Here is the Cliff’s Notes version of Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self’s comments at his press conference today.
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Full audio has been posted.
• **Jordan Hamilton will probably be the toughest matchup for KU in Big 12 play because of his size.** He posts up a lot.
• **Texas guards well.** The Longhorns are good defensively, and their pieces fit. They’re bringing a guy off the bench (J’Covan Brown) that scored 26 points against KU last year. That tells Self that UT is good.
• **Cory Joseph allows other guys be who they are.** He makes Dogus Balbay and Jordan Hamilton better.
• **Last year, KU played great at Texas.** But it wasn’t easy. It was hard for KU’s guys to get open. This year, UT’s defense is quite a bit better. Self says Texas is a top-five defensive team in the country. Both teams are worried about how to guard each other, but KU has to figure out how to attack as well.
• **Travis Releford is about 70 percent.** He will be available to play.
• **The Baylor first half wasn’t 2008 North Carolina good, but it was good.** That was about as well as KU has played offensively in a long time.
• **The team doesn’t talk about the home-court winning streak.** It’s in the back of the players’ minds. It runs across the TV every once in a while, but it’s not a major factor looking at the big picture.
• **The Big 12 is tough every year, but this year is really hard with the strength of the Big 12 North teams.**
• **Nebraska guarded KU as hard as anyone has guarded KU, and the Huskers did it man-to-man.** That type of game can help the Jayhawks prepare for Texas. Saturday’s game is going to be a game where people get after it and offense isn’t going to look good at times.
• **Self was surprised a little bit how well KU played against Baylor’s zone.** Self joked that it’s amazing that when you get a shot, there’s a better chance of scoring than when you don’t get one.
• **The biggest thing that Self remembers about the Kevin Durant game in the Fieldhouse was that Durant had 25 points at halftime.** Self turned to KU assistant coach Danny Manning and said, “What do we do?” and Manning replied, “I don’t know. That’s a bad boy.” The KU fans knew they were seeing something special that day — something they knew they might not see again.
• **Hamilton can get his shot where he wants to.** You can do a good job defensively on him and limit his good touches and he can still make 7 out of 10.
• **Texas is bigger than KU in a lot of spots.** It’ll be a tough deal for KU. But Baylor was bigger than KU, too. The Jayhawks won’t be bigger than a lot of the teams they play the rest of the way.
• **Self’s opinion on the Texas deal with ESPN is that it forces other schools’ hand to lessen that gap.** Instead of sitting around complaining, the schools have to look at, “What can we do to close that gap?” There’s money about there to be had. Instead of whining about Texas’ officials doing their job, other schools have to work their butt off to catch up.
