NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - USC VS KANSAS

March 22, 2021

Bill Self

Hinkle Fieldhouse

Kansas Jayhawks

Postgame Media Conference

USC 85, Kansas 51

Q. Obviously the game just ended, but do you feel a feeling, an idea maybe why things went the way they did?

BILL SELF: Repeat that. Do I have a feeling for what?

Q. Maybe things played out the way they did tonight.

BILL SELF: I think they were obviously more prepared, played better, coached better. We shot it miserably. It's going to be hard to score for us over that length regardless. They shot it unbelievably well, even early in the game, in the first 10 possessions or whatever. We had some looks, didn't make it any. They made some. We played from a hole the entire time.

That's about as poor as we could play. I'm sure Andy would say that's certainly one of their better moments, better games. It was a bad combination all the way around for us.

Q. Talk about maybe the struggles that you had shooting the three ball.

^ Done from here to the end of coach, starting marcus now BILL SELF: I think their length obviously bothered us. But our shot selection was poor. We haven't been a great shot selection team all year long. Tonight it seemed like to me when we got a little sped up, we didn't execute, we took some very marginal shots.

We're six of 25. I bet of the 25 we took, 10 to 15 were probably marginal at best. Playing a team like that, beating length in a team that's going to stay in the zone if you don't make shots, you've got to make some shots, especially when you don't have big guys, multiple big guys that you can play inside.

It was disappointing. I go back and I said what if we had done or that, played Mitch and David together, played the whole game zone. I don't know. It certainly wasn't very good.

Our three-ball offense wasn't very good, but neither was our interior scoring, as well.

Q. Wanted to ask about Marcus. Seemed like he was really going all out today. Obviously got in foul trouble. Your thoughts on if this is his finale?

BILL SELF: I hate it for all our guys that obviously we played like we did tonight, it ended this way. More so for Marcus than anybody else. I thought he competed. I thought he did a very good job on Evan, with the size mismatch and everything.

They do a really good job of posting up on the perimeter. It's hard to deny them the basketball when he posts up like that at the top of the key. Still Marcus guarded him fairly well, I would say. We just couldn't guard his brother.

I'm disappointed for Marcus. I thought he competed, tried his butt off. He got frustrated there in the first half obviously when he didn't get a whistle, then he kind of fouled, made a dumb foul.

If this is his last game, I know he's got some decisions to make, a decision to make, I'm really proud to have been his coach. Certainly I totally appreciate his abilities, what he gets out of himself each and every day.

Jayhawk fans should be very proud of him, as well.

Q. It wasn't really the way you guys wanted to go out, but what do you think you kind of learned from a season like this?

BILL SELF: I think for a lot of teams out there it's been a hard year. Certainly with us, it's been a hard year. The thing I thought about this team as much as anything, I thought we did a really good job certain times of the season to play to our strengths. I really thought we were peaking at the right time going into post-season. Then, of course, we've had the COVID bug that hit us. But that's not an excuse.

I think that there was less margin for error on this team probably than any team we've had since I've coached here. I think our guys maximized their ability pretty well, but our margin of error was small. When we play in a way where the ball stuck or we became one-on-one players or whatnot, didn't really play together, help each other, we became very average or even poor like we were tonight.

I think we've learned that there is a certain way to play. If you play that way, we can be pretty successful. But if we don't, we get average or below average real fast. This felt like today this was a team in January. When we got behind and got frustrated, we just didn't have enough juice to put anything together to make it a game.

Q. I know you compared these guys to Texas. Looking back on it, do you think this is a really tough matchup for you guys?

BILL SELF: Oh, yeah, yeah. There's no question. I would never say this to our team, but I wouldn't have been disappointed if Drake had won the game against SC, not because Drake is not good, just because it's hard for us to match up with length and athletic ability. That's been the downfall of our team all year long. I think that was probably as evident tonight as it has been in a long time.

The way that we defend, if you got a five man that can shoot, the way that we defended, the way it was successful in our league, things like that, obviously could have been an issue tonight if Isaiah made threes, he was four of five, made 12 for the year. That kind of staggered us and put us in a situation where we really didn't recover.

But they're so long. I thought Kai Jones was long. But I think Evan is even longer than Kai. At least to me he plays that way.

Q. Is there anything you can do to address that for next season?

BILL SELF: The yeah, you can recruit. You can address it through recruiting. You can address it through player development.

For us to be a team that really has a chance to be a national contender, I mean, we need to get a little bit more athletic. We need to get a little longer and bigger, those sorts of things.

But I thought our guys for the most part played pretty well and maximized their individual abilities pretty well this year. But tonight, the length definitely mattered.

Q. How difficult have the past couple of weeks been for Dave and Jalen, not being able to have that continuity with the team this time of year?

BILL SELF: It would be better to ask them. We got lucky the other night, and you guys know it. We were fortunate the other night. They played really well the second half. But we were (indiscernible) the other night. We tried to put a Band-Aid on it.

This team down a starter, down a couple of starters, even if guys are actually playing in the game but don't have rhythm and certainly hadn't practiced, those sorts of things, that puts us in a situation where our margin of error is even smaller.

It's been difficult. I'm proud of our guys that we made it to the tournament. I'm proud of the guys that we were a 3 seed. I'm proud of the guys that we won a game in the tournament. I'm just not leaving out of here, nor are they, remotely proud about how we performed prepared or got them ready tonight.

To me, Kansas deserves better. Certainly we didn't perform.