KU Jayhawks Q&A: What’s up with basketball transfers(?), coach search and starting 5
We’re back for another Kansas Jayhawks Q&A. Let’s get right to it.
This has been the No. 1 question I’ve received in recent weeks, and to be honest, a lot of factors have combined this offseason to lead to KU’s men’s basketball roster changes.
But most of it, to me, goes back to this quote from KU coach Bill Self after his team’s blowout loss to USC in the second round of the NCAA Tournament; he was asked what the team could do to improve against tall frontcourts in future seasons.
“You can recruit. You can address it through recruiting,” Self said then. “You can address it through player development. For us to be a team that really has a chance to be a national contender, I mean, we need to get a little bit more athletic. We need to get a little longer and bigger, those sorts of things.”
Translation: Self was ready for a roster shake-up. And to add — because of scholarship limits — a team must subtract as well.
So a lot of the guys who weren’t regular contributors for KU this season are now looking for a different school. We’ll never know the exact conversations that take place behind closed doors, but this is big-time college basketball, meaning if Self was wanting to pursue the Joseph Yesufus of the transfer market, he had to have the scholarship space to do that. A conversation with guys telling them they don’t have much of a future with playing time at KU obviously could be plenty of motivation — especially with the current no-sit-out transfer rules — to pursue other opportunities out there.
Bryce Thompson is obviously the exception (we’ll get to him shortly). But in short, the new transfer rules are going to increase the amount of up- and down-transfers, meaning most schools are going to see more roster turnover.
That can be good for all parties in the end. But it certainly will lead to less continuity.
The best explanation comes from Thompson himself, who opened up to the Tulsa World about his decision to leave KU.
“It was the first time it was kind of stressful,” Thompson told the World when talking about playing basketball at KU. “I’ve gone through stuff, but it’s always been just playing. It’s never been super tight or stuff like that.”
Thompson also talked about the desire to get a change, and obviously, a free transfer allows him a much easier path to do that.
Self talked often this year about how difficult the pandemic was on players. They were stuck in their dorms with their teammates most of the time. There was no release to get away from basketball. Self said he was even worried at times about being too tough on his players in practice, with fears that their mental health might not bounce back with the challenges of the pandemic added in.
For whatever reason ... it just didn’t work for Thompson at KU. He was a five-star prospect — and most KU fans will always appreciate him committing to Self even in the midst of the NCAA investigation — but to be frank, he was the biggest disappointment on the roster from a statistical standpoint. His best skill-set was mid-range jumpers, though that’s not an overly efficient shot. He struggled badly from three, didn’t create free throws and also turned it over too much for a non-point guard. The lineup numbers reflected that he was one of KU’s least-effective players.
That doesn’t say anything about how good he can be. Thompson has a high basketball IQ, and one would think full recovery from his back and finger injuries should improve his offensive potential.
I’m sure Self and staff would’ve loved to keep him. And I’m sure Thompson wished things had gone better during his only season in Lawrence.
In the big picture, though ... I’m not sure that his departure hurts KU as much as many believe. Thompson would’ve needed drastic improvement next season to be an average offensive player, and he was going to face major competition for minutes in KU’s backcourt anyway. Self’s other offseason additions are likely to fill in for Thompson’s production just fine, especially if we’re only looking at 2021-22.
It’s tough to gauge a roster with so much upheaval ... but at this point, I actually think KU is clearly better than it was at the end of last season and probably a top-five preseason team next year.
Some of that belief comes from Bart Torvik’s excellent RosterCast, which can help estimate what personnel changes do for a team. KU’s current setup — assuming Ochai Agbaji and Jalen Wilson come back — is good for third nationally in next season’s preseason rankings on the site, though it’s also true many transfers out there haven’t picked their destinations yet.
Some of this makes sense, however, if you think about KU’s roster construction and what it lacked in 2020-21. Self addressed this directly in a recent edition of The Jayhawker Podcast.
“If we all came back and we’re all healthy, that’s a pretty darn good team you are putting out on the floor,” Self said on the podcast episode just after the season. “But we all know we need to get a little bigger inside. We all know we need to get a little bit more athletic on the perimeter. We all know we need another playmaking guard. The one thing that hopefully we can do through recruiting is address those needs.”
The create-your-own-shot point guard was the missing piece for last year’s team, which was a big part of the Jayhawks posting the worst offensive efficiency numbers of the Self era. Yesufu — his efficiency numbers at Drake were excellent — should fill that role immediately as an athletic scoring guard who can hit threes and also make floaters in the lane.
It’s also true that returners — in general — tend to become better each season they’re in college. So for David McCormack, Christian Braun and Agbaji and Wilson if they return, all could be reasonably expected to be a touch better than a year ago, which should only improve the offense.
Losing Marcus Garrett will hurt, but his limitations at point guard were part of what held KU back offensively. His defensive ability also never played up as much as KU fans might’ve hoped, simply because it’s much tougher to dominate the game on that end as a guard as opposed to a shot-blocking big man.
It’s a long way of saying that trading Yesufu for Garrett, while also bringing back a talented core, adding a top-10 recruiting class and bringing in transfer Cam Martin could easily — to me — result in a team that’s more balanced with a higher ceiling that what we saw last year.
New KU athletic director Travis Goff appears to be following through on a promise he made at his introductory press conference last week: He’s going to learn as much as he can from the KU football stakeholders before acting on a move to name next season’s head coach.
It makes sense if you think about it. Any coaches willing to take the KU job at this late stage — potentially leaving their own jobs during spring drills — are likely to be just as interested in a few weeks as they are now. This is a major decision, and there’s no reason for Goff to rush things.
Having said that ... he can’t wait too long to announce something with so many people’s livelihoods impacted by this next move. That especially includes players and current assistant coaches, who basically should be owed clarity on Goff’s thought process as soon as he decides whether to ride the season out with interim coach Emmett Jones or select someone different.
So yes, I’d assume some sort of decision should be “soon,” even if that could be weeks instead of days.
The easy and correct answer is a coach with a long-term plan ... but this also is a tricky situation to navigate.
KU coach Les Miles, for all the things that didn’t go well in his tenure, absolutely nailed this part: He recruited talented, high-school players to replenish KU’s scholarship numbers. It was a move other coaches and athletic directors had hesitated to make, and because of that, Miles put the next Jayhawks coach on a decent path to a rebuild by paying for the sins of previous regimes.
KU, then, will want to do all it can to keep those good players on campus. If there’s a mass exodus — and the new immediate-eligibility transfer rules certainly make that a possibility if a new coach comes in — the Jayhawks essentially could forfeit all the hard work (and growing pains on the field) of the last two recruiting seasons.
Keeping Jones would help with this part — he’s popular with the players, and many have campaigned for him to get the job on social media — but then again, this is an overarching decision Goff has to make for the good of the entire program. If an outside coach from the top of his list is ready to come now, Goff should make the move to give the new hire a few extra months to get his culture established.
That might lose some players. It could move KU’s timeline back a bit in the short term.
But again ... Goff’s job is to do what’s best for KU as a whole. There are a lot of factors at play, but this coaching hire will likely be one of the biggest moves Goff makes during his AD tenure.
If nothing else, it shouldn’t be a choice dictated by fear.
Strong disagree. We discussed this during the last KU Q&A — check it out if you haven’t yet — but the new independent process that the Jayhawks’ case is in does not have negotiated settlements, and as all past actions have shown, KU is standing firmly behind Self while saying he and the program did nothing wrong.
You might note that Arizona’s NCAA case is in the independent process as well, with the Wildcats self-imposing a one-year postseason ban this year. There’s a big difference, though: Arizona cut ties with coach Sean Miller recently, which obviously led to the school admitting some guilt.
KU has not done that, and especially considering Self’s recent lifetime contract extension announced recently, the school has given no indication it will do anything but back the coach until the end of this dispute.
Let’s start with this: I haven’t gotten any indication to this point that a multi-year suspension for Self is likely. No one knows for sure, but punishing a sitting coach in that way would be nearly unprecedented and obviously send reverberations around the college basketball world.
If it were to happen, though ... this is where the finer details of Self’s “lifetime” contract would come into play.
Though Self cannot be fired “for cause” for this NCAA case, per his new extension, he essentially still could be fired at the right moment without cause for $5.41 million. That’s a lot of money but not astronomical, and certainly gives KU an escape hatch if it truly wanted to start clean.
The more likely scenario for Self would be to not wait something like that out if it happened. Surely he’d have an opportunity to be a head coach or assistant in the NBA, and if his own punishment was that severe, it’s likely KU’s overall penalties would be harsh enough that it might be best for Self to go elsewhere and for KU to start its rebuild with someone else. Self’s buyout to go to the NBA would be $2 million as a head coach, but obviously, that’s something that could be negotiated if needed.
To reiterate, though: This is way past what I think Self would ever receive as an NCAA punishment, and I have to think KU wouldn’t have signed his extension if it had any fear that a multi-year suspension was coming his way.
Double-dog-dare accepted.
Agbaji, to me, is the biggest question mark. The best guarantee he’ll likely get in the pros would be a late second-round pick with a potential two-way deal, though it only takes one team to really like you for that to come to fruition.
Wilson, who declared for the pros as well, remains an unknown, and hypothetically, KU could still add a starter-type like Creighton transfer Christian Bishop or high school recruit Ty Ty Washington.
You asked for a projection, though, so this is how I see it on April 15:
G — Joseph Yesufu
G — Ochai Agbaji
G — Christian Braun
G — Jalen Wilson
F — David McCormack
Sixth man — Dajuan Harris
If that’s how KU begins Game 1, I think the Jayhawks will be a top-five preseason team.
Ha. There was some buzz that old Self assistant Joe Dooley — the current coach at East Carolina — had some interest to rejoin the Jayhawks as an assistant following the departure of Jerrance Howard to Texas.
Dooley appeared to shoot down the rumors a few days ago while talking with WNCT’s Brian Bailey, but ... I’d still never say never with these things. Self said he’s in no hurry to permanently fill the role, and Dooley’s potential buyout appears to drop if he leaves East Carolina after June 1.
Either way, Self should have his pick of qualified candidates for the vacancy, regardless of whether Dooley is interested or not.
This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 8:57 AM with the headline "KU Jayhawks Q&A: What’s up with basketball transfers(?), coach search and starting 5."
