It's the Landen Lucas show tonight...

A strong double-double. Career high in scoring. And even a back to the post move or two.

Really nice to see--both for the young man and the team!

Keep it up, Landen!

RCJHGKU!

"There's a new kid in town...everybody's talking...there's a new kid in town."

The numbers don't lie, so let's take them in for a moment. In KU's last 3 games--first against a WVU team ranked 10th in the land, then against an OU team ranked 3rd (at their venue, no less), and finally last night against a team that spanked us by 19 the last time we faced them, Landen has scored 30 points, hauled down 36 rebounds, blocked 6 shots, and shot 8 for 11 from the charity stripe. All of that production on top of consistently setting good screens, helping to get Perry open, being a big, vertical body near the rim on defense, hustling his can off, and bringing nothing but positive vibes and attitude every single minute.

As for your "bottom of the barrel competition" critique, I believe ATXJayhawk addressed that nicely yesterday with his separate post on Landen:

He's had 16 points, 26 rebounds, and 5 blocks combined between the West Virginia and OU games this past week. He had more rebounds than the # 2 and # 3 leading rebounders in the big 12 in Ryan Spangler and Devin Williams. To put up those kind of numbers against the two best rebounders on two of the best teams in this league this late in the season is truly remarkable.

If he get's double figures in rebounds again tonight I'd say we have finally found a reliable starter at the 5 spot. We don't need him to score a lot of points, we just need him to protect the rim and get rebounds.

West Virginia game stat line:
Landen Lucas: 9 points, 16 rebounds, 4 blks, 1 steal, 2 turnovers
Devin Williams: 14 points, 9 rebounds

Oklahoma Game stat line:
Landen Lucas: 7 points, 10 rebounds, 1 blk, 2 turnovers
Ryan Spangler: 3 points, 7 rebounds, 1 steal, 0 turnovers

Honestly, if you can't be happy with that kind of production during the most important stretch of our season, I'm not sure you're going to be happy at any point going forward.

---

Before Landen began to take off here of late, when I thought about what KU needed at the 5 spot, my archetype was someone like Willie Cauley-Stein for the UK teams last year and the year before. That is, not an overly dominating offensive player, but a nice body inside, a good defender, and someone who could score enough to take some defensive heat off the true scorers on the team. Keep in mind, the last two UK teams (with Cauley-Stein anchoring the 5) made it all the way to the NC game and then to the FF before bowing out. Not too bad.

As for Cauley-Stein's numbers and contributions, in 2013-14 he averaged 26 minutes per game, 6.8 points, and 6.1 rebounds. In 2014-15, he averaged 24 minutes, 8.9 points, and 6.4 rebounds. Meanwhile, Landen has averaged 28 minutes, 10 points, and 12 rebounds over the last 3 games--that is, since he turned a new leaf and started his ascendance. Yes, that's just a 3-game sample, but it's the 3-game sample since Self challenged him and Lucas clearly started playing like a more complete 5 in the post. And even if he "slips" back down more toward Cauley-Stein territory going forward (i.e., 6-9 ppg and 6 rpg), that will combine with the other facets of his game to give KU a much more rounded attack than it had just a couple weeks ago.

Bottom line: I love what I'm seeing from the kid, hope he continues to shine, and have concluded that the level of performance he is starting to bring is making KU far more of a complete force to be reckoned with than it was heretofore. Past (recent) performance is no guarantee of future returns, and like any other player I'm sure he's going to register an off game here and there. But hopefully he continues to believe in himself and just goes out there on a mission, as has been true of the "new" Landen over the past couple weeks.

Rock Chalk...

Thanks, Murph. I just think the numbers are interesting.

HawknMo is a great poster, always bringing interesting insights. Also not afraid to speak up or take a contrarian view, and that's to be appreciated. I just wanted to put that out there so that he (or she, not sure?) doesn't get the sense of being singled out. I guess that was just my attempt at gentle persuasion, to say give Landen a new look with a different frame, because you might be pleasantly surprised like myself and many others right now.

One reason why there might be lingering skepticism is that Landen's sudden outburst on the offensive end is a bit of a "discontinuity." In other words, it wasn't something that came along incrementally, along a measured glide path. It just sort of exploded out of nowhere.

As a result, just a few weeks back, I was still opining that we really needed Bragg, Diallo, and/or Hunter (if not all three) to develop so that we'd be better rounded come tourney time (to augment the minutes Self would continue to give to Landen and, gasp, Jamari--whom I still have major concerns about given his tendency for erratic one step forward, two steps back performances). I still halfway feel like we're going to need one or two of those bench guys in crunch time somewhere along the way, but now I feel it's more like a "Cole Aldrich" niche contribution (UNC tourney game) rather than them needing to really come up big through the whole tourney. The reason is the unexpected breakout of Landen of late, or at least the breakout of one aspect of his game that had long been missing.

Bottom line: I hope Landen just keeps this up, because if he does, we are truly rounding into shape at precisely the right time.

Rock Chalk...

OH MY!!!

What the heck did I ingest before writing that? I actually was the one who posted about his untimely departure a month ago, and the Eagles are one of my favorite bands. So I definitely know that. I'll blame it on a lack of sleep!

PS: I'm about to edit it, LOL! (I don't like making mistakes)

PPS: The Royals once had a manager named Jim Frey. Maybe the wires just crossed for a split second and the rest, as they say, is history! Haha...

'Nuff said.

Didn't see your PM. (Funny that you thought I might have crossed wires as well with the former Royals manager!)

My "Jim for Glenn" senior moment messed up what I thought was an otherwise pretty thoughtful post. I find it interesting that the intended target of said post hasn't chosen to respond to that analysis, ATXJay's numbers, or Corpus's +/- analysis for Landen during recent games.

"Funny" -- more like "Amazing!" that I even remembered Jim Frey! He was only with the Royals a couple of years before he left, but then he did get them to the WS the year I left the Army to attend KU, so that may have kept him a little more salient to me than he would be otherwise.

On the other hand, as a music lover, erstwhile guitarist and huge fan of the Eagles since my first hearing of "Take it easy", I have no problem remembering the recently departed Glenn.

No worries, mate! If I had a dollar for every little cross circuit I've had over the years, oooh, I could afford 4 season tickets behind the bench!