Kansas Jayhawks land Lawrence native Zeke Mayo in transfer portal
The Kansas Jayhawks continue to add to their transfer portal haul this offseason with a hometown hero returning to Lawrence for his final year of eligibility.
Zeke Mayo, who was last season’s Summit League Player of the Year for the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, announced his commitment to Bill Self and KU on Tuesday.
After starring at the prep level at Lawrence High School, Mayo spent the last three seasons at South Dakota State, where he averaged 15.5 points, 4.9 rebounds and three assists per game while shooting 45% from the floor. Last season, the second straight in which he earned first-team All-Summit League honors, Mayo scored 18.8 points per game while shooting 39.1% from three-point range.
He’s plenty familiar with some of his new league foes, too. Mayo scored 19 points against the Iowa State Cyclones in the first round of this year’s NCAA tournament, and he also scored in double digits in games against the Kansas State Wildcats and UCF Knights this past season.
Kansas pulled out all the stops to recruit one of the best players in the transfer portal, even reportedly bringing in Devin Neal, another Lawrence native and KU football’s star running back, as part of the pitch.
Both 247Sports and The Athletic rank the Jayhawks’ newest addition as the 12th-best player in the transfer portal this year.
The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie wrote of Mayo: “As one of the best pull-up shooters in college basketball, Mayo doesn’t fill just a positional need, he actually fills a significant skill-based need that will give Self a lot more margin for error in how he constructs the team’s offense next season.”
Mayo is still planning to enter the NBA draft, which he stated when he originally announced he was entering the transfer portal. The deadline to withdraw from the NBA draft process to return to college is June 16.
Mayo joins former Florida Gators guard Riley Kugel as the two newest Jayhawks after Kugel committed earlier this week.
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