Print edition: 
LAWRENCE — The Kansas Jayhawks could've been holed up in Allen Fieldhouse in the two days since their sluggish win over Florida Atlantic, taking coaching and making the necessary attitude adjustments.
Turns out, though, KU's players and staff may have spent more time down the street at Watkins Memorial Health Center.
"We've all got the crud," KU coach Bill Self said after Saturday's 70-42 victory over South Florida. "We've had head colds, guys not practicing, throwing up and everything. It's really going around campus. Everybody got flu shots. It's just the crud going around. Everybody's getting it."
It is that time of year, of course. But the calendar turning to December is also the period in which college basketball teams are no longer able to use the excuse of it being early in the season and start coming together in time for conference play.
Fans at Saturday's game probably didn't know that the Jayhawks were under the weather, and watched the first half and maybe assumed "the crud" was the name of KU's new offense.
The Jayhawks' defense was sharp, but No. 15 KU led 24-21 at halftime because it played the same careless and stagnant offense that began with the second half of the Maui Invitational championship game against Duke.
In the first 20 minutes, Kansas had six assists and nine turnovers, made 1 of 11 three-pointers (Elijah Johnson made 1 of 7) and shot 37.5 percent from the field.
"I told our guys before the season that we were going to have to really enjoy winning ugly," Self said, "because we don't have as many offensive weapons than what we had in the past. But they've taken that to a different level than I ever imagined.... It's like a different galaxy where no man has ever gone before."
The good news is this is still Kansas, where a 28-point win over a Big East opponent is not acceptable unless it looks a certain way, and these Jayhawks (5-2) simply do not look like Self's other KU teams. Thing is, they probably aren't going to ever play the symphonic half-court offense of the past two seasons, when unselfish and gifted big men like the Morris twins were directing passes to Tyrel Reed and Brady Morningstar and often getting the ball right back in better position.
"When you lose Brady and Tyrel and Markieff (Morris), you lost the three-best passers on our team," Self said. "And we're replacing them with guys who don't pass it as well naturally. I don't think this will be a great passing team. If you saw, we had two wide-open lob dunks that we practice every day, and the big guy underthrows it, and we come away with nothing. Last year those would have been game-changing plays. We've been pretty spoiled."
Kansas went to halftime knowing that it wasn't physically or emotionally present in the first half. If the Jayhawks kept it up, they were in danger of letting an inferior South Florida team hang around too long.
KU summoned up more energy to start the second half, going on a 7-0 run that was sparked by defensive pressure and taking a 47-33 lead after Travis Releford, Conner Teahan and Tyshawn Taylor hit three-pointers on consecutive possessions.
"Me and Travis were talking about it, and we didn't even realize how much the score had spaced out," Taylor said. "We were just playing. Our focus was more into our defense and not really our offense. The offense was just coming."
That will be the most important lesson for this group, and it will likely need to be drilled into the Jayhawks' minds many times before March.
Taylor stayed on the pedal and finished with 24 points (20 in the second half) and five assists, pushing KU to a 20-2 advantage in fastbreak points.
The open floor is where the Jayhawks have the most fun because they are not yet to the point where they enjoy winning ugly. They still have plenty of time to grow, and hopefully soon "the crud" will go away — in their tired bodies and in their sickly half-court offense.
"We started off slow," Teahan said, "but we were able to change our attitude. We were able to turn it around."
