Kansas Jayhawks surge to Big 12 title, bolster Bill Self’s faith in their potential
At least publicly, Kansas basketball coach Bill Self is more prone to bluntly critique his teams than to gush, and more apt to emphasize the collective shortcomings than to inflate egos. He tells it like it is instead of how you might want to hear it. Not to be a scold but to motivate and teach, areas in which he has few peers.
So it was that in an interview the other day with ESPN, he spoke of his team thusly: “It’s a team that isn’t as individually talented as some of our teams,” he said, pausing and smiling before adding. “But they think they are. And I love that.”
As it happens, they’ve started to convince him, too, at least entering the NCAA Tournament.
Standing amid the confetti on the T-Mobile Center court after sixth-ranked Kansas stiff-armed No. 14 Texas Tech 74-65 in the men’s Big 12 Tournament title game on Saturday, Self smiled when reminded of those words.
“They think they’re really good, and I’m not going to tell them that they’re not,” he said. “And you know what? They are getting really good. They’ve grown together as a team.”
Those words might seem subdued. But they were just the start of a rare pause to appreciate that growth that even included Self acknowledging an emerging toughness that he hadn’t seen all season as KU earned a No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region. The Jayhawks on Thursday in Fort Worth, Texas, will play the winner of the game Tuesday in Dayton between Texas Southern and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
Coming from a man who detests softness more than about anything, and called this team out as appearing “soft and scared” after a 75-67 loss in Lubbock in January, that badge of courage Self noted on the court and was relayed to his players at a postgame news conference surprised them as much as anyone else.
“First time we’ve heard that all year,” deadpanned Christian Braun, one of five KU players to score in double figures (14). “Feels good to hear.”
Fleeting as it might be.
“It’s nice right now,” said Ochai Agbaji, who finished with 16 points and was voted the tournament’s most outstanding player. “But next week it’s going to change. He’s hard on us. He’s going to push us, and that’s what we expect. That’s why we’re here.”
That development is only part of why this team figures to have a chance to play true to a much-deserved top seed in the weeks to come.
Not only has it been gutsy in grinding out recent wins exemplified by this one, in which Self felt he had a whole team step up. It’s also become deeper, more balanced and versatile and bolstered by the increasingly awakening inside presence of David McCormack and surges from Mitch Lightfoot to go with the typically dynamic play of Agbaji, Braun and Jalen Wilson.
Then there was what might have been the most salient development of all on Saturday: Healthy again and with Self ready to re-engage him, point guard Remy Martin added another gear and dimension on Saturday when he came off the bench to score 12 points, pluck four rebounds and distribute four assists while swiping the ball three times in what might be considered his most meaningful game as a Jayhawk.
With McCormack and Lightfoot playing as they have recently and suddenly adding Martin as “a spark” without whom Self wasn’t sure KU would have won Saturday, Self said, “We’re a different ballclub than we were a couple months ago.”
Still one, mind you, that tends to make the game “harder than what it should be,” said Self, who reckoned his players should have moved the ball more offensively instead of “just dribbling all the time” and noted they made just 5 of 22 three-point attempts.
But he brought up that aimlessness in the context of how he never would have figured earlier in the season that this team (28-6) could win with such lousy long-range shooting against a team like Tech (25-9).
“You know, if you watched us play most of the year, we’ve scored it better than we have defended,” said Self, echoing some of the same sentiments he expressed after KU’s overtime victory over Texas last week in Allen Fieldhouse. “Today we defended better than we scored it.”
Enough so that he could safely say he didn’t think this was “artistic.” From Self, though, that’s hardly a complaint. If this team is going places in the tournament, it’s going to need to be more gritty than pretty at times since shooting can always be fickle.
“You’ve got to make the other team play worse than you,” he said. “It’s not so much you playing better than them: They’ve got to play worse than you.”
He added: “I think this team hopefully is growing into having some pride in making the other team not play well.”
Not to mention playing better themselves than they have all season, which seems to be the case right at the right time.
Now, Agbaji was right when he said securing a No. 1 seed “doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.”
Then again, how KU has gotten here says something about where it can go.
We already knew we could take it from the players … only more so now.
“Going forward,” Braun said, “we know we can beat anybody.”
Now, it seems, even the coach sees something more, too.
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 11:00 PM.