A few hours after returning from his team’s Monday night victory in Ames, Iowa, Kansas basketball coach Bill Self appeared on The Doug Gottlieb Show on Tuesday and discussed everything from KU’s latest win to the Svi Mykhailiuk travel heard ’round the world, Joel Embiid and the Jayhawks’ four-guard lineup.
Most of what was said and discussed was stuff you’ve heard. But at the very end, Gottlieb, the former Oklahoma State guard who pays close attention to Big 12 basketball and has great respect for the KU program, asked Self one simple question.
“I’ve got 15 seconds,” Gottlieb said, announcing the upcoming end of the segment. “Do you have a national-championship-caliber team?
“I think that we have a team that there’s less margin for error than what we’ve had,” Self said. “But I think that, when we play our best, I think we can play as well as anybody.”
The last 17 games certainly suggest that. Although the Jayhawks’ schedule has not been the murderers row of seasons past, it has included some quality teams and the Jayhawks have racked up four true road victories and four wins on neutral floors.
According to kenpom.com, the Jayhawks’ strength of schedule currently ranks 17th in the country and Kansas has contributed to the strength-of-schedule ranking of five teams in the Top 25.
A big reason for KU’s ability to navigate that schedule — made up mostly of strong challengers from mid-major programs in the non-conference — has been Self’s willingness (or is it necessity?) to abandon his traditional two-bigs lineup and play with four guards the majority of the time.
Self and Gottlieb discussed the coach’s change of pace in this department and Self pointed out that while has played small in the past, everywhere from Tulsa to Illinois and even Kansas, it often has been done by playing a shorter player at one of the forward spots.
This Kansas team is playing a taller player (freshman Josh Jackson) in the 4 spot but utilizing him as a guard as opposed to asking him to play like a big.
“It certainly is a different look and different style than we’ve ever played before,” Self told Gottlieb.
Asked how he came up with the tweaks and strategies for employing such a system, Self pointed to a pair of familiar foes as the programs he and his staff have studied extra film of to get ready for the change.
“I think we’ve stolen from other people,” Self said. “I thought Iowa State did an unbelievable job when they had Georges (Niang) doing some different things so we’ve watched quite a bit of tape on that. Jay (Wright has) played that way at Villanova for a long time and we played them last year, obviously, and I’ve watched quite a bit of tape with them.”
“It’s totally different. We’re doing more false motion type things to try to get the ball back into different guys’ hands and spreading the floor with an open ball screen. We’re doing a lot of different things but that would be kind of what we run behind what we run.”
While Jackson, Mykhailiuk and sophomore Lagerald Vick have been key in making the four-guard lineup work for the Jayhawks, the two players who make it go are senior point guard Frank Mason III and junior running mate Devonte’ Graham.
“To see what they’ve done since they’ve been here,” Self began. “Two guys that play together and understand and are tough and competitive. Those guys do it about as good as anybody does.”
And those two guys are a huge reason Self believes this team has the potential to play as well as any team in the country the rest of the way.
