Vick for Player of the Year, K.J. Lawson becomes a starter or a Quentin Grimes breakout?

By Matt Tait     Nov 26, 2018

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Kansas guard Quentin Grimes (5) pulls up for a shot against Louisiana guard Cedric Russell (0) during the second half, Friday, Nov. 16, 2018 at Allen Fieldhouse.

It’s hard to believe that just a week ago we were all digesting the news that Les Miles was the new Kansas football coach.

Now, after the season football finale against Texas and an impressive week of basketball in the Big Apple, the whole idea that Miles is KU’s football coach seems to be commonly accepted and embraced both here in Lawrence and across the country.

Crazy how fast things can change.

Miles, of course, still has all kinds of work to do, from filling his staff to actually getting the program back on track, but it’s clear, just one week into his reign, that he’s all in and he came to Kansas to coach football and win games.

We got a lot of “Ask Us Anything” questions regarding Miles and his staff this week. And Benton will answer most of those on Wednesday.

Today, though (OK, OK, tonight if you’ve been paying attention), I’ll dive into a few of the basketball-related questions that we received.

Thanks for the questions and keep them coming, in the comments below, on Twitter with the hashtag #AskKUsports or via email at sportsdesk@ljworld.com.

Let’s get to it.

I love this question (and questions like it) because it allows us to have a little fun and forces you to really think a little bit instead of just sharing information or dropping knowledge.

With that in mind, I really only think one of these is possible and that’s the Quentin Grimes breakout. Unless, of course, you’re talking about Lagerald Vick becoming KU’s player of the year. That is very much in play and, believe it or not, he could easily wind up being this team’s MVP.

But given that names like Mason and Graham recently have won Big 12 player of the year honors — and then some — I’m guessing that you mean bigger awards and I just can’t see Vick challenging for those, largely because it takes a pretty complete all-around game to win awards like that. Mason and Graham both were as good as passers and rebounders as they were scorers and right now Vick’s pretty much just looking like a scorer, albeit a pretty damn good one at that.

So that one’s out. And I don’t know if I can picture a scenario in which K.J. Lawson jumps all the way into the starting lineup before his Senior Night in a couple of years.

That’s not a knock on Lawson. I like his game, I admire his cool, calm and collected playing style and I was wildly impressed by the way he played against Tennessee in New York. But the opportunity only came because Marcus Garrett was out. Had Garrett been able to play, Lawson probably would not have had the chance to play 19 minutes.

Could things happen down the road that lead to Lawson getting more opportunities like that one (his solid playing being one factor that leads to that)? Absolutely. And it’s not all that hard to see him finding a way into the rotation from time to time. But to reach the point where he’s in the starting five, I just can’t see it.

So I’ll go with Grimes. Partly because the other two aren’t as likely — at least in my eyes — and also because Grimes is so talented and it’s going to click for him at some point. It might take until after winter break for him to be fully comfortable, but when he does there’ll be no turning back.

And if it does take that long, that might actually wind up being good news for Kansas because the Jayhawks have been pretty good with him fighting through a mini-slump to start the season. Adding a player of his caliber reaching his potential halfway through the season would almost be like adding a completely new player altogether.

Grimes is going to be rock solid this year. And he’s going to have some games that make you sit back and go, “Wow.” It just might take a little while to get there.

Nothing crazy happening here. Elliott’s redshirting. Self announced that after a game early in the season in which Elliott did not suit up or play.

This seems to make plenty of sense, given the fact that Elliott came to KU a bit late and as a walk-on. The Jayhawks really aren’t losing anything by him officially sitting out the 2018-19 season and Elliott’s not missing out on anything either.

He now can fully embrace his role as a member of the red team in practice, where he can spend the season developing his game against KU’s starters and rotation guys, while doing his best to push them to become better along the way.

Elliott came to Kansas with the idea that he’d have to put in some work to earn anything resembling playing time. He certainly did not expect to come in and make an immediate impact and this decision to redshirt gives him five years to reach the point of making an impact instead of just four.

That’s one more year in the weight room, one more year against elite competition, one more year with a close-up look at how the whole Kansas basketball operation works.

That might not pan out this year or next, but you never know what could happen three or four years from now, with the right amount of effort, work and development.

I’m a huge fan of the fact that so many KU fans still remember my percentage wheel that gained traction during conference realignment and served me well during a few coaching searches, as well.

But I haven’t had as many opportunities to use it of late, despite people asking me to break it back out. Take the recent KU football coaching search, for example. Jeff Long ran a quiet search and I only received bits of information about three or four guys along the way.

Most of it was concerning guys who were not taking the job, therefore I couldn’t throw them on an percentage wheels because what I was hearing would have landed them at 0 percent and what fun is that?

The bottom line is this: Unless I’m getting good information about a handful of options, I’m not going to throw one together just to do it. I could have done that with the KU football search and probably would have had Miles at 77 percent or so most of the time. But I didn’t have any great info on any other candidates and did not want my percentage wheel to look lame or, worse yet, be a waste without providing any good information.

Why did I go into all of this to answer a question about De Sousa? Because it’s kind of the same thing here.

Nobody’s talking much about De Sousa’s chances of playing and that, to me, means it’s settling in around 50 percent. But everything’s 50 percent, isn’t it? He either will or won’t, right?

I get the question. And I understand how you could see me being able to say there’s a 20 percent chance or a 75 percent chance or whatever the case may be. But without any good information to go on, it would just be guessing.

I’ll leave it this way: I haven’t given up on the idea that De Sousa still could find his way onto the floor this season and will actually play for the Jayhawks at some point again. And I don’t think he or the KU coaching staff have given up on that either.

Expecting it to happen or be announced any time soon might be wasting time, though.

This one, to me, has the feel of one of those situations that will get sorted out sometime after the holidays, with the NCAA ruling that the X-game suspension that De Sousa already served was sufficient and KU can announce that he’s now eligible to play.

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting on that outcome. But if he does play again, I think that’s how it could go down. There is, of course, still the very real chance that he won’t play at all this season, which would be too bad both for Silvio and the Jayhawks.

https://twitter.com/les_ku/status/1066765932855468034

First off, shoutout for the Twitter name. I’ve heard there are a handful of good Les Miles parody accounts out there already, too. Always fun.

So here’s a Miles-related question for ya (I couldn’t miss out on all the fun) and I chose this one because my gut tells me things will play out from the inside out.

What does that mean?

I think Miles will soon — if he hasn’t already — determine which members of the current KU staff he wants to keep and that very well could be the first bit of coaching staff news we hear.

Makes sense, right? It’s easy to announce “so-and-so is staying,” without having to make a big fuss out of it.

I still think Clint Bowen and Tony Hull will be retained in some capacity and a handful of members of the staff and support crew also could be retained in GA or analyst roles. We already know KU is looking to expand its staff in that regard so why not keep at least a few people who already are familiar with the current roster, opponents, etc.?

I’m a little bit surprised that we haven’t heard about at least one of the two coordinators yet, but that tells me that Miles has been waiting on something, perhaps someone to be fired or a season to be completed.

Benton will have more input on the assistants later this week.

https://twitter.com/Lulufulu85/status/1066799116158681088

I already addressed the De Sousa question up above, so look back at that if you’re skipped down to this one.

But let’s get into the other two questions real quick.

Regarding Keegan, of course we miss him. Tom was a huge part of everything we did here at KUsports.com for the past 13 years and was an absolute blast to work with. He always embraced our coverage ideas and was excited about trying new things or doing podcasts or videos — or both — as a way to both entertain and bring good information to our readers.

He’ll be tough to replace. And we’re working on doing just that at the moment.

But I’m also excited for him and his opportunity in Boston. I think he’ll kill it there and what an amazing town and opportunity for a sports columnist, huh? The guy’s earned it and I’m not sure how long it will take me to get used to seeing him Tweet about Tom Brady and the Patriots of sending live updates from a Yale-Harvard football game. Crazy!

As for your last question, if you would have asked me this question before the season began, I’d have said there’s absolutely no way KU would reach January without a loss.

Full disclosure: I wasn’t sure they were going to win their opener because of the veteran Michigan State guards that Grimes and Devon Dotson handled so incredibly well.

But KU has already made it through three of its toughest nonconference games and five of the seven remaining non-con games are at Allen Fieldhouse. The two that aren’t? New Mexico State on Dec. 8 at Sprint Center and a true road game at Arizona State on Dec. 22.

New Mexico State is 4-1, with a loss to Saint Mary’s, and Arizona State is 5-0, with a win over No. 15 Mississippi State.

Neither of those games — along with Villanova at home — will be easy. But KU will be favored in both of them and should be plenty motivated in that Arizona State game after watching Bobby Hurley’s squad walk into Allen Fieldhouse last year and put a beating on the home team.

KU’s schedule is tough. Even the so-called no-name teams are tough opponents who are experienced and slated to finish first or second in their conferences. But one of the most impressive things about this Kansas team thus far is that the Jayhawks aren’t anywhere close to playing their best ball yet and if that comes — or they at least get closer to that — in the next few weeks, it’s not hard to see KU making it to 12-0 entering the Big 12 opener on Jan. 2 vs. Oklahoma.

I wouldn’t bet a ton on it happening because you just never know when that rare off night is going to pop up. Lord knows we’ve seen it enough over at Sprint Center throughout the years. But I think, at this point, KU’s chances of running the nonconference table are slightly better than 50-50.

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.