LAWRENCE, Kan. — On the 75-inch TV screen in Bill Self’s office, David McCormack has just made one of the more significant shots in Kansas basketball history, rebounding his own miss and then burying a jump hook that gave the Jayhawks the lead with just over a minute remaining in the 2022 national championship game. Self hits the stop button on the keypad in his lap and turns to me, “I’ll show you a weird deal, OK?”
Self had called timeout prior to that play. This was his opportunity to diagram the play that might win him his second national championship. This was why I was here. Self had been in a groove that night, orchestrating the greatest comeback in title game history. How cool would it be to see what he sees? This “weird deal.” This was it, right? This was where he’d spotted a weakness and set up McCormack to exploit it and win the national championship.
Nope.
“This,” Self says, as he rolls the film, “is luck.”
The honeymoon has lasted all offseason, and before Self turns the page, I wanted him to relive that April night against North Carolina one more time while it’s fresh. So last week, days before Kansas opens the 2022-23 season (and Self serves a four-game suspension to begin the year), we watched the national championship game from start to finish while Self narrated.
The Jayhawks win the tip, and Ochai Agbaji is set up right away. He’d made 6 of 7 3-pointers two nights earlier against Villanova, so it makes sense to get him a shot right off the bat. But Self is a creature of habit. He scripts the first five dead-ball plays every game, and four of the first five are usually to throw it inside.
“We want to set this screen where you force him to go over,” Self says, as McCormack makes contact with Agbaji’s man at the top of the key. “David sets it at a bad angle, so he goes under, and if he goes under, Och is supposed to shoot it.”
The play is meant for McCormack, but because his feet aren’t at the right angle, Agbaji lets it fly. One (fortuitous) mistake leads to three points.
North Carolina brings the ball down, and Kansas has disrupted UNC’s first play call. Dajuan Harris applies pressure on the ball. McCormack helps cut off a drive. The wings deny one pass away.
“We’re turned up here,” Self says. “That’s good. Turned up totally.”
Armando Bacot airballs a contested shot, and it’s a perfect defensive possession. The second offensive possession is equally as satisfying. McCormack goes to set another ball screen — this one on the left side of the floor in front of UNC’s bench — but R.J. Davis is pushing Harris toward the baseline.
“So they’re downing the ball screen, so play to the pocket pass,” Self says as Harris takes one dribble to his left and then delivers an on-target pass to McCormack for an elbow jumper. “That’s perfect. Perfect. Perfect.”
The second defensive possession is more of the same, ending with a missed shot that ping-pongs around back out to the 3-point line. In his office, Self has a picture hanging of Darnell Jackson and Darrell Arthur diving for a loose ball against North Carolina in the 2008 national semifinals. That kind of effort is preached daily at Kansas, and McCormack is the first to the floor here, rolling onto his back and passing to Jalen Wilson to start a fast break.
Kansas is ahead 7-0, and Self’s only gripe so far has been one screen set at the wrong angle. This was his 10th team that had a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. All were good enough to win it, and a few were favorites. Some of those teams played tight in the tournament. When asked a few minutes later if he thought his team came out loose in this one, he says, “I thought we thought we were really ready to play. I thought we were kind of at that magic level.”
Of course, he knows what’s coming. The game is going to flip, and even though he knows the end result, it’s almost as hard for him to stomach now as it was in the moment. His first real gripe comes a few minutes in when Harris has a wide-open layup in transition and passes it off to a trailing McCormack.
“What is he doing? I mean, he had an uncontested layup.”
On the ensuing possession, Self starts fuming.
“This is a messed-up play,” he says. “So watch CB (Christian Braun) here. I mean, this is terrible. So right there, we screw up.”
A rebound is in the air, and KU has five players around and UNC has just two, but Davis, a 6-foot guard, wins the battle, back-tapping the ball to Brady Manek, the hottest shooter in the tournament.
Self, sitting on the bench, punches at the air.
“First time you’re mad?” I ask.
“I don’t know that I was mad,” he says.
It’s funny because the video says differently, but this might just be the emotional maturation of a Hall of Fame coach. What makes Self’s teams so good is the attention to detail and effort. He expects it. Will not tolerate anything else. He says his dad used to get mad about the small stuff but would never blow up on the big stuff. That’s Self.
But at some point you have to move on. Next play, as they say. And last season, the year he lost his father, he didn’t always burn as hot. At Kansas State, for instance, one day after losing his dad, his team played awful for a half. At halftime that day, Self stayed calm. Just told his team to do the little things right. The Jayhawks rallied from 17 down and won on the road.
Those moments, whether you realize it or not, stay with you. And it stayed with this team. No matter the deficit, the Jayhawks felt they could flip it.
And they put themselves in some hole on this night. Self felt it turning early. After the Manek 3, Braun drives to the basket around Caleb Love and gets his shot blocked from behind.
“This is confidence,” Self says. “So if he’s really making a move right here, he goes off his left-right foot. So what’s your natural shot to go off your right foot? Shoot a left-handed layup. He’s not confident. So he switches it back (to his right hand) where he gets blocked. See. What are you doing?”
North Carolina starts a 9-2 run to take the lead when Bacot puts his shoulder into McCormack, knocks him back, and scores. “Soft,” Self says.
KU’s one bucket during this stretch is the kind of execution Self loves. It’s where he also excels, figuring out a way to use the defense’s strategy against it. The play is designed for Agbaji to get the ball flying off a screen. That’s the easy thing to see. How he ends up getting a layup is all about the subtle details.
“The whole play is just to get CB there. See him down screen. This is all bulls—,” Self says of the action away from the ball. “And then post and keep him (Bacot) on the top side and then him drive away from that. Like somebody that downs a ball screen, the guys jump on the top automatically and you keep the guy from downing it. (Agbaji) got an and-one the second half doing the same play. It’s actually a good play.”
As you can see in the video, Leaky Black’s habit is to force baseline, which is exactly what Kansas wants.
What Self doesn’t want is playing out on the other end. When North Carolina has the ball, it comes down to ball-screen coverage. When the ball is on the side of the floor, Kansas is taught to ice (or down), forcing the ballhandler toward the baseline. The domino effect when done wrong plays out on the screen.
“That’s what kills you right there,” Self says. “We’re supposed to down that and we don’t, and then CB fights over. He should release and go under, so now Mitch contests the shot and CB had to switch it, so it’s a free run to the basket and they get an and-one. That’s what we talked about. Our big guy cannot come out and challenge that.”
The Heels keep going to a set where a guard sets a screen for Bacot, who then runs into a ball screen in the middle of the floor.
Self points out the good:
“Here’s a little thing right here: If you down screen right here into the ball screen, watch. If Mitch (Lightfoot) goes ball side, now he’s not in a position to down it. That’s why, I think, whenever you down screen a big, you should always piggyback him, so now it’s easier for him to get to which side he sets the screen on. If he’d gone the other way, it’d been harder for him to get over here. So I think you piggyback those screens.”
Too often this half, what Self doesn’t want is playing out. The Jayhawks, essentially, are playing on their heels and giving too much cushion.
Being passive irks him. Not being sound in your assignment gets him even hotter. And both play out on the screen.
“Now watch Remy. He does a crap job. He’s not into it. He’s looking around, scared to get screened. And then he runs all the way around. Look at that. David doesn’t get to level of the screen. He goes and shoots it. Remy tries to block him out. And he’s just too little. Just too little.”
This was the pregame emphasis, he says. “Get to the level of the screen. Be aggressive.”
The Heels go up by four, and Self feels the game turning. “They were playing better than us,” he says.
Two minutes later, Wilson ties the game with a transition put back layup, but KU will go nearly six minutes until scoring another basket. Self is not thrilled with the offensive execution, but it’s the defense that’s really getting to him.
“So watch right here. We gave up nine points on this play right here,” he says. “First of all, I don’t know what happened guarding the ball. David does a bad job; doesn’t down it. He has to get all the way over here. And then by habit J-Will (helps to the corner). He should bluff at him and get right back to Manek. And then Och doesn’t X-out. That’s bad. And Och did it with Black in the second half. He threw it to Love and he makes a 3. Bad play. Scouting report.”
Kansas is getting some decent shots but just missing, and with the defense leaking, Self spent the final few minutes of the first half searching.
“I was thinking, do we play small?” he says right before he subs out his big man, moving Wilson to the five. “We’ve got to try something different. So we’re gonna try to play small.”
New center. Same problem. Another blown assignment on ball-screen coverage.
Next, Self tries freshman KJ Adams at the five, searching for something to ignite his team.
“Anything,” he says.
Agbaji finally ends a scoring drought in the last minute with an off-the-dribble jumper. “Finally,” he says.
But he knows what’s next. “Watch the big guy run to contest.” Adams challenges a last-second jumper, which gives Bacot a free run at the basket until Agbaji steps in to box him out, leaving Puff Johnson unchecked for an easy putback at the buzzer. North Carolina leads 40-25 at the break.
His emphasis at halftime: “Defense. Everything was defense. Creating pace offensively and we’re playing too slow, but we’re so soft defensively and they’re killing us on the glass. We don’t get any deflections. Nothing. And they still killed us on the glass.”
Self knew the opening minutes of the second half were important. His team needed some kind of spark. Right before leaving the locker room, Self looked toward Harris, “You’re going to key the whole thing,” he said to his point guard. “They’re not gonna be able to run offense because of you.”
Self skips ahead to the opening possession of the half. Harris is pressuring right away.
“This is good D here. Juan keyed the whole game. He tries to get a deflection there. (Harris reaches from behind to try to knock the ball out of Bacot’s hands.) We blow up the handoff. It’s a different energy. David’s a little bit better to the level of the screen.”
Love travels, and Self’s energy in the room changes, as if it’s happening in real time.
Self’s other demand at half: “I said we’re going to dunk it first play. We are going to dunk the basketball first play and get some momentum.”
He went with a play called 54, a set originally put in for Dedric Lawson and Udoka Azubuike that’s a pick-and-roll lob play from the elbow. I want to dive deeper into its history, but Self is onto the next defensive possession.
“Look right here,” he says. “See David. Watch this.”
McCormack is not quite at the right spot on the first screen, but he’s there when UNC re-screens. Harris denies one pass away. Wilson is in perfect position to to tag the roller as the MIG (most important guy). Braun, Harris and Wilson pull off a double switch seamlessly.
Self narrates it all.
“They’ve got nothing,” he says proudly.
A minute later, Braun grabs a rebound and goes coast to coast.
“He was good doing that,” he says. “That’s two layups. So the lid’s going to come off with two layups.”
This is insight into how Self sees basketball. As the game has changed, he has too. He adopted small ball. His teams started shooting more 3s. But at his core, he believes the way to win is through shots at the rim, and most of his energy is spent toward creating them on offense and eliminating them on defense.
Braun scores again on a drive and layup. “Terrible D there,” he says, almost as if a poor defensive effort by any team — this time it’s UNC — bugs him.
Next, Agbaji screws up the same X-out type maneuver he called out in the first half. “See Och? He leaves the shooter. That’s six points that cost us just on scouting report. He knows it.”
A minute later, another defensive miscue when North Carolina gets another second-chance basket.
“See, CB’s a good rebounder,” he says as the ball is in the air. “How bad is this? Look how bad this is. Look at that. He doesn’t even move! And then he makes that. Jeez. That’s CB. That was awful.”
Self’s tone changes because he knows what’s coming.
“So now we’re going to play better,” he says.
Almost every defensive possession plays out as he wants, Self applauding each effort.
“Good D. Good D!” he says, as McCormack contests a Bacot shot and Agbaji runs it back up the floor. “Throw it to Juan. Drive it right off his ass, Juan.”
Harris makes a tough scoop shot to cut the UNC lead to four. Self is entranced by the action, but a defensive mistake is like a snap of the fingers.
“Gosh dang it,” he says as Bacot is fouled and pushes the lead back to five.
Soon, McCormack makes up for it by getting to the level of the screen.
“I think David takes the ball right here,” Self correctly predicts. “Yep. We got them shook.”
Love hurts his ankle, and it served as a reminder for Self to utilize an aspect of the pregame plan he hadn’t gone to yet: posting up his guards.
Braun gets it in the perfect spot, but Manek comes over to help and blocks it out of bounds. This allows Self to call another special.
“Lob. Lob. Double lob. Perfect. (McCormack and Agbaji circle in front of the rim, and neither is open, but the action distracts Bacot, and McCormack is wide open in the short corner, and he dribbles into a short jump hook). That’s easy. Easy,” Self says. “So that was our double-lob play that we got exactly what we wanted.”
Anytime that happens: satisfaction.
On the other end, Harris strips the ball from Davis, setting up a fast break that ends with Braun laying the ball in and cutting the lead to one. The Heels call timeout, and the camera captures Braun yelling “b—“ at the crowd. Self smiles. “Juan,” he says, reveling in his point guard’s defense and knowing he’s the one that’s keyed this celebration, just as he predicted.
KU’s after-timeout call is another post-up for Braun. Love lunges as the ball is in the air, and Braun scores at the rim uncontested.
“He had no interest in guarding that,” I say.
“No. None!” Self answers.
The next after-timeout play is another one that’s supposed to go to McCormack, but Harris audibles mid-play and pitches it to Agbaji for 3. It misses, but Self is pleased with the execution. Always process over results.
Kansas comes down the floor trailing by three. After a kicked ball, Self goes with another look that ends in the same action that worked in the first half: Agbaji driving baseline side with McCormack sealing.
“Another way to get to it,” Self says, narrating the play. “Long pin-down for Och. Boom. Drive it right back. And-one.”
Agbaji makes the free throw.
“All right,” Self says, shifting in his chair. “Tie game.”
Remy Martin defends UNC’s Caleb Love during the national title game (Stephen Lew / USA Today)
Agbaji checks out, and here comes Martin, who Self was clearly displeased with in the first half. The only real drama this team faced was Martin’s knee injury, the pain of which had him in and out of the lineup midseason until Self suggested he shut it down until he felt ready. It was a mystery whether he’d ever get back on the floor for Kansas, but he’d been magnificent for most of the tournament. But not in that first half.
“I was going to ride Juan as long as we could,” Self says. “I trusted Juan.”
But nine minutes in, he gives Martin another shot.
And on Martin’s first possession, he buries a corner 3 to give the Jayhawks the lead. Three minutes later, another.
Neither is planned, but that’s where Martin thrives — when something goes off script.
Defensively, Martin isn’t much better than the first half, especially in ball-screen coverage. Self nitpicks each mistake, but he leaves him in and just before the four-minute mark, he calls his number. Martin dribbles around a high ball screen and banks in a tough lefty scoop.
But on the next possession down, it’s bad Remy.
“Remy over-dribbles and just loses the damn ball,” he says. “Feeling himself after he freaking made a basket.”
Manek makes two free throws to tie the game, and Self doesn’t sub. I ask why he’s sticking with him after he just turned it over.
“Because his offense,” Self says. “He can make a bad shot.”
He pauses briefly, and then remembers what’s coming.
“Maybe right here.”
KU runs a play for McCormack, but it’s not there. The ball ends up in Martin’s hands late in the clock, and he side-steps around a ball screen.
“Right here,” Self says right before Martin lets one go with Bacot lunging at him and his momentum going toward the Kansas bench. “Look at this shot. That’s freaking tough, man.”
Love comes right back, attacking McCormack in drop coverage — not at the level of the screen, like he’s supposed to be — and Love scores. “Dammit,” Self says. “We’re exhausted.”
Both teams are. Their body language gives it away. They’re like two boxers leaning on each other against the ropes.
With Kansas ahead by one, a busted play leads to a late-clock open 3 in front of the Jayhawks bench for Wilson.
“Airball,” Self says as soon as he catches it.
Manek scores on a putback, and UNC has the lead.
Self goes back to one of his staples, a one-four high look with an elbow entry to McCormack. Right as he’s catching it, Agbaji cuts backdoor. It worked in the first half, but Agbaji mistimed his steps and had to shoot a reverse, allowing Black time to recover and block it. This time Black sniffs it out right away and the backdoor isn’t there. McCormack pivots, throws the ball to Wilson at the top of the key and sets a screen on Manek since he’s standing right next to him.
And this is where it gets weird.
Self gleefully narrates.
“Wasn’t a play call four-five ball screen. Wasn’t ever called. Four-five ball screen — they’re taught to switch it. So we got Manek on (McCormack). Now we throw it to him, and he gets off a decent look.”
McCormack misses a lefty hook and gets his own rebound. Self stops and starts the action as he explains.
“If that’s Bacot guarding him, we don’t get that ball. Now watch this. He’s double-teamed. All right? Stop.”
He pauses the screen.
“He’s double-teamed, and Jalen Wilson has never, ever, ever cut to the basket. He always stands.”
“So why did he cut?” Self asks. “Because he just shot an airball.”
Self noticed all this when he first re-watched the game. Great coaches can control the chaos. He couldn’t here, but a habit that he’d tried to form forever — getting Wilson to cut — had finally happened. Self hits play.
“So he cuts,” he says, pausing it again. “Now watch Manek. So unsound. Watch Manek reach with his right hand.”
The “sound” move would have been just to wall up. The Heels have McCormack trapped in the middle of the lane, but by reaching Manek takes himself out of the play.
“And then watch Bacot. Who did Bacot go guard? The cutter.”
Self plays it again, letting it get to the end.
“And he turns naked,” he says, using a funny term that means there’s no one in front of him. “He went from a double team to getting off a naked, wide-open jump hook just by one guy reaching with the wrong hand and one guy cutting only because he shot an airball and then Bacot happening to back off because of the cutter.”
Self leans back in his chair, as the score changes to Kansas 70, North Carolina 69.
“I tell everybody,” he says. “People don’t know it’s luck. I mean, that’s a helluva shot.”
The job, of course, was not finished. And after a year of trying to get Martin to play defense like Self wanted, the point guard was about to get tested one last time.
“All right, Remy. Let’s see what you got here, baby,” Self says, as Martin fights around two ball screens. He then switches onto Love, whom he cuts off initially. Love pulls the ball back out, and then attacks again.
“You’re beat,” Self says as Love gets a step, and then… “Good block from behind.”
That’s Martin’s ninth block in a five-year career. It’s the story of this tournament: Martin delivering when it matters most.
With 54 seconds left, the Heels throw the ball to Bacot, and he drives.
“Good defense,” Self says as McCormack slides his feet, and then Bacot slips to the ground.
“OK. Now watch,” Self says. “He’s down. We can go attack.”
Martin throws it up to Wilson, and Self says exactly what he was thinking at the time: “God, CB’s wide open. That’s an uncontested lob.” But Jalen Wilson dribbles the ball unguarded beyond the 3-point arc until Bacot is able to hobble back up the floor. The officials call the play dead.
“At the end of the day, it’s the right thing to do,” Self says. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Self says he later asked Wilson why he didn’t attack, and he starts chuckling as he relays his answer. “I’ve never been up one in an NCAA championship game. I was scared s—less.”
In the ensuing timeout, Self had a chance to go to the clipboard. Because the game was stopped for Bacot, he knew he’d be out of the game. Had Bacot been in, Self might have gone to Agbaji or Martin. With no Bacot, he knew exactly where it was going.
“I told them, ‘Dave is the only one who can touch it here,’” he says.
The Jayhawks followed the lines on the board perfectly, the ball getting to McCormack with Manek guarding him one-on-one.
“He gets to his left shoulder,” Self says, his voice rising. “That’s a pro jump hook.”
There were parts of the game that Self would have been content fast-forwarding past, but you can tell he’s watched these final moments over and over again.
He narrates UNC’s possession, nailing every detail before it happens, then pausing as Love’s long contested 3 bricks off the back of the rim and bounces all the way to the top of the key right to Martin.
“Remy’s got this ball,” he says, pausing at Martin’s apex. “Remy’s got this ball! Game should be over right there.”
He hits play.
“Goes right through (his hands),” he says, rewinding and playing it again. “Look how high he is. Goes right through his hands. And they get it. And they shoot another bad ball. Game’s over.”
Of course, he knows, it wasn’t. He designed a sideline-out-of-bounds play to go to a streaking Harris. The first part was perfect …
“He’s wide open, and what is he doing stepping out of bounds?” Self asks, looking at me and then back at the screen as he replays it again. “He’s wide frigging open. God dang. The guy I trust the most. He’s wide open. God dang.”
Part of him, though, loves how this played out, because of what took place in that next huddle.
Self had decided the Jayhawks would foul. He goes all the way back to the 2007-08 season when they had the debate in a game up three at Georgia Tech and didn’t foul. Sherron Collins got a steal, and they won the game. Self fouled in the 2012 national semifinals against Ohio State, and it worked. In his head, he runs through the variables. How good a free-throw rebounding team does he have? What about the opponent’s rebounding? He was worried about Bacot’s ability to get a free-throw rebound, but he’d made his decision. He was fouling.
“And then right at the end of it, Jalen says, f— that. We’re gonna f— it up. We’re not fouling. And then the other guys said, ‘Coach, let’s guard them. Let’s guard them.’ I said, y’all better freaking guard ’em, or I’m gonna look like the biggest laughingstock of all time.”
This, however, was how he’d always wanted his guys to think. Not that they would screw something up, but that they’d want to guard.
“I always tell the guys, would you rather be down one with the ball or up one and they have the ball? And hopefully every team’s gonna say I’d rather be up one and they have the ball. And so the whole mindset is, Coach, that’s not who we are. We guard people.”
Self hits play.
“Good D,” he says, as Braun contests Love’s desperation 3 and the buzzer sounds.
He watches the celebration and continues the foul-or-no-foul discussion. Then the camera cuts to him hugging McCormack.
“David was so good there at the end,” he says. “We were pretty fortunate.”
The celebration was all a blur. Self says he doesn’t remember what he was thinking when it was over. All he remembers is not being able to get with UNC coach Hubert Davis to shake his hand. Otherwise, it was like he blacked out. The game is what he lives for.
The discussion from there goes to more X’s and O’s. Self diagrams how to attack a no-middle defense in my notebook. Then it’s onto Big 12 basketball this season. He’s onto the next challenge.
As I get up to leave, we talk about what keeps him still going. Self will be 60 this year. This will be his 30th season as a head coach. That go-ahead McCormack hook shot was a reminder that he cannot control everything, but he still has fun moving the chess pieces.
And when potentially winning a third title someday comes up, he smiles as big as he has all day.
He hopes to be so lucky.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Nick Tre Smith, Icon Sportswire, Tom Pennington, Jamie Schwaberow / Getty Images)
