How Bill Self’s words — from a year ago — spurred Kansas Jayhawks to NCAA championship
Bill Self was in an NCAA Tournament bubble, but his words spread great lengths all the same.
Kansas men’s basketball had just experienced its worst NCAA defeat in a 34-point loss to USC in March last year, and when asked how he could address his team’s deficiencies in the offseason, KU’s coach was blunt.
Self said the Jayhawks needed to recruit. They needed to work on player development.
But they also needed something else.
“Guys, for us to be a team that really has a chance to be a national contender, we need to get a little bit more athletic. We do,” Self said in a press conference from Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. “We need to get a little longer and bigger and those sorts of things.”
Self couldn’t have known it at the time, but those words set the groundwork for KU’s national championship just over a year later on Monday night at the Superdome in New Orleans, where KU beat North Carolina 72-69.
During the Jayhawks’ memorable run through this NCAA Tournament, their starting five probably wasn’t what Self expected after the USC embarrassment.
“I think we are more athletic — and it’s the same guys,” Self said this week at the Final Four in New Orleans. “They deserve the credit.”
In other words, the five starters — Dajuan Harris, Christian Braun, Ochai Agbaji, Jalen Wilson and David McCormack — had reversed their own narrative just 378 days after their lowest point.
While Self’s words might’ve been intended to be an invitation to outsiders wanting to join the program (all-Pac 12 guard Remy Martin, for instance, joined KU as a graduate transfer), they ended up serving a greater purpose over others the next few months.
They motivated the heck out of Self’s current guys.
“I think that’s kind of a challenge to us as well,” KU forward Mitch Lightfoot said. “We had to meet that challenge. I think we did.”
Harris said he saw the dedication start almost immediately. After one week off that March, he saw teammates get right back to work, which included hour-long individual workouts on most days.
“When we came back, we just had like a goal, to make it to here. To make it to the Final Four,” Harris said this week at the Superdome. “To make a championship.”
Braun was just one example of that grind paying off.
He started drilling four days a week in the summer alongside Wilson with Lawrence trainer Peter Danyliv at a church gym across from campus.
Braun improved his offensive arsenal. He added moves and counter-moves while becoming more comfortable closer to the basket.
A year after making 46% of his twos while barely shooting them ... Braun tripled his production there while upping his accuracy to 55%.
“I think you’ve seen a lot of guys really take it upon themselves to improve,” Braun said, “and a lot of guys work really hard to get to that position.”
There were more transformations too.
Agbaji worked out in the summer with NBA player Damian Lillard, the start of a shift that pushed the KU guard from complementary scorer to first-team All-American.
Wilson, meanwhile, honed his three-point shot and free-throw accuracy, prompted in part by pro personnel feedback he’d received after briefly declaring for the NBA Draft.
Braun said an interesting thing happened late this season, then, after all KU’s guys were clearly playing above their previous level.
They started building confidence — forging belief that they were plenty good enough to win championships too.
The rings piled up from there. KU won a share of the Big 12 regular-season crown on Senior Night before rolling through the next week’s conference tournament. They overwhelmed Miami (Florida) in the second half to take the NCAA’s Midwest Regional championship, then muscled their way past North Carolina in Monday’s title game.
“It’s cool for us just to be in this position,” Braun said, “and show everybody where we can do it.”
The ending also provided Braun an opportunity to justifiably brag on his teammates.
Braun swears he wasn’t upset with Self’s comments after the USC game ... but he certainly heard them. He also gauged social media reaction at the time to what Self said, realizing his teammates had a lot to accomplish to show the outside world they were better than perception.
So after defeating Miami on March 27 — and making the Final Four — Braun delivered a tweet that encapsulated his team’s overall metamorphosis.
“that’s a lot of trophies,” he wrote with laughing emojis at the end, “for a team that needs to get more athletic.”
Monday night just added to the haul.
With these Jayhawks proving — for all time — they were plenty worthy of basketball’s biggest stage.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 11:50 PM with the headline "How Bill Self’s words — from a year ago — spurred Kansas Jayhawks to NCAA championship."
