Inside Kansas Head Coach Bill Self's Postgame Press Conference After ASU Road Loss
Bill Self on his ejection: “I argued Darryn’s foul. I think he gets help all the time, but I argued that. The first one, that’s fine. I mean, I was out the box. The second one, I was still out the box. So I guess that’s the reason why he gave it to me, because I was still out the box and didn’t retreat in the timely manner in which he wanted me to. That was it. It certainly was not intentional whatsoever.”
Question: What was your perspective on the first 13 minutes of the game before you got kicked out?
Self: “I thought we were awful. They were good. A lot of times when coaches say their team was awful it doesn’t give credit to the other team being good. They were good. Job throws in two threes to start it. Banks the first one in. But we played — once again — we didn’t rebound the ball defensively the whole night. We did offensively, just didn’t get anything from it. I didn’t think we played very well. And I didn’t think we were as prepared to play as I had hoped that we could have gotten them. And that’s on the coaches.”
Question: Darryn has been struggling shooting-wise. Is there anything you’re seeing?
Self: “I think if he continues to work at it full speed, he’ll make shots. The thing about it is when you work in practice it’s got to be at game speed, game tempo. Sometimes we as a group — when I say we have to practice, I’m not talking about just being out there together. I’m talking about when we’re all on the same page and doing things at the speed that you have to do it at when real guys are trying to stop you and guard you. Him missing shots didn’t bother me. I’m telling him to shoot. It’s my fault. I’m telling him to shoot it.
But I do think from a standpoint of what would happen if of the eight really great looks he got, you come away making three. What happens on the layups? They said on TV at one time we were 5-for-17 on layups. What happens if you’re able to finish around the rim? Of course he had a lot to do with that. He’s a presence in there. We didn’t play as big as we could. But it was the whole team.”
Question: You had 25 offensive rebounds but only six second-chance points. How does that happen?
Self: “I don’t know. That’s hard. Usually off offensive rebounds defenses are in scramble mode. I know we are. And we didn’t take advantage of that whatsoever.”
Question: Looking at the offense overall, you guys haven’t been quite as sharp compared to the eight-game winning streak. What’s the difference?
Self: “I still think the ball needs to have energy. There’s too much — we’re going to labor offensively if you just take our individual pieces. We can labor unless we actually play really well together. Tre needs to make stationary threes off other people’s plays. Flory needs to get an angle on guys and go around them. That didn’t happen at all in the first half. Melvin needs to be able to get paint touches and play behind that.
There are some things that I don’t think we individually play to our strengths near as well as what we were playing to a month ago. I really believe that. But even playing bad offense — we shot what, 29 percent tonight? They shot 32. Even with bad offense there’s still an opportunity for us to win if we could just get key stops. And we didn’t do that.”
Question: What was your perspective watching the rest of the game?
Self: “I actually thought we tried. I was able to watch it on a computer in the locker room. I thought we tried. But whenever you put yourself in that big a hole, your mistakes are magnified more than if you’re playing within striking range the whole time.
We cut it to two. Then we missed the front end. Flory had that layup. There were some things that happened. Then the law of percentages prevailed. I think we should have had a defensive rebound down three and it ends up being a foul. Then they make a three on a side out. Those are big plays.
What were we down to when Johnson went on a 5-0 run himself? We were flat-footed defending the perimeter there. There were opportunities for us to put ourselves in position to win and we just didn’t make enough plays. But I thought our effort was pretty good in the second half.”
Question: Jacque also got a technical after you left. Do you know what happened?
Self: “Jacques ' a relatively mild-mannered guy. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but I think it was a situation in which we all could have handled some situations better. It was a pretty temperamental crew tonight.”
Question: How will the team handle this adversity?
Self: “I don’t look at the Arizona loss quite the same way as I look at this one. Arizona is terrific. But the bottom line is it’s early March. The way we should look at it is it’s a game. It didn’t cost us a league championship. It cost us seeding. It’ll cost us at least a seed line in the NCAA Tournament and could cost us seeding in the Big 12.
But everything is still in front of us to play for. I hope that’s how we look at it.”