Bill Self admits he did not envision 1-seed possibility for Kansas

The Kansas Jayhawks are in a prime position to defend their national championship crown. The Jayhawks have looked impressive this season and currently sit atop the Big 12 standings, tied with Texas in conference play at 11-4. On top of that, most bracket projections have Kansas as a 1-seed. Something that even head coach Bill Self recently admitted he did see it happening this season.

“Yeah, I didn’t think that something that would be realistic,” said Self. “I’m proud of this team; they’ve done great. We haven’t accomplished Jack, but we put ourselves in a favorable position to maybe do something. But this league is so hard, and everybody talked about the sky is falling; when we lost three in a row. In this league, that can happen easily. But we’ve recovered pretty good since then. I think we’ve got a nice team. I don’t know if we got a great team or an exceptional team, but I think I’d stack our metrics up against anybody right now.”

Kansas’ work is far from done for them to wrap up the Big 12 regular season title and be a strong lock for a 1-seed. Kansas still has two home games left on their schedule, against West Virginia and Texas Tech. And then they will wrap up their regular season down in Austin, TX, against the Longhorns. That matchup will likely decide the conference’s regular season champion.

Self discusses mismatches Kansas created vs. Baylor

On Saturday, Kansas got a key win over Baylor in large part due to the mismatches that Bill Self and the Jayhawks were able to find and take advantage of throughout the game.

After the game, Self explained what makes those mismatches important in a game like that.

“We did,” Bill Self said. “There were certain guys that you probably want to try to drive, especially through foul problems and things like that.”

In particular, as Self explained, Kansas was able to find matchups that they liked on the inside. This gave Kansas, a team known for its outside shooting, an advantage in the game.

“Yeah, we tried to take advantage of throwing it inside, even though we don’t throw it inside a ton, but throw it inside because the switches allowed us to put a little guard on a big guy a lot of times and just like the little out of bounds under play,” Self explained. “It’s not anything great but it’s just an easy basket you don’t have to earn.”

Kansas trailed Baylor at the half, losing by 13 points. However, the Jayhawks dominated the second half, outscoring the Bears 55-26 to win the game.

“They picked on us the first half and we were able to get some of those advantages in the second half.“