A ‘really resilient team’: Self’s rewatch of KU Jayhawks’ title run reaffirms his belief
It’s been nearly two months since the Kansas men’s basketball team defeated North Carolina, 72-69, in the 2022 NCAA Tournament title game at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
Since clipping the nets on April 4, KU coach Bill Self has binge-watched replays of his No. 1 seeded team’s tourney wins over No. 16 seed Texas Southern, No. 9 Creighton, No. 4 Providence, No. 10 Miami, No. 2 Villanova and No. 8 UNC.
“I’ve seen the Creighton game once or twice and the Providence game once or twice, Miami maybe five or six times, Villanova in that seven, eight range and Carolina double figures,” Self revealed Thursday during his postseason Hawk Talk radio show hosted by Brian Hanni.
Victories in the close games (KU defeated UNC by three points, Providence by five and Creighton by seven) and in the blowouts (KU thumped Texas Southern by 27 points, Miami by 26 and Villanova by 16) left Self with one apparent takeaway: This Ochai Agbaji-led 2021-22 KU team (34-6), which won its last 11 games, rates as one of the best squads in school history.
“This is a ‘Danny (Manning) and the Miracles’ type team. This is a great team,” Self said. “This team should go down as one of the four best Kansas teams regardless (of) however you shake it down,” KU’s 20th-year coach, added.
Kansas has won four NCAA Tournament titles — in 2022, 2008, 1988 and 1952 — as well as retroactively awarded Helms Foundation championships for its 1922 and 1923 teams. Manning was most outstanding player of the 1988 Final Four and won another ring as an assistant on Self’s coaching staff in ‘08.
‘This team had intangibles’
“With all respect to all the other ones, this team had intangibles,” Self said. The Jayhawks won the Big 12 regular-season and postseason tourney crowns, then after being awarded the top seed in the Midwest Regional, went 6-0 in the NCAAs.
“This team had intangibles like the ’08 team didn’t even have. It wasn’t quite as talented (as ‘08). That team (which went 37-3 and also won Big 12 regular season and postseason tourney titles) had great leadership and intangibles (from Mario Chalmers, Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Sasha Kaun, Russell Robinson, Sherron Collins, Darnell Jackson, Cole Aldrich and others) but not any better than what this team had,” Self said.
Self cited some other outstanding KU squads worthy of consideration for “best ever” in school history.
“You could say ’85-86 and obviously the ’97 team … those are the two that come to mind,” Self said.
Led by Manning, Calvin Thompson, Ron Kellogg, Greg Dreiling and others, coach Larry Brown’s 1985-86 KU team went 35-4 overall and won the Big Eight regular season and postseason tourney titles. KU lost to Duke, 71-67, in the Final Four semifinals in Dallas. Self was a grad assistant on Brown’s KU coaching staff that season.
Coach Roy Williams’ 1996-97 KU team, which was led by Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz, Scot Pollard, Jerod Haase, Jacque Vaughn and others, went 34-2 overall, winning the Big 12 regular season and postseason tourney crowns, but did not reach the Final Four. Eventual national champ Arizona defeated KU, 85-82, in the Sweet 16 in Birmingham, Alabama.
Self discusses top teams in his era
“You could certainly say the ’11 and ’10 teams with us and the ’16 team, being No. 1 overall type seeds, that would have a chance (to be included as one of KU’s best ever squads),” Self said.
The 2010-11 Jayhawks (35-3), which featured the Morris twins, Tyshawn Taylor, Thomas Robinson, Tyrel Reed, Brady Morningstar, Elijah Johnson and others, also won the league regular season title and postseason tourney crown. That top seeded team fell to No. 11 seed VCU, 71-61, in the Elite Eight in San Antonio.
KU’s 2009-10 squad (33-3), which was led by the Morris twins plus Collins, Xavier Henry, Aldrich, Taylor, Reed, and Morningstar and others, won the league regular season and postseason tourney crowns but fell to No. 9 seed Northern Iowa, 69-67, in a second-round NCAA Tourney game in Oklahoma City.
KU’s 2015-16 team went 33-5, won the league regular season and postseason tourney titles but lost to eventual champion Villanova in the Elite Eight, 64-59, in Louisville. It was led by Perry Ellis, Wayne Selden, Frank Mason, Devonte Graham, Landen Lucas and others.
“You could say the ’20 team,” Self stated.
The 2019-20 Jayhawks (28-3) who went 17-1 to win the Big 12 regular season title, were unable to play in the postseason because of the pandemic. That squad was led by Devon Dotson, Udoka Azubuike, Marcus Garrett, Agbaji, Isaiah Moss, David McCormack, Christian Braun and others.
There was no tourney to test Jayhawks in 2020
“The ’20 team didn’t have a chance (because of the cancellation of NCAAs) but those other teams had opportunities and didn’t quite get it done,” Self said. “Give these guys all the credit. They made it happen. They came together in a way I’ve never seen a team come together like it happened for us down the stretch,” he added.
Self was asked to describe the “intangibles” he mentioned regarding the 2021-22 national champs.
“It’s more than chemistry,” Self said. “It’s not having to deal with anything that didn’t have anything to do with winning or losing basketball games. It’s never having a situation where you felt one guy didn’t have both feet in. It’s never having to worry about if kids would compete. When I talk about compete, being into it from a strategy standpoint, a scouting report standpoint, getting treatment standpoint, getting rest standpoint. There was never a doubt any of those guys would be doing what they should be doing to give us the best chance to win.
“Never a doubt regarding jealousy,” Self continued. “You can talk about leadership all the time. So much of it also becomes jealousy. As we get in deeper and the stakes are higher and their popularity grows, do individual wants and desires creep in over team wants and desires? That did not happen.”
Self continued: “I didn’t talk to one guy one time about what agents were saying they need to do to play better or how to play to impress people in the NCAA Tournament. (It was) first time ever I haven’t talked to them about that kind of stuff. When I say being ‘locked in’ and having alignment, this team was a 12 (on a scale of 1-10) when it comes to stuff like that.
“You can’t say other teams were poor. That’s not how it works. Other teams could be really good on those things, but this team was perfect. There’s a difference between making an A in a class and A-plus. This team made A-pluses across the board,” Self stated.
‘No issues’ involving this year’s title squad
Self continued on the intangibles front: “This has been a year where there’s been no issues — none. It’s like everything was from a supreme power, a supreme being how things fell into place.
“One reason why it was so good is because I know the players expected it,” Self added of a confident team expecting to win it all.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think anybody outside our team really expected it. I think our guys thought, ‘We’ve got a chance to do pretty well.’ From a chemistry standpoint and sharing the ball and being tough at game point this was a darn good basketball team. They maximized their abilities about as well as any team we’ve had.”
The 2022 champions were a “really resilient team,” junior guard Christian Braun said. “Guys like Ochai (Agbaji), Jalen (Wilson), Dave (McCormack), Juan (Harris), Remy (Martin) ... everybody on this team really came to play, to fight every game, every half.
“No matter what happened, we never really worried too much. Those guys keep us kind of steady. We never thought we’d lose,” Braun added.
KU rallied from a six-point halftime deficit in the Elite Eight against Miami and from a 15-point halftime deficit to North Carolina in the title game.
“We hadn’t done it in a national championship game but at K-State we were down more than that (16 point deficit in a 78-75 victory on Jan. 23 at Bramlage Coliseum),” Braun said.
Of the Jayhawks’ refusal to quit after 20 minutes in the Carolina game, redshirt sophomore forward Wilson said: “We know how good we are, how poised we are. We know how to play. We were down 16 points at our rival school (KSU in first half) and came back. It was us locking in and wanting it more.”
Self’s other NCAA title team was down nine points with 2:12 remaining in a 75-68 overtime win over Memphis in the 2008 national championship contest in San Antonio. In 2008, the No. 1 seeded Jayhawks defeated No. 16 seed Portland State, No. 8 UNLV, No. 12 Villanova, No. 10 Davidson, No. 1 North Carolina and No. 1 Memphis en route to the crown.
Four No. 1 seeds battled it out in 2008
“The competition in the Final Four was better (in ‘08) because it was four No. 1 seeds,” Self said of KU, North Carolina, Memphis and UCLA. “It was surreal. We didn’t really have to go through much crap to get there. It was like we were injury free all year long. We were never ranked below 3 or 4 in the country. It was kind of an expectation we would be one of those teams (in Final Four). That team in ‘08 would never have lost to anybody by 20 at home,” Self added.
Kentucky defeated KU, 80-62, on Jan. 29, 2022 at Allen Fieldhouse, dropping the Jayhawks’ record at the time to 17-3.
“Even if it was the Celtics we wouldn’t have lost by 20 (in a home game in ‘08),” Self said. “Kentucky comes in and beats us like they did. My father passed in January. We kind of had to work around that. To run the table this year, I don’t know if it felt better (than ‘08) but I think there was more elation. There was more pure joy this year because I know this group had been through a little bit more.”
The Jayhawks players and coaches have thoroughly enjoyed the aftermath of winning the title.
“I don’t know if our feet have quite touched the ground yet. It’s been good,” Self said. “Just to be candid I actually feel like this year’s celebration and the euphoria of winning it far exceeded what it did in ’08. I do think in ’08 when we won it I felt we had celebrated too much. Around August I didn’t think we capitalized on that immediate success like we should have (in recruiting and offseason workouts). This year we’ve tried to do a better job of that.”
The 2022-23 team will be arriving soon for the start of summer school on June 7, meaning it soon will be time to prepare for what Self hopes will be yet another stellar season.
“Winning it is fabulous, an unbelievable feeling,” Self said recently on the “Glue Guys” podcast hosted by former KU forward Landen Lucas and Landen’s dad, Richard. “One thing I’ll say is the wins never feel as good as the losses feel bad. Never. That one win makes it feel better than all the losses combined. There’s a lot of heartache to get there but certainly it was worth it. The reality is,” he concluded, “we’ve got a lot of work to do. We need to capitalize off of the success of this past year.”
