It’s safe to say that Tuesday night’s 91-57 loss to BYU was a low point in the Bill Self era at Kansas—one of their worst losses in program history.
The 34-point loss is tied for the largest margin of defeat in Bill Self’s time in Lawrence and is the third-worst defeat in KU history, according to ESPN.
With the loss, Kansas has now dropped back-to-back games in conference play for the first time this season and has lost six of their last nine games.
With games against Texas Tech, Houston, and Arizona still on the schedule, the Jayhawks had better find a way to get back on track, and fast.
What is it going to take for that to happen? Well, according to Self the players need to “get away from each other” before anything else happens.
“We need to regroup, get away from each other for a day, and go home. A lot of times with teams, there needs to be something that happens to pull everybody together, that is, us against the outside. And you know, we’re going to have an opportunity to do that for sure. So, a lot of teams go through it. We just haven’t been through it much at all and in a long time. But certainly, we’re going to go through it this time.
“So all we have is each other, and we’re going to have to be strong for each other and be good teammates and good leaders and understand that we need to look in the mirror, all of us, and what can we do to change the momentum? And then whatever we commit to doing, do it. And tonight, we were one foot in, one foot out in in how we guarded things right from the jump. It was crystal clear how we were going to try to guard them, and right from the jump, we doubted it, and it ended up hurt ourselves.”
A few questions later, Self circled back around to how his team chemistry was working at the moment and admitted that the road trip to Provo didn’t help pull the team together as he’d hoped.
“I don’t know … we need to get away from each other. I’ll tell you that point blank. And I thought this would be a great opportunity to be a team bonding situation. But it hadn’t been. And it hadn’t been a good trip and guys need to get home. We’ll get home probably around five o’clock tonight or in the morning, and get away for a day. And then let’s regroup on Thursday and start looking at some things that we can do to be a more connected and a more intangible oriented team.
“Because when we play with intangibles, that leads to playig to athleticism, which leads into toughness, which leads to playing to connectivity, a lot of things. But right now, our intangibles are not where they need to be, which leads to looking a step slow, which leads to being on an island, which leads to poor communication, which leads to a lot of different things. And certainly, we got to tighten that stuff up before we actually say, ‘Well, we’re guarding something wrong, or we’re not running something right.’ When run something when you’re not connected, it’s never going to look good. So we’ve got to tighten that up first.”
Sometimes, the best thing that a team can do is get some time away from each other and take a moment to reflect before coming back together and getting to work. Unfortunately, that time is usually during the offseason or right before the tournament—not in the home stretch of the regular season.
It appears that Kansas has some serious locker room issues that they’re going to need to work through before getting back on the court, and for a group that started the year out as the No. 1 team in the country, that’s certainly not ideal.
