Right, Bill?

Wrong.

The Jayhawks will pick up the pace from last season’s plodding team that had a sure thing in Wayne Simien and made certain the ball found its way into his hands, but they won’t run as fast as their coach is running from the notion they will be gunning for 100 points on a nightly basis.

“I can’t emphasize enough we’re not going to lead the nation in scoring,” Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self said.

Still, more than anything, the thing the four freshmen have in common is they like to play up-tempo basketball. Point guard Mario Chalmers likes to push the pace. Wings Micah Downs and Brandon Rush have sprinter’s speed, and Julian Wright, spending most of his time at power forward these days, runs like a wing.

If you feel like you’re watching paint dry at the refurbished Fieldhouse this season, you must be staring at the bleachers because this year’s team promises to be easier on the eyes.

“I’d say we’ll probably get more athletic-type plays than we have in years past,” Self said from his desk. “This is going to be a fun team to watch. Without getting too technical, this will be a fun team to watch. And you could be surprised every night we play. You could come away thinking, ‘Wow.’ But you could also come away thinking they made some unbelievable great plays and look up and say the overall performance didn’t equal the great individual plays.”

When Self talks about the pace the Jayhawks will play at, a yellow light on the verge of turning green comes to mind. When the new players broach the subject, the light is green all the way.

“I think we’ll be an up-tempo team,” Wright said. “Get it and go. We have the athleticism to do it. We have the passing and ballhandling to do it.”

Chalmers didn’t come to Kansas all the way from Alaska to walk the ball up the floor.

“The chance to play up-tempo and the tradition at Kansas were the big factors in why I came here,” Chalmers said.

Power forward C.J. Giles, a swifter runner than most men his size, is ready to change speeds.

“We’ll definitely run more, and I like that,” Giles said. “I was running in high school, playing with my boy Rod Stewart, who’s here now, and Nate Robinson, who’s in the NBA now. I had to run just to keep up with them.”

Faster, yes. Faster than a speeding bullet, no.

“We’re going to play faster than we have played, but we’re not going to score 90 points a game,” Self said. “That ain’t happening. We don’t have the offensive firepower at all five spots to come down and take the first available shot. We’re going to get up and try to steal easy baskets and that kind of stuff.”

It all starts on the defensive end, where Self envisions pressuring the basketball on a one-on-one basis for 94 feet more than trapping the man with the ball. The purpose of picking up the pace, Self said, was “to try to create offense from your defense, try to get down and score before the defense is set. We have a better team to do that than in years past. We’ve got more creative guys. With the exception of Keith (Langford), last year we couldn’t pitch ahead and have a guy attack the basket. This year, with the guys we have, we should be able to do that better. The other thing is our big guys this year run better.”

Some coaches who gun for 100 points a night are willing to view turnovers as the cost of doing business and are careful not to discourage players from pushing the pace by stopping practice every time a ball is lost to decry the evils of turnovers. Self doesn’t buy going faster as an excuse for playing sloppier.

“One philosophy is if you shoot faster there’s less passes, so you shouldn’t have as many turnovers,” Self said. “So when you really think about it, if you’re shooting quick there’s less time of possession, less passes made, less guys handling the ball, you should not turn it over as much. There’s more of a chance to turn it over when there’s long possessions.”

That’s in the perfect world. Often, pushing the pace can bring out imperfections.

“When you get to running, guys get out of themselves and they try to do things that they’re not capable of doing, and they’re not making easy plays,” Self said. “But if we can play as fast as we can and make easy plays, that’s the perfect world right there.”

The KU basketball fans who squeeze into their bleacher seats crave perfection. That’s not realistic. They’ll settle for a more entertaining, faster brand of basketball. Thanks largely to the four freshmen, that’s a reachable goal this season.

Illustrations by Karl Gehring