Unsightly win over Texas may have revealed something substantial about Kansas Jayhawks
Truth be told, the sixth-ranked Kansas Jayhawks looked discombobulated and alternately sped up and sluggish for a good long time on Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse.
If you watched KU coach Bill Self on the sideline a bit, you got a glimpse at some of his considerable arsenal of exasperated go-tos: the hands to the face, the gestures and words of wrath, the full body droop, etc.
And you can take that frustrated state of mind from Self himself, who put it thusly as he addressed the Senior-Day crowd after KU concocted a 70-63 overtime victory over No. 21 Texas to claim its staggering 20th Big 12 title in the last 26 years:
“Has anybody ever been to the worst movie they’ve ever seen,” Self said, “but the ending was fantastic?”
He later clarified that he had no particular film in mind when he said that. But he reckoned there are plenty to choose from that weren’t box-office hits and generally crummy but redeemed themselves with the endings alone.
The particular beauty of this for KU (25-6, 14-4 Big 12), though, is that the unsightly elements of the game also became testimony to the ability to grind and find a way.
“Today was obviously not artistic at all,” Self said. “But in order to have great years, you’ve got to win ugly (at times).”
Certainly, they furnished the ugly, which Self figured had plenty to do with the team being too uptight over celebrating six seniors playing their last game here.
And maybe there was something to contend with in having lost two of their last three games and playing their fourth game in eight days … and the responsibility of trying to extend an incredible 38-year-streak of Senior Day victories (featuring 10 wins over ranked teams, including No. 1 Baylor last year).
Whatever the case, there sure was a lot to distress a KU fan along the way to the redemptive finish.
Consider that in the final 5 minutes 40 seconds of regulation and first few minutes of overtime, Kansas went more than 8 minutes without making a field goal.
And what about that turnover spree in the first few minutes of the second half? Or the bungled final 15.8 seconds of regulation after KU took a timeout with a chance to dispense with the drama of overtime in what was then a 57-57 game?
“Dumb, dumb, dumb by me,” said Self, blaming himself for how he positioned personnel in a sequence that ended with Jalen Coleman-Lands nabbing a loose ball and banking it in a millisecond late.
Oh, and throw in the fact that presumptive Big 12 player of the year Ochai Agbaji missed his first 10 field-goal attempts. And that David McCormack led KU with 22 points but missed seven of 13 field-goal attempts, most of them in heavy traffic but from just a foot or two away.
No wonder KU was on the verge of losing for the third time in four games and fifth in the last 12 … and moving headlong into a vulnerable trajectory into the defining weeks of the season.
By the end of the game, though, all of that was reduced to a footnote at worst. Or, heck, maybe all of that actually stood for something substantial:
Like a potential harbinger of prosperous days ahead yet for a drained team not at all at its best beating a Texas team (21-10, 10-8) against which it had lost three in a row — including only a month ago in Austin when it beat the Jayhawks 79-76 with more poise and grit in the crucible down the stretch.
“That was our game,” Self said, “and they won it.”
Meanwhile, this was a game that could have gone either way.
And KU seized it despite making just 31 percent of its shots from the field (18 of 58) and never really getting any offensive rhythm.
You could consider that being flawed.
Or you could see it as a signal of a superseding resolve for a team that entered the game leading the Big 12 in scoring (78.9 points a game) but won this with defense and rebounding (49-42) in what Self noted was a contrast to its formula most of the season.
No doubt Kansas has to play better to make a dent in the NCAA Tournament. And to do that, KU will have to play in a different frame of mind than what it lugged around Saturday.
“In sports, you want to operate at a magic level, where your energy and your focus and your adrenaline (converges) at kind of a crossroads and gives you the best chance to play well,” Self said. “We weren’t at the magic level today. We were too amped up and too anxious.”
The greats, he added, such as Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, have had the ability to consistently attain that magic level without getting caught up in what’s around them.
Self suspects that the inability to get there was a large part of what happened Saturday but won’t be a factor going forward.
Just the same, at some point soon, KU, like every other team in the NCAA Tournament, will stare at moments when it could indeed be susceptible to being too amped up and anxious.
What happened Saturday should provide a blueprint, or at least an example, that any such distress needn’t be their undoing as they head to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament. They’ll be the No. 1 seed by virtue of holding the tiebreaker with Big 12 co-champion Baylor.
“If we lost this game, we would be going into Kansas City trying to recapture some momentum,” Self said. “And I don’t think that will be the case now.”
Where it goes from here remains to be seen, of course.
But if this movie ends well for the Jayhawks, when they roll the credits, what happened here on Saturday should be highlighted.
Because not only did it beat the alternative, but it also spoke to another dimension of this team.
This story was originally published March 5, 2022 at 9:15 PM.