KU needs to get healthy for the NCAAs. But it needs more than that, and Self knows it
In the initial hours at T-Mobile Center on Wednesday, before watching Kansas State keep its NCAA Tournament hopes alive, and then an under-manned KU team get drilled by Cincinnati, I finished a column about Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
That’s a wild ride of an opening sentence, I understand, but stick with me. The lead anecdote of the Kelce column referenced that he’d sat out the regular-season finale. He was a different player afterward. The Chiefs might not have won the Super Bowl without his opportunity to just hit refresh.
The relevance? KU coach Bill Self took the same opportunity. Forced to sit Hunter Dickinson with a shoulder injury, Self made what he termed an “easy decision” to sit Kevin McCullar right along with him in their Big 12 Tournament opener. Get them healthy for the postseason.
Seemed like an apt comparison, right? Maybe there still is one somewhere in there, because Self’s decision did put KU in its best position for what awaits in late March.
But here’s where it breaks down: The Kansas problems stretch beyond its collective health. Stretch beyond the painful-to-sit-through night in Kansas City.
There wasn’t much to be gleaned from Cincinnati’s 72-52 win amid a pro-Kansas crowd that had little chance to remind you it was a pro-Kansas crowd.
But there was this: The Jayhawks not only had one player capable of scoring on the floor, in KJ Adams, but just one player who looked remotely unbothered by the thought of even trying to score.
Dajuan Harris and Johnny Furphy combined to shoot 4-of-19. Forget assist-to-turnover ratio. They combined for three more turnovers than buckets. Those aren’t the fill-ins, either. Those are the guys you’re going to need in a week, and hopefully two or three weeks.
While much of the attention Wednesday fell to those who would fill in, those in line for an increase in playing time — Nick Timberlake, Jamari McDowell or Elmarko Jackson — when I was asked before the game who had the most to gain, the reply was much easier:
Johnny Furphy.
KU cannot shoot the 3. It is 6-of-41 over the past two games. Outside the top-200 in the nation from behind the arc for the season. You know all this. Cincinnati knew this. The Jayhawks’ future first-round opponent in the NCAAs will know this, and in case they don’t, Self is willing to advertise it to them.
“It’s like they’re shooting at the fair where the balls can’t actually fit through the goals,” he said, not the remotest hint of a smile as he said it. “We gotta start start shooting at a bigger basket.”
Or, you know, they have to get Furphy going again, and twice on Wednesday he put up a 3 that you wondered mid-flight if it would even draw contact with the rim. He’s 3-for-19 from deep over the last five games, and his next time on the floor will be the first NCAA Tournament game of his life. You can’t help but wonder if it’s coming at the worst possible time.
For him.
For all of KU.
A year ago, I was so confident that KU should be the No. 1 overall seed that I wrote about how they’d been jobbed when they had to settle for just a run-of-the-mill No. 1 seed instead.
A year later, the Jayhawks will enter the tournament 7-8 over their last 15 games. And while McCullar has battled his knee injury through the conference season, KU has had both him and Dickinson on the court for much of it.
They’ve been crushed by 20-plus points in back-to-back games for the first time since 1919, according to X user Adam Sullivan, and one of those games included both players on the floor. Yet through all of that, they still have wins against the Nos. 1, 2 and 5 teams in the KenPom rankings.
Self insists Dickinson and McCullar will be healthy enough to play next week, though he kind of has to say that, and he insists his starting five is as good as any in the country.
Forget the bubble teams. Welcome to the tournament committee’s most difficult task in four days: What to do with Kansas?
Beside the larger point, though, if we’re being honest. Wherever the Jayhawks wind up in the tournament — a 4 seed, a 5 seed or something more surprising either way — is there someone willing to make valid argument they’re prepared to make a run once there? Heck, it didn’t look like the five players occupying the floor Wednesday against Cincinnati had much belief in making a run in Kansas City.
KU is fighting a roster construction problem without the time to remove all of the nails and try again. (Of course, there’s a team across the state line in Columbia, Missouri, that wishes it had the same roster construction problem, I realize.)
But confronting KU now is an issue that has so rarely confronted Self this time of year.
“We gotta get a swag back,” Self said. “Geez.”
Is one week — without the chance to win a basketball game that counts — enough time to gain confidence?
Well, the best hope is the two — confidence and health — are related. Which returns me to the top of the column.
Self might’ve called it an easy decision to have McCullar dress in a blue shirt rather than a white uniform Wednesday. But we know better, right? The guy cannot stand to lose so much as a scrimmage, and he knew he was setting himself up for some painful moments over the course of 40 minutes.
At one point, after Jackson watched a rebound fall to the ground and then committed a foul on the putback — though not hard enough to prevent the basket — Self clasped his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. Didn’t even speak.
But whatever we think of the Jayhawks, whatever we think of the drubbing they absorbed in KC, whatever we think of their first time not making the quarterfinals in Big 12 Tournament history, they’re better set up for the NCAA Tournament than they were before the night began.
The faint hint of an opportunity for next week rests on the health of two players who took the night off. That itself is a victory
The only victory KU had Wednesday.
They’ll need more than good health to ensure it isn’t their last.