We need to change his initials from DP to DNP

We could name a Keanu Dawes and Christian Reeves front court "Keanu Reeves"

Taylen Kinney is on the US's U18 team. Should be a good stage to assess how college-ready he is.

If we win I will be psyched. If we lose without DP I will blame not having DP. If we lose with DP I will blame the short-term chemistry issues of working him back into the lineup. Either we win or I have an excuse!

Here are the takeaways.

Positives:

1. It was nice to be on the other side of an epic meltdown after the Houston and Baylor "games" last year.

2. DP played 32 minutes.

3. DP was clutch at the end of regulation.

4. We showed that, when we play with heart, we can be a very good team (though I guess we already knew that).

Negatives:

1. This result was more of a TCU choke than a KU victory, though there were elements of both

2. We played with absolutely no effort for an unacceptably long time

3. DP is still cramping

Once again, Melvin saved our bacon. God he is good.

Bill Self said on the postgame radio show that Flory is the best defender in the country and that he was tremendous tonight, citing that neither Toppin nor Watts could score on him

I am very proud of the guys. They had had so many "moral victories" where they played good teams close without DP but came up just short this year. And today they had had enough of that! They made damn sure to get the job done! What a special group

I will miss Kohl Rosario. I think I will always believe he would have turned into a fan favorite before the portal era.

At this point I think it is best to just assume he is done for the year. That way we are prepared for it and if he does come back it will be a pleasant surprise.

That is all correct and I would never commit the folly of saying JD's career was without its low-points. However, I think that his stretch of games from late 2021 through mid 2022 are important enough to make him a legend. In the 2021 season we had not been decent for over a decade. But the last three games of that season, something seemed to change. There was the win over Texas, of course, but we followed that up by close losses against TCU and WVU, suggesting the Texas game might not have been a complete fluke and that Kansas might have actually developed into a decent Big 12 team. Those three games were the springboard to our back-to-back bowl seasons and Jalon Daniels played very well in all of them.

https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/kansas/2021-schedule.html

Early 2022 was another key moment in Kansas football history. Starting 5-0, being ranked, appearing on college gameday, and setting ourselves up for a bowl game appearance were huge for our program, and I don't think that 5-0 stretch occurs without Daniels. He played great football and some of those close games (West Virginia, Duke) might have gone the other way without him.

https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/kansas/2022-schedule.html

I agree that Bean is more of a KU legend than Daniels. The way Bean stepped up when Daniels kept getting injured, played well, and was the starter for almost all of 2023 (our best season since 2007), and won us a bowl game puts Bean ahead of JD. But none of JD's flaws and nadirs can take away what he did for us from late 2021 to early 2022.

With our roster full I put together a wee chart of how I see our lineup playing out in a typical game:

position - starter (minutes) - backup 1 (minutes) -backup 2 (minutes)
1 ----------- Council (28) -------- Kinney (6) ---------- Blyden (6)
2 ------------ Blyden (22) --------Kinney (10) ---------- Stokes (8)
3 ------------- White (20) ------- Rosario (10) ---------Stokes (10)
4------------- Stokes (16) --------- White (12) --------- Dawes (12)
5 ---------- Dawes (20) --------- Mbiya (20)

minutes leaders: Stokes (34), Dawes (32), White (32), Council (28), Blyden (28), Mbiya (20), Kinney (16), Rosario (10)

I went with a small starting lineup because that seems to be our most talented group. Plus this would still be a good rebounding team despite being small. I guessed Rosario and Mbiya would beat out Parker Jr, Barnett, and Reeves due to experience in the system, but it would not surprise me if any of those three guys beat someone out to get minutes.

I understand that game scripts will change lineups and minutes. This is just a sample of what I think minute distribution could look like in a typical Big 12 game.

I think whether someone is a legend or not depends on context sometimes as much or more than raw data. Climbing out of the deep hole of depravity in late 2021 and early 2022 is one of the most important accomplishments in KU football history and JD was a big part of that. I think that cements him and Devin Neal as KU legends.

It might depend on how long Baker Mayfield is out

That is only a problem if Council is the go-to guy on offense. He mostly was last season because Darryn didn't play and White and Flory aren't very good at creating their own shots.

@DCHawker That is probably true, but it doesn't mean that Council limits the team'a ceiling

Tough break for JD. His center failed to snap the ball correctly and JD took a huge loss as a result

I could get behind the feeling that Melvin does not raise our ceiling, but to say he lowers it is categorically false. Many many great teams, including some that have won national championships, have started guards who are not good 3-pt shooters.

For added context, last night Melvin Council posted on social media that he would announce his choice this morning between Kentucky, LSU, and "Mitchigan". There was some suspicion at the time that he may have been trolling.

On a more positive note: I am glad to see we played well today and got our first shutout since the stone age. But I will have to see us convert our good mojo into a quality win or two before getting my hopes up