who transferred over. They had the Tarek Owens maybe was the name of the big like pogo stick center who's really good at blocking shots um so so i don't know i i i think we're almost like in the developmental years of trying to figure out what works but then the funny part of all that is by the time we might have an inkling or a better idea of like more examples of why this or that works or this or that doesn't work, it's probably something else is going to change in college basketball. You know, the thing back at, you know, 10 years ago, early in the one and done era, I remember a lot of recruiting analysts and college basketball analysts kind

of saying the same thing over and over again about, hey, do you want more experienced teams or do you want more talent? And people would always say, coaches are never going to turn talent away. If there's a five-star recruit that wants to come play for your program, you're going to find a way to make it work. And I think ultimately that is true and it's always going to be true. So if you look at this off season in general, let's say the season doesn't go according to plan. And let's say like a guy like Artario Morris, right? Let's say he doesn't pan out. He's just not a guy who's a mainstay in the rotation. Do you think that's going to cause Bill Self and his staff to say, see, those are the types of guys we want to stay away from? Good players, good players who didn't work out. Like these are all isolated players and they're all individual

circumstances that are going to lead to their success or to their lack thereof and I think it's too difficult in the moment like when you hit the offseason you got to hit the ground running you're immediately figuring out what are we going to do who's leaving who are we going after how many roster spots do we have available do we need to make another one available that I think it's difficult to have perspective in that moment and say, wait a minute, let's take a step back. Do we want to reevaluate our process? Do we want to reevaluate exactly how many of these guys we should be going after? I think you're right. It's a developmental stage, but I do wonder, will we ever get to a point where there will be enough data that's

going to change these coaches and these teams' mindsets to say, hey, you know what? We like this number around three to four new guys. I think ultimately it's an arms race and coaches and teams are always going to want to bring in as much talent as humanly possible. Even if they like their roster, I think it's going to be really hard for them to say, hey, this guy's interested. He's on the open market. Who would we be to not be interested in him if we think he could make our team better? Do you think there's any, I don't know, positive idea about if you are a school like Kansas and you see a lot of these freshmen coming in, whether it's Marcus Adams and Chris Johnson, johnson doesn't even make it in adams makes it for a few weeks then goes away uh you think back to recent recruit i mean the

freshman class in uh what would that have been 2021 with what like zach clements who transferred now he's back bobby pettiford is transferred out like you think of like everyone in that class and feels like everybody is like transferred out does it make sense at this point in time, if you're a school like Kansas to just say, yeah, unless you're like a top, I don't know, 30 recruiter or whatever it is, unless you're going to be a good enough freshman, I guess this is the better way of putting it

because it's not necessarily a ranky thing. Like Christian Brown wasn't ranked in the top 50 or a hundred or whatever, but he was playing right away. If you're not good enough to come in right away as a freshman and at least be a part of the rotation to where you're going to get playing time and you're also going to feel like, I got playing time, now the sky's up from here, as opposed to being like, I got benched every game, I'm unhappy, I'm going to transfer.

Unless you are good enough to do that, does it not just make more sense at this point if you're Kansas to bring in a transfer, even if it's somebody who didn't do well at their last stop or is still a developmental player, because then at that point you would have used up their one free transfer to where it's going to be hard for them to leave. Or do you think going back to the idea of what you said about how coaches are a big symptom of this to where they actually can kind of boot guys off in a certain way,

kind of show them the door that they wouldn't want to do that, that they actually do like it the way it is so that they can basically say if they're not good enough, see ya. It's so hard for me to say yes to that because I look at this current roster heading into 2023. Two of the most important players on this roster are Dwan Harris and KJ Adams, and they were not blue chip recruits. And they both played a little bit their freshman year, but then you saw by year two, they blossomed into major roles on the team.

And having enough of those, like there's a million of those guys that have come through the program under Bill Self. Like we can go back and I would probably tell you most of the best players that Self's had at Kansas, the most impactful players, I should say, follow that script. Whether it's Devontae Graham, Frank Mason, Thomas Robinson, all of those guys were, to a lesser extent, like T-Rob, I think,

was like a top 50 player. But Frank and Devontae, they were not highly ranked players. But they blossomed into guys who ended up leading to some of the best seasons was like a top 50 player, but Frank and Devontae, they were not highly ranked players, but they blossomed into guys who ended up leading to some of the best seasons that we've seen. Ochai, another great example of that. I think the staff knows there will always be a need and desire to have those types of guys. And I think typically what separates them from maybe somebody that you would get as a sophomore is that you get to know them and you understand pretty early. Like we heard while DeJuan Harris was redshirting, do you remember all the buzz that we heard about him

that redshirt season? The coaching staff loves him. They think he's going to be great. He's the next point guard of the future. You get those guys in early. And even though you know they're not going to impact you right away, you see like the stuff maybe in between the ears that you've seen before in other great players that you want to tap into. So it's not to say that guys who transfer in their second year can't also possess those sorts of things. I guess what I'm really saying is that you're not going to do anything to

jeopardize your ability to get guys in, because I do think there is an added benefit in having them learn under your watch than someone else's. So it's this weird sort of healthy balance of like, I always want to get the guys, even if they're not going to play freshman year, I want them in our building. I want them in our locker room. I want them in our practices instead of being at somebody else's practice,

because we are going to get more out of them. The longer they're with us than we are, if they're being coached by someone else. I want to finish things up here. We're going to switch gears, talk a little KU football with a whose stat line is it anyway? This is Locked on Jayhawks. Last segment of the show, whose stat line is it anyway?

KU football edition. I'm going to give you a stat line. This is KU football related, and Nick is going to guess who he thinks it is. All right, this first one, some quarterback stats. 3,941 total yards yards 43 total touchdowns to eight interceptions is this a season is this a career can i get something football yes this is kansas football um a season for kansas football i mean the one that comes to mind would be todd reising

the correct answer on this one is this was a bit of a trick question so i won't count you against this uh against uh this one this was a combination of jason bean and jalen daniels what they did last year if one guy does that i mean those are heisman level numbers yeah i think uh i think jalen daniels led the nation in qbr last season when he was playing and he was a top five Heisman candidate before that injury in the TCU game. It'll be really interesting to see, A, what happens in year two of this new era. I know it's technically year three, but like last year kind of felt like a refresh for the Kansas football program. And B, what happens now that you're not going to catch anyone by surprise like for the first time Kansas is not finished to pick at or even near the bottom of the big 12 Jalen Daniels

is your preseason offensive player of the year that is insane by the way I don't feel like that's being talked about enough that a Kansas football quarterback is being widely regarded in a conference now that has four extra teams as the best player in the conference, which means that week in, week out, conference play, everyone's got their eyes locked on you. It's not going to be, oh, it's just Kansas. We can take our foot off the pedal this week. No, like the preparation for playing Kansas is now going to be on par for what it's like playing in the rest of the Big 12. And that's a place that Kansas hasn't really been in at any point in the last decade. Nope. All right.

This was a receiver stat line, KU. 44 catches, 716 yards, four touchdowns. So there's a couple of guys coming to mind. You said receiver. So does that mean not tight end? Correct. I'm going to go with Luke Grimm. One away.

LJ Arnold is the correct answer here. Grimm led the team in receptions. Arnold led the team in receiving yards. And I bring this one up for a couple reasons. One, does KU kind of need a receiver to have that thousand yard type season to take the offense to the next level. Do they have it? And I guess, I don't know, who would you go with to be that guy? Arnold, Graham, Skinner? I don't know.

Yeah. Skinner seemed to be the guy early on that there, there was like a special connection with, with he and Jalen Daniels. Like he was more of that deep threat, but a lot of the big highlight plays early in the season were Skinner. I still think from like a pure talent perspective, LJ Arnold seems to be the guy that like game in, game out, had the consistency that makes you think, okay, this guy maybe has an extra gear that he can get to. But I do think that's the beauty of the Kansas offense last year. This was not just a two-man show between quarterback and receiver.

They like to spread it out. Like Mason Fairchild got in the action a lot, especially in the red zone. So I'm really excited about this receiving corps because I wouldn't be surprised if maybe a couple of guys broke out and had potentially eight, nine hundred, a thousand yard seasons. Yeah, I think that Arnold, if it does happen like he could be an NFL draft pick, I mean, six, five, six, six. But it's got to happen first before we get into that. All right.

Last one here is a defensive guy, 60 tackles, five and a half tackles for loss. And he was second on the team last year with four and a half sacks. Oh, OK. tackles for loss and he was second on the team last year with four and a half sacks oh okay um see I don't know if he had I don't know if this guy had the tackles for loss but 60 tackles without knowing like the tackle numbers there's a name that comes to mind I don't think it's right it's it's kind of an obvious answer but now I'm overthinking it I'm gonna say Rich Miller the correct answer here is a different linebacker it is Craig Young that was my other guy that was the other guy I was going for but I didn't think either one of them had the tackles for loss this is my first 0-3 in whose stat line is it anyway I think this is

rough yeah football's tough. We're going to be doing RCST trivia football next week, and that's always way tougher, as this one is here. But, okay, this one's interesting to me for one main reason. Lonnie Phelps is gone, right? That's your leader in sacks. When you look at how they're going to make up for that this year, yeah, maybe Jeremy Robinson can have a breakout season,

maybe one of these transfers coming in, or somebody can have a surprise type of season I almost feel like though the more likely scenario for KU to get the required pass rush they need is just like blitzing more or sending guys like Craig Young and Rich Miller after the quarterback a little bit more when you have a more trusted secondary listen I am not worried about the Kansas defense at all this year. And the main reason is that it's year three under this coaching staff and year three under a staff that is developing talent in a way that we haven't seen under the previous four regimes.

I'm kind of to the point where it's feels like a cop-out answer, but it's like, I don't even need to give you names because God, there are going to be, I would say probably five to six names that were playing backup roles last year, rotational roles that are all of a sudden going to look like legitimate big 12 starters, because that is what happens on power five teams. You lose players, you may lose individual production, but if you're developing talent the way that a competent program can, guys all of a sudden are going to step up and look ready. I think the Kansas defense will be markedly better this season, and it's simply because there are going to be more

guys on the field. More of those 11 guys are going to look like they belong than did last year, than did the year prior. Okay, I think that's a good place to finish. That'll get people excited to finish this one up with. Well, Nick, I know you're undergoing a move. You're going to Denver and everything. So I guess I'll just leave it at this. Where do you want people to follow you or find your work? So we're going to be starting

a new KU show here in a couple of weeks. So nothing is official on that front yet. So I don't want to throw out, I'm going to have a specific name title, but we're going to be doing a really cool KU project here

within the next month or so. So maybe next time I come on with you, I will have some more details to share. All right. Well, we'll be looking forward to that. Give him a follow at Nick underscore Schwert on Twitter. You can find me at D Johnson radio on Twitter and you can find the show wherever you get any of your podcasts.

You can also find us on our YouTube page, like, and subscribe to the show till next time. See ya with locked on Jayhawks.