Bill Self, Kansas Jayhawks Need To Shift Focus

There's not a lot to be said about the Jayhawks' loss to the Volunteers on Sunday.

The fact of the matter is that games like Sunday's simply aren't worth dwelling on.

Kansas needs to make the most of their first loss of the season by learning from it, nothing more, before forgetting all about it and preparing for the contest with the Nebraska Cornhuskers this Saturday.

Mostly, I don't want to hear any baloney about how Kansas did or didn't need to lose a game in order to win a national championship.

Does losing a game or two help most teams?  History tells us that the answer is probably yes.

Is it necessary to lose a game in order to win a national championship? As the college playing field grows more competitive, this answer, too, apparently shifts more towards the "yes" end of the spectrum.

That doesn't make losing to Tennessee a good thing, and I would have been perfectly fine with winning every game.

Winners always play to win a game; they never prep to lose one, even if it "helps" them. That's why this argument is ridiculous.

The only thing Kansas needs to do is win every game of the NCAA Tournament and, should it be necessary, their conference tournament beforehand.

However, such an argument no longer exists on the University of Kansas campus because the Jayhawks have lost a game.

As I said before, all the Jayhawks can do now is make the best of that loss.  Learn from that loss, and make such a loss, in essence, a "good" thing.

In fact, having said that, technically, all Kansas or any other team needs to do is win their conference tournament and the national one after that—perhaps, psychologically speaking, maybe the best thing for Kansas isn't to focus on winning their next contest.

Perhaps Bill Self's focus should shift to simply improving, working a little harder, playing a little better, and really getting the most he can out of every individual player.

I have little doubt in my mind that such results would lead to a victory anyway.

I guess I simply think that when you're a team as talented and targeted as Kansas, maybe the best way to play is not to win games, but simply to improve through each and every game.

At the regular season's end, when winning is all that matters, hopefully Coach Self has his team as highly improved and as close to perfect as they could possibly be, and hopefully that would be good enough to get the Jayhawks their final prize.

However, I'm not a psychiatrist or a coach.

The best I can do at the moment is hope Kansas is working hard in their preparations for the Cornhuskers.

Nebraska is a team that, like Kansas, is very balanced, has a formidable front court,and some athleticism on the wings. In the Cornhuskers' four losses, they have scored less than 70 points and a,s a whole, tend to be rather inconsistent offensively.

The Hawks need to work out those defensive kinks and avoid having to play a zone (which looked horrendous, didn't it?) in order to fluster the young Huskers and get back to their winning ways.