Self on Late Night: "I was really impressed with the crowd"
For the first time since the 2019-20 season, Allen Fieldhouse felt like home during Late Night in the Phog on Friday night. KU’s dream season and a quest for a second national championship under Bill Self came to a crashing halt due to COVID 19 in 2019-20, and several setbacks last season prevented the Jayhawks from ever reaching their maximum potential.
However, for the first time in a long time, everything returned to normal inside Allen Fieldhouse on Friday night.
“Yeah,” said Kansas head coach Bill Self when asked if it was good to have the fans back inside Allen Fieldhouse. “I was really impressed with the crowd considering the mask mandate and things like that. So, I still don't know that everybody's comfortable getting out and bringing families, but hopefully, we'll continue to see improvement and by the time the season starts in, I guess, mid-November for us at home, that we'll be back to some real normalcy.”
Following a night of skits, several appearances by Rob Riggle, dancing, a scrimmage by the University of Kansas women’s basketball team, and plenty of laughs in-between, Self’s squad took the court for a 20-minute scrimmage, with a running clock, before RUN DMC, put the finishing touches on the entertainment for the night.
In leading the Crimson team over the Blue team, 41-30, David McCormack (9), Christian Braun (8), Dajuan Harris (7), Joseph Yesufu (4), KJ Adams (6), Michael Jankovich (3), Jalen Coleman-Lands (2), and Zach Clemence (2) led the way for the winning squad.
On the Blue side, Ochai Agbaji (12), Jalen Wilson (5), Cam Martin (4), Mitch Lightfoot (4), Chris Teahan (3), and Dillon Wilhite (2) carried the scoring load.
Late on Friday night, Self was asked about KU’s team speed so far?
“Our team's speed? You can't tell anything about it tonight, but yeah, we're pretty athletic, fast,” said Self. “We play faster. We've got more guys that can push it. Even our veterans push it better than they did last year. But I think that we'll be a ... Playing fast doesn't necessarily mean shooting fast, but I think we'll be a team that can definitely have really good ball and body movement by the time we get to playing games, at least I'm hopeful for that. And that wasn't ball tonight, but we've really done a good job of doing that the first couple of practices.”
While there wasn’t much to learn from Friday night's scrimmage, which featured a running clock, KU’s struggles from behind the arc was somewhat surprising to those that have followed this team since it was put together after last season.
Bobby Pettiford, Joseph Yesufu, Christian Braun, Dajuan Harris, Kyle Cuffe, Jalen Wilson, Remy Martin, Ochai Agbaji, Cam Martin, and Jalen Coleman-Lands all have the ability to hit from behind the arc. However, on Friday night, the two squads combined to hit just 7-of-36 shots from downtown.
“Yeah,” said Self when asked if he liked his guys have the confidence to take shots from behind the arc. “Yeah. That's good. I like that they're confident enough to shoot them and they'll be told shortly not to. But Jalen Coleman and Jalen Wilson both shot it great and they were 1 for 10, if I'm not mistaken. Juan and Ochai, I guess, were our two best three-point shooters. But we're better shooters than what we shot."
For senior guard Ochai Agbaji, just having the fans back inside Allen Fieldhouse was more than worth the wait.
"Yeah, it was a lot of fun," said Agbaji. "Kind of when we went out there to do the alma mater, it kind of just reminded me of singing the national anthem before our games and how we stand in that line right there. So it was fun to see everybody packed in there."