Kansas coach Bill Self said he wasn't surprised by the Jayhawks' early exit from the NCAA tournament, as injuries left them with just eight healthy scholarship players.
Josh Weinfuss is a staff writer who covers the Arizona Cardinals and the NFL at ESPN. Josh has covered the Cardinals since 2012, joining ESPN in 2013. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and a graduate of Indiana University. You can follow him via Twitter @joshweinfuss.in the second round of the NCAA tournament Saturday, Jayhawks coach Bill Self said he had long been preparing for next season.
"But we could have done a much better job as a staff of putting more guys out there that we could play, and so that's something that I've thought about for a long time. The thing about it is, in basketball, early on you can play through some things. But the course of a season, there's a grind that goes with it and bodies get run down, injuries occur. It's all part of it.
Self didn't want to put the blame for Kansas' fatigue soley on the 10:45 a.m. tipoff time here, but he said that, coupled with having to play a full 40 minutes of a fast-paced, high-intensity nail-biter against Samford on Thursday night, did in his team. In its storied NCAA tournament history, Kansas' 21-point loss was the second-largest in school history and the second largest by an AP preseason No. 1 team, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The Jayhawks became the second straight preseason AP No. 1 not to make it to the second weekend , something that's now happened four times in the last seven years overall.
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