It takes a lot to please 15th-year Kansas basketball coach Bill Self, but even he sounded impressed at the ease with which the Jayhawks handled Texas Southern, 114-71, Tuesday night in Allen Fieldhouse.
“They’ve got four legitimate guys, 1, 3, 4 and 5, those guys can all play,” Self said of the Tigers. “We just played so efficiently offensively. They had a chance to beat Ohio State. They had Syracuse down int he second half. They had Washington State down 23 in the second half. Really, Gonzaga’s the only one that’s handled them with ease, so certainly I was pleased with the outcome. I thought we played pretty well.”
Even so, Self remains on constant guard against bad habits developing in games against less talented teams than Kansas will face in the Big 12.
“I think our defensive rebounding’s a bad habit,” Self said. “We haven’t rebounded very well in my opinion since the first half of Kentucky, (in) which we were great, but second half we didn’t rebound defensively and certainly we didn’t against South Dakota State like we should have and didn’t (vs. Texas Southern).”
He also pointed to defensive flaws.
“I think bad habits would be big guys going for blocked shots on guards outside their area,” Self said. “Then all you have to do is throw the ball at the rim and catch it and dunk it. It’s not that complicated. We want people to do that to us. That’s something that Dok (Udoka Azubuike) and Mitch (Lightfoot) have to get better at. I also think that we play to the score too much defensively. I don’t think there was the same energy level midway through the second half as there was to start the game in most cases. Competition hopefully will keep that from happening as much.”
