It's Self Before Team for Coach of Year

Even if you phrase it as carefully as a major leaguer testifying before Congress, ask Kansas coach Bill Self who he thinks should be the national coach of the year and you're likely to get about the same answer as if you'd just asked him to explain the economic stimulus plan.

Which is to say a whole lot of stammering and more tap dancing than Broadway's spring season.
Ask him about his team's success, and he'll talk about maturity. Ask him about the emergence of Tyshawn Taylor or the development of Sherron Collins and he'll give all the credit to his players. Ask him about how a national championship coach can steady a team and he'll talk about those on the floor who watched Kansas cut down the nets.

Heck, you could probably ask the guy exactly why he picked out the tie he's wearing and he might somehow give credit to the waterboy.

If Self has made any mistakes this year in guiding the Jayhawks to a 24-5 record and a No. 9 national ranking, it's only that he hasn't hogged the spotlight like some past-her-prime starlet.

Because coach, this isn't a hard question.

Its answer should be obvious before the question mark meets the page, as undeniable as the outcome of a Lions game or whether or not Bruce Pearl has a dry cleaner in his Fave Five.

Bill Self should be the nation's coach of the year.

Good looking out, Trent Johnson. Nice effort, Coach Calipari. Have fun in the NCAA tournament, Jeff Capel and Mike Anderson. Way to make us take notice, Darrin Horn. But this award belongs to Self in a rout that would make Bill Belichick blush and the Jayhawks' 90-65 payback rout of Missouri Sunday look like a squeaker.

After all, Jeopardy! contests haven't answered as many questions as Self has this season.

When he started the year with a trip to Canada, just over four months after Mario Chalmers put another miracle and another championship in the Kansas tradition, the border police might not have been the only ones checking passports to figure out who the heck these guys in Jayhawk gear were. Self lost all five starters from that championship game, and six of his top seven scorers.

Only Cole Aldrich, who played every bit of four minutes in the national title game, and Collins, Kansas' engine-powered bowling ball of a point guard, returned as viable pieces.

How hard is it to replace five starters? Look at Florida, which won back-to-back national championships only to lose all five starters in 2007. The Gators spent last year in the NIT, despite a recruiting class that included co-SEC freshman of the year Nick Calathes. Two years later, they're still sweating out the bubble. The 2005 champion, North Carolina, sent four players into the lottery, but even with future face of college basketball Tyler Hansbrough anchoring the center, those Tar Heels topped out at 23 wins and a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Cinderella George Mason. Maryland and Syracuse, champions in 2002 and 2003, lost less than five starters and both have seemingly assumed permanent bubble status.

Not even the Red Wings can change out lines that seamlessly.

Of course, the Jayhawks took their lumps early in the season. They lost to Syracuse and even fell to UMass, a team that right now is probably dreamily flipping through the College Basketball Invitational literature. Self picked up a technical late in that game. The Minutemen made both free throws. The Jayhawks would lose by one.

But that just makes their 16-2 run since a Dec. 23 loss to Arizona all the more impressive.

Self has done what, in an era before one-and-done was as much a part of the lingo as pick-and-roll, coaches did on a regular basis, developed a team across a season. There are no quick-fix freshman superstars on this club, though he's shuffled in two freshman starters. There is no single player that can win games all by himself, though Collins has been as good as any player in the nation since the 62-60 loss to Missouri Feb. 9.

There's just good players with a great coach.

And since a Jan. 10 loss to Michigan State, this team couldn't have couldn't have bulked up any faster even if it was friends with every one of Alex Rodriguez's cousins.

Then struggle has turned into a love affair.

"I'm falling in love with this team," Self said after his team clobbered Missouri. "They try hard and they're getting more and more aggressive all the time."

The Jayhawks are looking downright scary after last week's wins over Oklahoma and Missouri. Win Wednesday night against Texas Tech, and they'll clinch the Big 12 title for the fifth straight season.

Sure, other coaches have had excellent seasons. LSU's Johnson turned the Tigers from a last-place team into the class of the SEC. But Johnson benefited from the return of eight players, including five seniors and a healthy Tasmin Mitchell, who played just three games last season. Give Johnson credit for coaching the team better than ex-coach John Brady could have, but combining all those seniors, including last year's leading scorer Marcus Thornton, to dominate a so-so SEC is the equivalent of a baking soda and vinegar volcano compared to the chemistry lesson Self is handing out.

Oklahoma's Capel, meanwhile, is looking up at Kansas in the standings and has had a national player of the year candidate to rely on most of the season. South Carolina's Horn has turned the Gamecocks into a likely NCAA tournament contender, but go ahead, tell us who they've beaten outside of the SEC. We'll wait.



John Calipari has Memphis in the conversation for a No. 1 seed despite losing two of the nation's best players in Derrick Rose and Chris-Douglas Roberts. But how good are those Tigers? The average Pomeroy rating of teams Memphis has beaten in Conference USA play reads like a bad cholesterol count. Kansas' is a comparatively slim 68.

Missouri's Anderson certainly deserves his share of the credit for the way he's pulled together an 11-man rotation, survived the defection of Keon Lawrence and deftly maneuvered around yet another suspension to Leo Lyons. But what Anderson has built in three seasons, Self has done almost entirely since January.

Certainly, Kansas' schedule hasn't been a Final Four preview, but Self has kept his young team up for every game. How hard is that? Ask Wake Forest, which has three likely first-round draft picks and yet has lost to less than impressive rosters, including those of Virginia Tech and N.C. State, how hard it is to stay on top. The Deacons team crashed so hard that initial findings from the NTSB won't be back for weeks, meanwhile Kansas is in cruise control. Ask Texas how hard it is to build around one great guard and a frontcourt threat.

Self even reversed course mid-season, after his request for Collins to take 20 shots a game became an obvious error with the rise of the Jayhawks' supporting cast.

And by the time Kansas hosted the Tigers for payback, the difference was unmistakable to everyone on the court.

"I think we are better than everyone thought we would be," Collins said, after leading the Jayhawks' rout. "To me it's not surprising."

Not anymore, Sherron. Frankly, it's downright obvious.