It's evident Self needs a Final Four

OMAHA, Neb. | Time flies when you haven’t won. That’s the funny thing about sports. One minute, you’re an overachieving young coach busting up NCAA Tournament brackets and building ram-tough teams to bruise through the Big Ten.

The next minute, you’re the best basketball coach who has never been to a Final Four.

It’s a jarring adjustment, but Kansas coach Bill Self has never hidden from the truth. Times change. Expectations change. And Self knows there are a whole lot of people out there saying that he needs to get this Kansas team to the Final Four. It’s his third time this decade as the coach of a No. 1 seed (and eighth consecutive time as a top-four seed). It’s his second consecutive Kansas team to win 30-plus games.

And, oh yeah, it’s the most talented basketball team he has ever coached. You know all the numbers. The Jayhawks have outscored opponents by an average margin of 20 points this year. The Jayhawks have four McDonald’s High School All-Americans. They have four starters — Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Mario Chalmers and Darnell Jackson — projected to be taken in this year’s NBA draft, should they make themselves available. They have seven players who averaged seven points or more in conference play — and the Big 12 was one of the two or three best conferences in America. They had seven different guys lead the team in scoring. And so on.

Well, you know all about Kansas’ talent. Everybody does. That’s the point. The spotlight is on the Jayhawks. And the spotlight is on Bill Self.

It is strange. It seems like only yesterday that Self was the hard-charging young coach inspiring and driving Tulsa to that surprising Elite Eight run in 2000. He was then the tough young coach who took over at Illinois and in his first year put together a rugged team that pounded to a Big Ten championship, and then went back to the Elite Eight. Three years later, he was still a promising young coach hired to put the pieces back together at Kansas after Roy Williams went home to North Carolina. He took that first team to the Elite Eight as well, where they lost in overtime to Georgia Tech.

Then, an ultragifted Kansas went back to the Elite Eight last year, Self’s fourth, and this time the Jayhawks lost to UCLA.

The thing about March is this: Everyone will celebrate your Elite Eight appearances for a while … but if you stop there they will wonder why you can’t make the Final Four. And — Self still has this to look forward to — everyone will celebrate your Final Four appearances for a while … but if you stop there, they will wonder why you can’t win the big game. There are no scenic lookouts on the March Madness Highway.

Anyway, with Self, the no-Final-Four thing is a story now. People ask him about it. They ask his players about it. They talk about it on television. We write about it in the newspapers. It’s out there. Self’s teams have lost to lower seeds four of the last five years. Self has 17 tournament wins — only three coaches (John Chaney, Gene Keady, Tom Davis) have more tournament victories without reaching a Final Four, and all of them coached many more years. Everyone waits for Self’s team to deliver in March.

And fair or not, lots of people are getting impatient.

“To be candid, I felt really good about a lot of teams that we had going into the tournament making runs,” Self says. “We have some teams make some good runs. I think winning three games in a tournament is a pretty good run — maybe not great by expectations or what you hope to do.

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To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.