Third-seeded Kansas begins tournament play today in Minneapolis against 14th-seeded North Dakota State, but don’t dare call the Jayhawks “defending national champions.”
You’ll get an earful.
“I don’t think this team feels like it’s defending. They don’t have anything that they own,” Kansas coach Bill Self said this week.
Kansas lost seven of its top nine players from that title team — more than 80 percent of its scoring, rebounds and assists. Five Jayhawks were drafted, a record for a two-round NBA draft. Four are playing — and contributing — in the league, while center Sasha Kaun returned home to play professionally in Europe.
The only notable players back from KU’s national championship team are junior guard Sherron Collins and sophomore center Cole Aldrich.
“I hadn’t even thought about ‘defending national champions’ and us going out and having to defend something,” Self said. “I haven’t even thought like that. When you’re talking about defending, you’re talking about other people coming at you and you trying to hold them off. I think we have to be the one that’s in the attack mode more than anybody else.”
Picked to finish third in the Big 12 by the league’s coaches, Kansas (25-7) won the regular-season title and earned Big 12 coach-of-the-year honors for Self. Collins (18.3, 5.0 assists) and the 6-foot-11 Aldrich (14.6, 10.6 rebounds) were named to the all-Big 12 first team. But eight of Kansas’ top 10 scorers are freshmen or sophomores.
And Self has convinced his team that no bonus points are awarded for the previous year’s laurels.
“We won last year, (so) of course we’re defending it,” Collins said. “But that’s not how we’re thinking. We’re just trying to take this thing one game at a time.”
