‘Find a way’ is what KU does in its win over Baylor

Bill Self’s Kansas team already had seized an outrageous 11th straight Big 12 regular-season title … at a time when the conference is the nation’s best by any number of measures.

And after grinding past Baylor 62-52 on Friday at the Sprint Center, his Jayhawks are a win from doubling down with a victory in the Big 12 Tournament title game Saturday night.

For all that, though, as Self stood winding down in a Sprint Center corridor Friday, he groped for the right words to describe KU’s identity.

“I would say … I should know that by now, probably … ” he began, pausing repeatedly before blurting it out: “I would say our identity would be ‘find a way.’ Just figure it out.

“Find a way.”

If the term isn’t glamorous, well, this team isn’t either.

And the words still speak eloquently to what has distinguished a season of underappreciated achievement by KU — even as the ultimate signature of the NCAA Tournament awaits.

It’s also a season that has reflected a particularly nimble coaching job by Self, arguably one of his finest.

It’s not just that lately he hasn’t always known who he’s going to have available (see: Perry Ellis and Cliff Alexander).

It’s that he’s spent almost all season not knowing who he can expect to perform in any given game.

“Very rarely do our games go as scripted,” he said, smiling. “So we’re getting used to it.”

The unpredictability was on display almost instantly against Baylor.

The Jayhawks, 26-7, entered the game having misfired on 51 of their last 59 three-point shots and immediately made their first two — despite Self’s hopes they wouldn’t heed his encouragement to keep flinging them up.

“I told them if they’re open to shoot it,” he said, “and hoped like hell that they wouldn’t.”

But the threes weren’t the way Kansas found to beat the Bears.

They cobbled it out with defense, not to mention some ill-considered shots by Baylor, which made just 19 of 58 field goals.

They spackled it together with a cameo return from Ellis, who had 11 points and six rebounds in a balky knee brace and said he was fine after limping off the court midway through the second half.

And they did it with the recently silent Wayne Selden popping up as the guest offensive player of the game. Punctuated by a pair of dunks on lobs, Selden had 20 points — more than in his last four games combined.

If you were to say he epitomized the enigmatic nature of this season, well, Self wouldn’t disagree with you.

“Love Wayne, but (he) … basically mirrors our team from an inconsistency standpoint,” Self said. “He’s had some great games, he’s had some games where he really labored.”

It wasn’t just that Selden played better on Friday, though, that encourages Self.

It’s why he played better.

“One thing he saw tonight … is that when he’s aggressive and drives it, he’s a pretty hard guard,” Self said. “And when he settles, he’s an easier guard. So he needs to let the driving and things like that set up shooting as opposed to having shooting set up everything else.”

It’s not the first time Self has pointed this out, of course, and it remains to be seen if this will take consistently with Selden.

But if it doesn’t, chances are someone else will emerge — whether of his own will or Self’s.

While at one point Self actually called it “kind of fun” to have to constantly adjust to the inconsistency, he also said in the wake of the ugly win Thursday over TCU that “the last 24 hours hasn’t been very pleasant for us.”

“Because I’m tired of it,” he added, “and they’re tired of me being tired of it.”

If that doesn’t sound like harmony and chemistry, exactly, it’s what you might hear about a team without a clear identity from a candid coach who isn’t averse to motivate his players even as he speaks to the media.

With a championship game awaiting today and nothing but elimination games thereafter, Self is hopeful that there is one thing he can count on from here on out: an energy that too often is missing.

“We can be duds,” he said.

Trouble is, the team with a fuzzy identity doesn’t necessarily have a consistent reservoir for that, either.

Ellis is the lone consistent performer, really, but he has a low-key, even stone-faced, demeanor.

Moreover, Self believes point guard Frank Mason and forward Jamari Traylor are too prone to fluctuating with the situation, signs of what he called being “pretty immature and pretty soft.”

But for all this, Self offers one major concession.

“I think our guys do adjust to the situation,” Self said. “If we need to make stops, they make stops. If we need a big basket, they make a big basket. Which is a good thing.

“But I feel like we’re living on the edge.”

Which probably is exactly where Self wants them as he keeps trying to find a way himself.

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 10:51 PM with the headline "‘Find a way’ is what KU does in its win over Baylor."