Everything Bill Self Said After Kansas Was Blown Out by Houston

Kansas saw its run in the Big 12 Tournament come to a screeching halt on Friday evening in a 22-point loss to Houston. The Jayhawks will now wait for Selection Sunday to learn their first-round opponent next week.

It was a pitiful offensive showing that saw KU make just 14 field goals and score a season-low 47 points. Bill Self and his coaching staff were obviously not pleased with how the group performed in what was supposed to be a pivotal contest.

Following the defeat, Coach Self spoke to the media to discuss what he saw from his team. He offered several blunt assessments of what transpired.

On his general comments about the game:

"Well, obviously we weren't very good tonight, and they got off to a good start and we were playing catch-up and never had offense the entire game. So it's disappointing. I actually thought we tried defensively, for the most part, the entire game. But certainly when you can't score, it puts you in a hole, and certainly we were in a big hole tonight."

On what good things he takes away from the two tournament games:

"Well, that's actually a good question because I think that'll be the key thing that we have to come up with. We beat a team yesterday that will be the type of team we play either on Thursday or Friday. You know, hopefully get a little confidence from that. But the thing about it is, the conference tournament is important. It's a great tournament, of course. That first game was probably as good a game college basketball's seen this year, a high level, from what I saw of it. But still yet after Sunday, nobody's going to remember this tournament. Everybody's going to be focused on next week. So hopefully it's an opportunity to get our batteries recharged and do the same thing. I would love to have played longer. I would have loved to have been more competitive tonight and everything, but tut the reality of it is on Sunday is a new day that everybody's 0-0 and everybody'll be fired up to play."

On if he sensed the team's energy was off early on:

"I didn't think our energy was as good as it has been at times. I didn't think it was great yesterday either, though, to be honest. I thought we were so bad early offensively, but when we got it to 29-25, I'm actually thinking, you know what? All we need to do is finish the last minute and a half decent, and we're going to go in with a little bit of momentum, we're going to be fine. And then, they score four to end the half, and that was disappointing. But to come out the second half down eight, I mean, how many times have we been down eight this year? Many. And to come out and lay an egg, you know, that first, you know, two minutes, was disappointing to me. We got the ball exactly where we wanted to get it, we missed a shot or whatever. And then they make a harder shot on the other end. It wasn't game over, but it was to the point where it was deflating enough that I think it took a lot of the wind out of our sails."

On what the offense needs to do to improve:

"Well, we were terrible, terrible playing behind ball screens. I mean, we knew how we wanted to attack it, and we didn't attack it. We were really bad at that. They did a great job loading up, and you know, the first game, we controlled it from an offensive standpoint, and then they made some adjustments. But I don't know if they made a lot of adjustments that was different than the first game. You know, obviously, they weren't going to let Darryn beat them. They were going to have two guys on him and drag guys to him and switch, so he always felt guarded. They did a great job of that, but in the openings and the ability to play behind when they pressured, we didn't do a good job. I didn't do a good job getting the guys ready for that. You got to play four on three behind their pressure, and we didn't do that, but maybe once or twice the entire game."

On where he feels the team stands going into March Madness:

"If we'd have played better and gone not 14-for-52 as starters. If we would have played better and gone 22-for-52, which is still 40%, basically, and been more competitive in the game, does that make us more prepared for next week? I'm not sure it does. I think there's some things from a standpoint that we can do that we have control over. I think that we can, our personality, the energy, I think physicality, hitting first as opposed to being hit first. I think there's a lot of things that will play into success next week, more so than the outcome of this game. This game, if anything, if we have any competitive juices at all, should be inspire us to can't wait to get back out there again. And I believe the guys will respond in that way. The one thing about this game tonight, it didn't camouflage our deficiencies. It exposed them in a big way. So maybe it will be easier for us to understand that and understand why we can't, sometimes when things don't go well, you actually can rationalize, 'Well, they didn't go well, but it was close.' It wasn't close. So there's no reason why we can't look at this and see a very clear picture of what we didn't do well and what are the intangibles that would allow us to do better, because I do think that's it as much as anything."

On benching Bryson Tiller the entire second half:

"Well, my message is to rebound and play competitive. You know, that's it. Be physical, rebound, play competitive. So it's been the message for a long time. That was just my call. Yeah, that's my call."