Kansas advances to Big 12 title game

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The screams echoed out from the third seat over on the Kansas bench, a continual billow of noise and frustration that lasted for the better part of 40 minutes. Bill Self was not sitting, of course. He was standing, arms folded, then gesticulating, in a sort of perma-state of beet-red exhaustion on the floor of the Sprint Center.

If a basketball coach could ever be overwhelmed with both frustration and joy at the same moment, that was Self on Friday night during a 62-52 victory over No. 16-ranked Baylor in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament.

“Coach is coach,” freshman Kelly Oubre said.

“He was pretty happy,” freshman Devonte’ Graham said.

For close to 40 minutes, the ninth-ranked Jayhawks played like the sort of careless and sloppy outfit they can tend to be. There were 18 turnovers and wholly inefficient offense, and in certain moments, Self was reduced to screaming one word in the general direction of his players:

“Soft!” he yelled.

But then there was the other Kansas, the team that has quietly emerged during this long slog of a Big 12 season. This was the Kansas team that held Baylor to 32.8-percent shooting, the defensive unit that forced 17 turnovers of its own, the team that outrebounded a long and physical Baylor squad 39-35.

This is the Kansas team that has steadily grown into one the nation’s best defensive teams as it enters the Big 12 title game on Saturday night, facing No. 2 seed Iowa State.

“The one thing I have found out with our guys,” Self said. “You can’t be nice to them. Because they’ll mistake niceness for softness. So the whole deal is we got to stay on them every step of the way.”

For Self, it’s been a year-long struggle to build this team into a Big 12 champion. There are many reasons for this, of course. But for the first half of the season, the flaws were most apparent on the defensive end. Back in early January, when Kansas began the conference season, the Jayhawks ranked just inside the top 50 nationally in defensive efficiency, a point of near embarrassment for Self. After bottling up Baylor on Friday night, the Jayhawks climbed to eighth in defensive efficiency. For Self, it’s a point of pride. But it’s also important for historical reasons.

Such as this: No team in the last decade has won the NCAA title with a defense that ranks lower than 21st.

“Our field-goal percentage defense in the league was like 37.5 (percent),” Self noted. “That’s what it was when we had our great teams.”

By now, Self has identified specific traits of his team’s defense. They are better at guarding opposing teams’ actions — screens and cuts — than they are at guarding the ball. And at times, they still struggle to defend in transition. On Friday, for instance, Baylor scored nearly 20 percent of its points (10 of 52) by beating KU down the floor.

“Our transition defense (stunk),” Self said.

But if the Jayhawks are guarding in the half-court, and they are playing with energy, Self has learned this: They can be absolutely stifling.

“That’s what coach takes pride in,” junior forward Jamari Traylor said. “If it was a game where we probably score like 90 (points), he wouldn’t be as happy.

“Defense is what matters.”

In recent weeks, Self has also noticed that his team tends to play better defense when its offense is suffering, which is equal parts encouraging and infuriating. It is why Kansas is now 26-7 and probably locked into a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament despite an offense that has stopped making shots in the last four weeks. It is why the Jayhawks are in Saturday’s championship game despite averaging 63 points in two victories.

“If we were making shots, we wouldn’t be this good defensively,” Self said. “I think that is one thing.”

On Friday, junior forward Perry Ellis, the Jayhawks’ leading scorer, returned to the starting lineup after missing two games because of a knee sprain. He finished with 11 points and six rebounds in 26 minutes before leaving in the second half after taking a knee to the thigh.

“It didn’t hit my knee,” Ellis said. “I’m fine.”

The presence of Ellis, though, didn’t do much to solve the offensive struggles. The Jayhawks shot 42.9 percent from the field and made 3 of 12 from three-point range — a number that could actually be considered sizzling compared to recent form. The offense didn’t matter.

“We just had to figure out a way to make other teams play bad,” Oubre said.

Oubre, of course, has been at Kansas for just one season. But already, he has learned the triggers that will make his coach a happy coach. If the Jayhawks can make the other team play bad, it is usually a good night. In that way, Friday was a good night.

It is not the formula for beautiful basketball, and it is not the formula that will calm the coach’s frustration on the sideline, but it can be the formula for Kansas success.

“The formula,” Self said, “for winning in the NCAA Tournament, too.”

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 8:26 PM with the headline "Kansas advances to Big 12 title game."