Next Year's Jayhawk should be loaded, deep and think in the front court

I see Dok on none of the NBA draft boards and imagine he'll be back next year. Then, who knows, but Billy Preston may be back as well.

Dok 7'0"
Billy 6'10"
McCormack 6'10"
Lawson 6'9"
De Sousa 6'9"
Lightfoot 6'8"

We will go from thin in front to potentially very thick and crazy deep. Who knows what Billy will do? Just wish the NCAA would make a decision on him. I don't know much about how the NCAA works but they continually appear incompetent, disconnected and unconcerned about the teams and players they are to serve.

From my perspective the NCAA appears to be interested only in making money. They appear to be completely indifferent if not hostile to the athlete.

NCAA processes and decisions are frustrating, but I don't really get the vitriol and blame game against them.

There are hundreds of thousands of athletes, each of whom need to meet the same eligibility criteria. It seems the NCAA certifies 99.99% of those efficiently and quickly.

KU has presented very unique cases over the past three years, including bad acts by certain athletes and their parents. NCAA has to make a decision, that then sets a precedent for every single other school and athlete, and thus must be made carefully. Where do we get off blaming the NCAA when most of our issues are illegal loans to parents, driving questionable loaner cars, coming from another country with incomplete records, etc.

If the NCAA is mad at us, it might just be because we keep putting these difficult issues in front of them.

For Preston, I would think the loaned car issue is one of the most difficult for the NCAA to understand. It's the easiest way for an alum to "help" a kid, which doesn't include outright cash gifts, cash loans or buying stuff that the kid will keep. The kid can always just say "I just borrowed it to go to the store", but in reality how did he even get the car, how long did he drive it, etc. It very obviously is not clear cut in Preston's case.

I wish KU didn't have to deal with any of these issues, but we keep recruiting problems, and then get mad when the NCAA doesn't jump through hoops to solve our problems in time for the big game. How bout we just stop putting ourselves in this position??

To the original post, with the lineup you show, I think MItch is the odd man out, but at the very least he'd rotate to his more natural position as a small forward. I have no idea if he can play that position because we haven't seen him try but the rest of the list look like centers and power forwards to me.

As for presenting the NCAA with problems, I don't think we're alone in that regard. I do think (or at least hope) that KU's compliance department is extremely conservative an aggressive compared to others. Honestly, we could have easily overlooked the car situation and it likely would have never seen the light of day, and Billy would be happily driving a car around.

Once an accident report got filed, KU's compliance guys likely felt that they couldn't overlook it. Just a guess, but it would explain a lot.

In terms of recruitment, we put pressure on coaches to win, and we put pressure on them to bring in players who can help them win. I do think the coaches try really hard to vet these kids, but in the end it's like a job interview. If the kid promises to keep his nose clean, and we believe the kid because he seems sincere, and then he or a relative does something stupid, it's not 100% on the coaches in every case.