Louisville, Ky. ? Give me a dollar for every time Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self has said he doesn’t care who starts, just who finishes games, and I’ll give you a wardrobe worthy of Villanova coach Jay Wright, plus a few threads, on a daily basis.
The funny thing is, though, Self hasn’t uttered one of his favorite quotes in a quite a while. Why would he? It hasn’t been an issue since Landen Lucas slid into the starting center spot and everything else fell into place.
The lineup, which Self made seem to the starters at the other four spots that the center selection was their idea, has just the right chemistry from a personality and basketball sense, both in the frontcourt and backcourt.
Starting guards Frank Mason III, originally committed to Towson University, and Devonte Graham, initially an Appalachian State recruit, both found their way to Kansas as underrated freshmen and immediately exposed the inexact nature of assigning ratings to high school players.
Both fit the profile that Self prefers in guards in that neither fits the classic description of either a point guard or a shooting guard. They both personify the hybrid “combo” label, although Graham leans much closer to a point. Russell Robinson, Mario Chalmers and Sherron Collins of the 2008 national-championship squad had “combo” written all over them as well. The same went for Tyshawn Taylor and Elijah Johnson of the 2012 national runner-up.
Mason and Graham both attack on the dribble with effectiveness. Mason, when at his healthiest, finishes at the rim and with a variety of floaters, even better than Graham, who is an even more accurate three-point shooter (.438 to Mason’s .390).
Mason, such a quick jumper, so strong, is the slightly better rebounder, Graham the more versatile defender. Three inches taller and blessed with longer arms, Graham is equally comfortable guarding shorter and taller scorers.
Yet, more than any of their differences as basketball players, it’s their divergent personality types that make them blend so well.
Except when grimacing from pain — a frequent companion for an athlete who sets himself up for collisions with much heavier bodies at high altitudes; a prescription for crash landings — Mason’s expression doesn’t move much. To watch Fearless Frank run so swiftly and contort his body with such precision on the fly, is to imagine him playing cornerback in shut-down fashion. To watch his face during competition is to easily imagine him shoving all of his chips to the center of the table without even a hint of a tell. He doesn’t talk a great deal and doesn’t emote much when he does. Pressure doesn’t seem to rattle him in the slightest.
And then there is Graham, the most extroverted of the starting five, the chattiest, the one with the most expressive face, a passionate presence whose confidence and aggressiveness forever grow in lock step with each other. Right around the time that Self — oops, I meant to say the four original starters — decided the team best functioned with Lucas manning the middle, Graham shifted his focus from deferring to Mason to complementing him. Vocal leadership comes more naturally to Graham, but he respects Mason so deeply that it took awhile to do anything that could be perceived as treading on his territory.
It happened very smoothly and Mason welcomed it. They communicate so well, sometimes non-verbally, so that when one needs a little taken off his plate for a while, the other knows just when to put more on himself.
They collaborate so well at both ends. And so do the starters in the frontcourt, Perry Ellis and Lucas.
Personalities, playing styles, strengths, challenges, they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum in so many ways.
On the court, Lucas brings the team’s most physical strength and has a subtle nastiness to his game. He embraces contact, knowing it’s where he has the edge on most basketball players. He has a great knack for every aspect of rebounding, from positioning to reading shots, to making it a top priority at all times. As his playing time has increased, so too has his ability to block shots. Lucas is a power player, more heavy-legged than his mates and is the only member of the starting five who doesn’t count perimeter shooting among his strengths. In fact, he pokes fun at his failure to hit the rare outside shot he takes.
A junior who red-shirted as a freshman, Lucas took the longest to join the rotation and didn’t become a regular starter until a third of the way into the Big 12 schedule. His offensive game isn’t as advanced as his strong abilities at the other end.
In contrast, Ellis arrived at Kansas with polished footwork, strong ball skills and a knack for scoring. He has a finesse game, runs the floor with the speed of a point guard, beats his man off the dribble and has the highest three-point percentage in the starting lineup (.444). About the time Lucas joined the starting lineup, Ellis’ defense improved in many ways. He has all the physical gifts necessary for productive rebounding, but hasn’t been as natural at that as Lucas. Ellis did pick up eight rebounds in the second-round victory against UConn and will be called upon to lend a hand Thursday night in a Sweet 16 game vs. Maryland, the tallest, widest remaining team in the tournament.
Ellis leads the team with 16.9 points per game and Lucas ranks sixth with a 5.5-point average. Ellis and Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield are the most consistent scorers among Sweet 16 field, the only players with at least 20 points in six of their past seven games. Ellis’ game has more beauty than nastiness. The uber-consistent senior from Wichita has not scored more than 22 points in any game during that stretch. For the record, 22 also is Ellis’ age, which might come as a surprise to those who feel as if he has been playing for Kansas since Lawrence didn’t extend past Iowa Street.
Both Ellis and Lucas bank on fertile brains on the floor and in the classroom, but as conversationalists could not be much different. Mature beyond his generation, Lucas has a natural gift for making anyone interviewing him feel at ease. He doesn’t speak in cliches. Equally cooperative and polite, Ellis has worked hard at coming out of his shell, but remains on the quiet side and seldom takes conversations on unpredictable paths.
Put the basketball skills, experience level and personalities of the two guards, Mason and Graham, and the two post players, Ellis and Lucas, in a blender and the composite of the four would look like this: A 6-foot-5 junior who can play guard and forward, is above-average in every major aspect of the game, but not phenomenal in any one area, is much more extraverted than Ellis and Mason, but not as sociable as Graham and Lucas. In other words, the composite would walk, talk, emote and play exactly as does Wayne Selden Jr. (Interestingly, Selden’s statistics on neutral courts have been better than on the road or at home and that doesn’t even include his work in South Korea).
Selden ranks second on the team in scoring (13.6), tied for fourth in rebounding (3.4), third in assists and third in steals.
He brings vertical athleticism, punishes the rim with violent dunks and entices it with a soft shot from long distance.
Selden’s skills don’t always look as smooth as those of Mason, Graham and Ellis, but even in those games when the line next to his name in box scores is on the ugly side, the team still seems to perform better with him on the court than the bench.
Mason did a nice job of explaining why that is. “He’s a physical presence for us,” Mason said. “He’s always in the right spot. He helps defensively, off ball screens, just in the right spot, sometimes by bluffing to stop the offensive guy from getting in the paint. He’s been huge for us.”
All five have been huge for the Jayhawks (32-4, 16 victories in a row), growing steadily since forming a starting lineup that once locked, never changed.