Former Duke star thinks KU has the right mindset to repeat as national champions
The Kansas men’s basketball team has a chance to join a shortlist of programs that have repeated as national champions.
No men’s team has won consecutive NCAA Tournament titles since Florida in 2006-07. Before that was Duke in 1991-92. Those are the only two in the past 40 years.
CBS Sports’ Grant Hill was a forward for the Blue Devils when they won those championships, and he talked about Kansas’ quest.
“Obviously I had the good fortune a long time ago to play for back-to-back championships,” Hill said in a CBS Sports conference call. “So long ago it might be hard for me to remember.
“I do think that Bill Self is an incredible coach, a legendary iconic coach. He has done a great job this year with this team, the pressure and the expectations of being the defending champion and still keeping that mindset of pursuing a championship while losing some pretty talented players from last year’s championship ballclub.”
Hill spoke before Self was hospitalized last week. He is expected to coach the Jayhawks in the NCAA Tournament.
KU opened the season by beating Duke 69-64 in the Champions Classic in Indianapolis. That victory caught the eye of Hill, the former Blue Devils star.
“I think part of it is the mindset from the start of the season how you approach the season and clearly Kansas, of course when they beat Duke early on in the year, showed that last year was last year, and this year is a separate season,” Hill said. “And they’ve approached it as a team that’s hungry and a team that wants to prove that they belong.”
Former Villanova coach Jay Wright, another CBS Sports analyst, also praised the job done by Self this season.
Wright knows from experience the pressure that comes with playing as the defending national champion.
But Kansas, 27-7, shook off a three-game losing streak in January and won the Big 12 regular-season title. That earned the Jayhawks the No. 1 seed in the West regional.
“What he did this year to get them to be a one seed and put them in this position is incredible,” Wright said in a conference call. “You read all these self-help books for people that are struggling or going through bad times. There’s not a lot of books out there that say how do you handle success because there’s so few people that get there.
“But how he handled that, the stress of every game you play, your opponent’s playing the national champion every game, even though a lot of those guys didn’t even play on that team. And that is stressful. Once you get to the tournament, it’s kind of a relief, like ‘OK, all we’ve got to do now is play in the tournament.’”
