And make no mistake about it, putting teams away is something the Jayhawks absolutely have had on their radar.

“At halftime, every game, people will joke around and say, ‘What’s the score,” said KU junior Landen Lucas. “And we’ll all say, ‘Zero-zero.’ It’s just something that we say because we have to go out there and have that mindset.”

Leading K-State by 15 at halftime during the quarterfinals of the Big 12 tourney, the Jayhawks, in Louisville prepping for Thursday’s 8:40 p.m. Sweet 16 contest against Maryland, continued to pour it on in the second half and topped the Wildcats by 22.

Four games later, during a second-round victory over Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, the top-seeded Jayhawks did not pull back after sprinting out to an 18-5 lead and, instead, built a first-half lead of as many as 24 points before coasting to a 12-point victory.

Lucas said the 0-0 mantra was used during halftime of each game. And even though the Jayhawks allowed UConn to trim their lead to nine midway through the second half, the junior forward said KU’s desire to finish the job helped maintain the comfortable lead.

“I don’t think it’s new,” he said of referencing the 0-0 score at the break. “I think we’ve always said it. What would be new is us actually going out there and playing like it. We would say it but not really have that mindset. But I think you can see the change in this team. We’re getting more mature in many areas.”

That idea of capitalizing on this team’s maturity is something that took awhile to surface. With two juniors and two seniors in the opening-night lineup, many expected KU to take full advantage of the luxury of having its most veteran team since 2013. But early on, that was not always the case, and it showed up most during KU’s three-game road-losing streak and 5-3 Big 12 Conference start in January.

The reasons for KU’s struggles were many, and it was not until KU coach Bill Self settled the lineup and rotation that this team could fully use its wisdom and maturity to its advantage.

Since that time, after putting Lucas in the starting lineup for good, the Jayhawks have been on a big time roll and appear, in many ways, to only be getting better.

“If you compare us now to the beginning of the year, it’s a big difference between getting up and putting teams away,” Lucas said. “We would get up on teams early in the year and then the next thing you know we’ve got a ballgame with 10 minutes left.”

Junior guard Brannen Greene said seniors Perry Ellis and Jamari Traylor played a huge role in increasing the sense of urgency with which this team played. He also pointed to each player’s personal pride — as well as the collective pride of the team as a whole — for helping the Jayhawks (32-4) take things to another level.

“They’re kind of the catalysts of it all, bringing the energy and making sure that we all know that whenever we lose that’s our last game,” Greene said of Ellis and Traylor.

Asked to define what the phrase “killer instinct” meant to this team, Lucas’ explanation sounded an awful lot like the Jayhawks have looked during the past month and a half.

“It’s really just always treating the game like it’s a tie game,” Lucas said. “If we go out there and play a possession like we’re up 15 or 20 points, that’s when you can let a team come back into it. If you play every possession like it’s a tie game, that’s when you extend the lead and that’s what we need in a tournament like this.

“You never want to level off. The good teams that make deep tournament runs always get better and improve.”