Bill Self criticizes lack of energy, defensive effort for Kansas against Kansas State

Bill Self once again didn’t like the effort given by Kansas.

Self began his postgame press conference following the 81-73 loss for the Jayhawks at Kansas State on Saturday by noting their lack of consistency. To him, that has everything to do with a lack of energy from them game in and game out right now.

“To me, we have, we have – this is what I just told them. It’s been very difficult for us, for whatever reason, to string games of superb energy back-to-back or ever consistently at all,” said Self.

That has reflected itself in Kansas’ record over the last two months, specifically in conference play. The Jayhawks are 9-7 since December with most of that coming over a 7-3 stretch during that span. They’re just 7-5 in the Big 12 too having gone 3-3 over their last six, which has Self already thinking they’re out of the running in the league.

That’s also showing itself on the defensive end for Kansas. Over the last eight games, the Jayhawks have allowed 68.5 points (38.3% FG, 24.3% 3PT) in their wins and 82 points (45.4% FG, 41.1% 3PT) in their losses. They have their moments on that side but, in general, they haven’t had energy there either with this weekend being the latest example in Manhattan.

“I mean, you guys have seen us,” said Self. “There are times, against elite teams? We can lock anybody down. And there’s times that we can’t guard our shadow.”

“I thought K-State played unreal. They shot it great. They were faster. They played with more energy. But we didn’t do anything to make them play out of rhythm at all. It was a very dull defensive game. Maybe Jerome would say the same thing too because we got the shots we wanted. But I didn’t think we, we played with energy defensively. And we’re not quick enough to keep up with speed when you aren’t turned up and we weren’t defensively turned up,” said Self. “Our offense actually, to come over here and score 73? I’d take that before the game starts and say, ‘Alright, we’ll see what happens’. But, obviously, our defense wasn’t up to par.”

Kansas has essentially been trading wins for losses during their past eight games. In order to fix that over their final eight now, they’ll need that extra energy starting tomorrow against Colorado.