It’s not off the table that either player returns to Lawrence, but when Flory Bidunga entered the Transfer Portal, it appeared to present the perfect opportunity for Bryson Tiller to have a breakout next season. Now, Tiller is in the portal too.
The 2024 four-star big man made a major impact for the Jayhawks in his redshirt freshman season, averaging 7.9 points and 6.1 rebounds in nearly 26 minutes per game. However, his shot was slow to come along, he was an inefficient scorer, and after playing a season next to Bidunga, he’s yet to prove himself as a defensive anchor.
Tiller was a highly-rated 2024 recruit, but Aiden Sherrell was ranked even higher. A McDonald’s All-American, Sherrell played two seasons at Alabama, and on Monday, the eve of the Transfer Portal window in college basketball, he, like Tiller, announced his intention to enter the portal.
Sherrell isn’t just the perfect Tiller replacement for Bill Self to target; in many ways, he’s the idealized version and a bona fide upgrade of a similar skillset. Kansas is facing a difficult portal window with the possibility of losing both Tiller and Bidunga, but landing Sherrell wouldn’t just ease the pain; it could set the Jayhawks up to be even better in the front court next season.
Aiden Sherrell is already everything Kansas hoped Bryson Tiller could become
The rest of college basketball is chasing the rim dominance that Dusty May, Todd Golden, and others have found with massive front courts. So, smartly anticipating a major payday, bigs have begun to flood the Transfer Portal market. That supply-side increase may help regulate the booming prices, but will likely fail to keep them in check. That’s why Bidunga and Tiller are testing the market and why, after indicating that he was likely to stay in Tuscaloosa, Sherrell saw himself out the door.
While it won’t be cheap to land them, the influx of seven-footers in the portal will make Tiller and Bidunga easier to replace, and while Georgia center Somto Cyril is a name to watch and Saint Mary’s forward Paulius Murauskas is sitting near Bidunga at the top of transfer rankings, Sherrell is the most one-to-one Tiller upgrade.
As his three-point shot has come along, Sherrell has become an efficient scorer in Nate Oats’s wide-open five-out offense, knocking down a third of his attempts from deep. Though his finishing around the rim leaves something to be desired, his 59.5 effective field goal percentage would represent a significant improvement from Tiller’s 48 percent eFG.
Sherrell is a good passer with a decent assist/turnover ratio, which is crucial if he is to play alongside another big, but his best skill, with his massive wingspan, is his ability to protect the rim. For Kansas, that was Bidunga’s primary task. Still, in Tiller’s minutes with Bidunga off the floor, the Jayhawks held opponents to 56.1 percent shooting at the rim. In Sherrell’s minutes at Alabama, which didn’t have another big aside from a five-game stint from Charles Bediako, opponents shot 54.5 percent at the rim.
Sherrell averaged 2.2 blocks per game while attempting 2.4 threes. He was the only player in the country who averaged more than two blocks and two three-point attempts. That’s a rare combination of floor spacing and rim protection, and exactly what Kansas was hoping Tiller to be if he reached his ceiling. Sherrell is already there, and he still has more development to come.
So, when Bill Self is finalizing his list of portal targets, Sherrell’s name is a good place to start.