After one of the worst losses of the Bill Self era, can Kansas salvage this season?

At the end of last year’s underwhelming 11-loss season, Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self made a startling confession.

“I think for the last month I’ve been thinking about next season to be honest,” Self admitted after an 89-68 shellacking by Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

A glaring lack of depth made worse by a late-season wave of injuries contributed to Kansas finishing an uncharacteristic sixth in the Big 12 and winning just a single postseason game. The Jayhawks dropped five of their final seven games, leaving Self lamenting that he and his staff didn’t recruit enough “firepower” off the bench to cope with attrition and fatigue.

That season, by Kansas’ towering standards, was a letdown.

This season, by Kansas’ towering standards, has been even more disappointing.

The preseason No. 1 Jayhawks already were a team potential double-digit NCAA tournament seeds wanted to draw even before beginning a two-game road trip to the Beehive State last Saturday. Now it’s a legitimate possibility the Jayhawks might tumble to the double-digit seed lines after they followed Saturday’s dud of a 74-67 loss at Utah with Tuesday night’s 91-57 no-show at BYU.

Kansas (17-9) trailed BYU (18-8) by eight after less than two minutes, by 20 at halftime and by as many as 38 points late in the second half. The 34-point final margin was the Jayhawks’ worst loss in program history as a ranked team facing an unranked opponent and just the school’s second 30-point loss to a Big 12 team in the Self era.

When he assessed his team’s performance against BYU, Self was blunt.

“I thought we were awful and I thought they were great,” he told reporters.

Self hoped the trip through Utah would be a bonding experience for his team, but by the end he said his players needed to “regroup” and “get away from each other for a day.”

To see Kansas malfunction for two straight years like this under Self is a shocking development. This is a program that seemed immune to the occasional down seasons that have plagued even fellow blue bloods North Carolina and Kentucky. The Jayhawks won 18 out of 19 Big 12 titles from 2005-23. They were a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament nine times during that span. They were never anything worse than a No. 4 seed.

The way Self deployed Kansas’ ample NIL budget on the recruiting trail this past offseason, it appeared that a forgettable 2023-24 season would be a blip, not the start of a downward trend. Self retained veteran stalwarts Dajuan Harris, KJ Adams and Hunter Dickinson. Then he went to work in the transfer portal addressing Kansas’ threadbare depth and lack of perimeter shooting.

What happened next is a reminder that an NIL war chest doesn’t guarantee success in modern college basketball. You need NIL money to acquire talent, but you have to deploy those funds wisely and assemble a roster that fits together.

Kansas landed coveted transfer AJ Storr to serve as an offensive spark plug and shot creator alongside Harris. His scoring average has plummeted from 16.6 points per game last season at Wisconsin to 6.2 for the Jayhawks. He had more turnovers than points in 18 minutes off the bench at BYU.

Kansas brought aboard former Alabama wing Rylan Griffen as an elite spot-up shooter capable of spacing the floor for his teammates. Griffen is averaging 6.6 points and shooting 35.9% from behind the arc, both well down from his numbers with the Crimson Tide last season.

The only one of Kansas’ transfers who has been a difference-maker has been guard Zeke Mayo. The South Dakota State transfer has dazzled with his pull-up shooting and ability to put pressure on the rim, but that hasn’t been nearly enough to transform Kansas into an elite offensive team.

Kansas is 59th nationally in offensive efficiency, per Ken Pomeroy, tied with last year’s team for the worst of the Bill Self era. The Jayhawks are 302nd nationally in the percentage of their field-goal attempts that are from behind the 3-point line. Opponents know they can go under screens and dare Harris, Adams and Dickinson to shoot without fear of being burned by it.

Sturdy defense has been what has propelled Kansas to some marquee wins over the likes of Michigan State, Duke and Iowa State. When that deserts the Jayhawks, as it did Tuesday night against BYU, an underachieving team can look downright “awful,” as Self put it.

The good news for the Jayhawks is they’re not going to miss the NCAA tournament. They were a No. 4 seed in the selection committee’s early bracket reveal last Saturday morning. Three of their last five regular-season games are at home, and they’ve lost only twice at Allen Fieldhouse so far this season. Other high-major programs would love to be in their position.

The bad news for Kansas is that this no longer looks like a team that can be a threat to make it past the opening weekend, let alone live up to its preseason No. 1 ranking. There’s not enough shooting, not enough toughness, not enough desire. Self even seems to be at loss for what to do, admitting he threw freshman Flory Bidunga into the starting five on Tuesday night “just to try something.”

Self ended his news conference at BYU on a somewhat optimistic note, pointing out that one of the worst two-game stretches of his tenure offered his team a chance to make a stand and prove its critics wrong.

“A lot of time with teams there needs to be something that happens to pull everybody together [so] that it’s us against the outside,” Self said. “We’re going to have an opportunity to do that for sure.”

Maybe this will be the inspiration Kansas needs for a late-season push, but it seems more likely Self needs to turn over his roster and start fresh.

Between a top-tier coach, unmatched tradition and ample resources and fan support, Kansas has every necessary ingredient to keep winning in college basketball’s modern era.

For the last two years, the Jayhawks have endured Champagne problems.