Portal View After the Mass Exodus

Kyle Davis, Deputy Editor

The Full Reset

It’s been an interesting few months for Kansas basketball fans. In February, fans went online to clamor their frustrations with this year’s team and wish them all gone. Well, now they’re gone. And when I say they, I mean just about everyone.

You’ve probably seen the memes about how there’s no one left on the team. But obviously this won’t last long. At the end of the season, we wrote about where KU should be focusing in the portal this year and what traits should be prioritized. We’ll revisit this, but first, the fact that KU hasn’t done anything yet might not be a bad thing.

Last year, KU took anyone and everyone who put up solid numbers and built a team that had people asking if KU had eight or nine starters. We saw how that worked out and how difficult it was to get them to gel. It feels like Bill Self has learned from this mistake and now is taking a much more thoughtful approach to make sure fit aligns as much as skill set. You can also see that in turning away from a guy like UCF’s Keyshawn Hall, who felt a bit like an AJ Storr type. Instead, Self seems to have certain types of players he’s looking for to surround Darryn Peterson and Elmarko Jackson.

The Portal Profile

Let’s just take some of the names that have been reportedly associated with KU or that we know the Jayhawks have made contact with. Players like Illinois’ Tre White, Texas A&M’s Pharrel Payne, St. John’s RJ Luis, Florida State’s Malique Ewin, Arizona’s KJ Lewis, and Maryland’s Rodney Rice. Obviously KU isn’t going to get them all, but they have some similarities that give insight into KU’s mindset.

All of these guys are between 6-4 and 6-11 and don’t seem to have major weaknesses on either side of the ball. Evan Miyakawa’s website not only tracks teams’ offensive and defensive efficiency when the player is on the court, but also has his Bayesian Performance Rating (BPR). Their teams’ offensive efficiency were all over 111 (points per 100 possessions) and defensive efficiency under 91 (except for Ewin on a horrible FSU team). White, Ewin, and Payne are all great rebounders and efficient scorers inside the arc.

Miyakawa has Offensive BPR and Defensive BPR ratings for this year. A solid defensive player had a DBPR of 1.5-2.5. All of the targets above have a rating of at least 1.15. Storr, Griffen, and Coit all had DBPRs of less than 1 (Storr and Coit were 0.26 and 0.28).

Rice is the great shooter of that group. But I would imagine this is where Kansas looks to the mid-major ranks (especially since Iowa’s Josh Dix goes went to Creighton). The three names most associated with KU from the mid-majors are Monmouth’s Abdi Bashir Jr., Sam Houston’s Lamar Wilkerson, and Jacksonville State’s Jaron Pierre Jr. All three shot 38% or better from three and scored 20+ ppg for their teams this year. They’re also all at least 6-5 and don’t have the body types of mid-major players.

Can KU get them and will it work? That’s what we don’t know. But there’s a clear plan in place.

It’s Time to Rethink Your Expectations for Transfers

Andy Mitts, Publisher

Since Bill Self came to Kansas after the 2003-04 season, the role of the transfer portal has changed significantly. Originally relegated to a long-play on stockpiling talent that may never see the floor, that changed significantly with the rise of graduate transfers: players who had significant careers but weren’t quite ready to go the NBA and didn’t want to explore professional opportunities overseas. The core of your team still needed to be strong freshman and multi-year players that had spent time with your program.

John Calipari kickstarted the “All-Star Team” mentality with his persistent use of high-level recruits with the pitch of preparing them immediately for the NBA. The constant turnover gave him a high variance, with many teams that competed for national titles and some that flamed out spectacularly. The NBA Draft age minimum created a pool of players that could come in as one-year “free agents”, but there still wasn’t a good way for players that didn’t pan out to immediately find playing time elsewhere. The requirement to sit out for a season after transferring led quite a few players that stuck around a couple extra years with the Jayhawks to become big contributors.

The changes in the transfer restrictions completely changed the face of roster construction. With the ability to transfer without having sit out, followed by the ability to transfer multiple times without having to sit out, the transfer portal has turned into the college version of free agency. Except there is no way right now to lock players in for multiple seasons.

This change has come quickly. Just three seasons ago, the Jayhawks won a national title with players that had been here for multiple season, augmented with a few key additions. The core of Ochai Agbaji, KJ Adams, Dajuan Harris, Christian Braun, Jalen Wilson, David McCormack and Mitch Lightfoot had all been with the program for at least three years. Remy Martin was a spark plug for the team during the tournament, but he was the only transfer playing a key role.

Contrast that with the last couple of seasons. Kansas relied heavily on the core of Wilson Harris and Adams to help a mix of transfers and freshman to step into key roles. New players either performed so well that they moved on early (Gradey Dick and Johnny Furphy) or the development pieces moved on to other opportunities (Ernest Udeh and Zuby Ejiofor). What resulted is a huge change in the way that Bill Self and his staff have to be successful.

The last two seasons, Kansas has focused on players that have a ton of talent, assuming that the culture and style will bring everyone together as usual. Instead, the Jayhawks and their fans are learning the lessons that Calipari and Kentucky tried to teach everyone years ago: No system is robust enough to prevent hiccups without the key glue guys that provide consistency from season to season.

With nearly the entire roster moving on for the second time in three seasons, I’ve seen lots of fans that are upset with the pace of Kansas signing new transfers. But what I’ve seen is a slow and deliberate process that is much more about managing egos and setting expectations as it is about big stats and throwing money around. If fans don’t want a repeat of this season, they need to have patience and let Self build a team around super-recruit Darryn Peterson.