LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) Bill Self has taken three teams to the Final Four and won a national title, he has more Big 12 championship rings than fingers and a national coach of the year award sits in his office.
This season may have been his finest coaching job at Kansas.
Once the nations No. 1 team, the Jayhawks had to juggle the distraction of an FBI investigation into apparel partner Adidas. They lost one of the nations most dominant big men, Udoka Azubuike, to a season-ending wrist injury. Sophomore forward Silvio de Sousa was rendered ineligible by the NCAA and veteran guard Lagerald Vick left the team late in the season.
Yet the Jayhawks competed for the regular-season Big 12 title into the final week, reached the finals of the conference tournament and may be playing their best ball in months.
Despite starting four freshmen and playing lineups nobody ever envisioned.
This is new for everybody, Self said after learning his team is the No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region, and will face Northeastern in the opening round Thursday in Salt Lake City. The biggest thing will be to have fun and enjoy it. Its a reward for the guys doing a good job on every team throughout the season, and we will approach it that way and hopefully play free.
The Jayhawks provided glimpses early in the season what they could have been. They beat Michigan State to open the season, knocked off Tennessee on a neutral floor and beat Villanova in December, all part of an impressive 15-2 start to the season that had fans thinking national title.
Then the injuries began to mount.
Azubuike missed time with an ankle injury, then needed wrist surgery, and suddenly the twin-post lineups that Self had tinkered with all offseason were useless. So, Self switched tactics and began to employ a four-guard lineup, leaning heavily on a young and inexperienced backcourt.
That worked well enough until Vick left for personal reasons.
Now, the Jayhawks base their starting lineups on their opponent: Against big teams, they will start freshman big man David McCormack alongside power forward Dedric Lawson in a setup similar to what they ran at the start of the season, and theyll swap in sophomore Marcus Garrett and run four guards when the opponent is smaller and gets up and down the floor.
Its a unique situation given that Kansas usually dictates the way other teams want to play, but the reality is nothing about this season has been usual for the Jayhawks.
Were definitely confident, said Lawson, their All-Big 12 forward who sat out last season after transferring from Memphis. Just knowing that the guy beside you is not going to let you down, that everyone in the locker room is going to go out there and play to their best of their ability no matter if shots are falling. Just competing is all you can ask for.
Its all Self has asked for all season.He finally felt like the Jayhawks responded in the finals of the Big 12 Tournament, too. Shots werent falling and Iowa State was running away from them, yet his young, cobbled-together lineup kept fighting until the last few seconds of the game.
Im more excited after watching them (against the Cyclones) than I have been all season, Self said. We had nothing go well nothing and they battled their asses off for 40 minutes. Even though it wasnt pretty, I thought we did a lot of good things.
