Bill Self describes Kansas' performance without Dajuan Harris as 'trying to survive'

The Kansas Jayhawks were put on upset alert on Tuesday night when the UCF Knights nearly took them down. Still, head coach Bill Self saw his team survive what had been a very difficult game.

After the game, Self pointed to missing Dajuan Harris as being a major issue for the Jayhawks. In fact, because he was out, Kansas would have to shuffle lineups and try new approaches to try and survive the upset bid.

“We were just trying to survive,” Self said. “I think it’s pretty evident how valuable Juan is after watching our ball handling and getting us into offense and defense.”

In the morning, Self and Kansas had expected Harris to play. However, at shootaround, they learned he’d be out for the game, forcing the late change in plans. He’s been dealing with an ankle injury that he tweaked during practice on Monday. Luckily, however, KJ Adams did return to the lineup as a reinforcement.

“I think it’s pretty evident how valuable KJ is too. For him to be out of rhythm as much as he is and still deliver like he did, it’s pretty impressive. But, yeah, I thought this would be as hard a game as we’ve had when I got down to shootaround today and I realized that Juan wasn’t going to play,” Self said.

“So, it was a great win. We obviously didn’t guard the first half, didn’t guard a lot the second half, but we went through a period of time where I think we got like eight straight stops or something close to that. I think they may have gotten one foul dunk in there when we made a mistake, but I thought for the most part the second half we at least competed with a makeshift lineup, playing KJ at the three and Flory [Bidunga] at the four, and Hunter [Dickinson] at the five. We hadn’t practiced that one time this year. So, it was good to get through it.”

Going into halftime, Kansas had given up 43 points and was trailing by a basket. In the second half, the defense would continue to struggle, but the offense took off to score 50 points in the final 20 minutes. That, along with winning the rebound battle and drawing 12 more free throws than UCF, helped Kansas put the Knights to bed.

Now, Kansas is turning its attention to a road trip to Baylor on Saturday. It’s a game that Self knows his team will need to be prepared for or risk a fourth conference loss.