They finally were home, safe and sound, after a lost weekend in frozen Philadelphia.

The coaches followed the players off the bus, and assistant Tim Jankovich was able to crack a smile after hours upon hours of travel delays incurred in the aftermath of Saturday’s 83-62 loss at Villanova.

“Sit right back, and I’ll tell you a tale of the fateful trip,” Jankovich said, paraphrasing the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song.

He and the Jayhawks indeed felt like castaways following their first setback of the year.

“It was nine hours to do the whole thing,” KU head coach Bill Self said of KU’s travails, er, travels. “It was a 4 1/2-hour wait on the plane. Unfortunately, it almost eliminates practice today.”

The Jayhawks held a workout Sunday night after catching their collective breaths in a day that began with 6:15 a.m. wake-up calls at Philadelphia’s Downtown Marriott.

The Jayhawks stayed at the hotel an extra night only because the Philadelphia airport had closed shortly after the team bus arrived at 4 p.m. Saturday after the game.

“Today we get to the bus at 7 (a.m.) with the hopes of taking off at 9,” Jankovich said. “Like yesterday (when Philly was hit with a foot of snow), it’s snowing sideways. You can’t see 100 feet.

“We finally get to the plane,” Jankovich added, explaining the bus is allowed to drive on the tarmac, “and we sit on the bus an hour as the plane warms up. They put us on the plane at 9 and then they plowed so we could get to the runway to de-ice.”

One problem — the plowing took almost three hours.

“By now it’s 10 and we don’t move a couple hours. They plow enough so that we can get to de-icing, which was a good hour.

“Finally, finally, finally about noon, the sun came out. At least it stopped snowing and it didn’t feel like you’d take off in a blizzard,” Jankovich said.

The Jayhawks ascended in the charter about early afternoon, Eastern time, and landed safely in Topeka a couple hours later.

“The great part of the whole trip is we always have a bus waiting (in Topeka). It turned out our driver had torn his pants at some point and called somebody to meet him to bring him pants. We’ve got to sit on the bus while somebody brought him pants. That’s another good 15 minutes.

“It was our lovely couple days.”

Saturday definitely was no laughing matter.

The team bus headed slowly from Wachovia Center to the airport right after the game as cars already were sliding off the road.

“It was a full-blown blizzard, what they call a whiteout,” Jankovich said. “The airport was five miles away and it took 30 minutes to get there. We knew any minute they could close it. We drive right on the runway and they tell us it’s closed. Right on the runway, it’s shut down.”

What followed was a much longer drive to the hotel.

“A 15-minute drive turned into two hours,” Jankovich said. “It was scary. We get to the hotel and by now there’s a foot of snow. They had to shovel a path off for us to get off the bus to the hotel, honest to gosh.”

The coaches watched films at the hotel.

“Bad games make for bad films,” said Jankovich, who fortunately already had completed the scouting report for KU’s next foe, Baylor.

The Jayhawks will be back on another charter flight early tonight for Waco, Texas, site of Tuesday’s 6:30 p.m. contest against the Bears.

“The bad thing is Baylor plays different than a lot of teams we play, but that’s not an excuse,” Self said.

He’s one coach who does not offer excuses.

“It was long (weekend), but that’s OK,” he said.

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Bumps, bruises report: C.J. Giles didn’t play Saturday because of his bruised foot. “C.J.’s got a bad foot,” Self said Sunday on his weekly TV show. “He’s not practiced since the Nebraska game. He played three minutes that game. Hopefully, it’s day-to-day. Alex (Galindo) pulled his groin. He didn’t play much (four minutes). Hopefully he’s recovering. Moulaye (Niang) didn’t make the trip with tonsillitis or strep. ‘Mou’ would have helped us against Villanova. Hopefully, we’ll have all our pieces back soon.”

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More on ‘Nova: Self found more ways to describe Saturday’s one-sided loss: “They got us good. It’s disappointing to me. We’re a veteran club, being 10 down on the road is not the end of the world. We didn’t respond well. The second half, they buried us.”