Three down, three to go for one of the truly great Kansas basketball teams  even if Oregon wins today. Nobody can sneeze off a 32-victory season and 16-0 in the treacherous Big 12.

But its tournament pattern favors KU Â scary game (Holy Cross), blowout (Stanford), gut-wrencher (Illinois). Time for another laugher. If the old guys can’t do it, let the Fab Frosh handle it again.

As the Jayhawks regroup for this vital triad, they should pump up themselves like that Mike Myers character on “Saturday Night Live” Â the chronic self-doubter who declared: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and, doggone it, I like myself!”

Kansas is all that and more. There’s lots to like, with every necessary tool in the box to construct a title throne. So stop the whining about a perceived lack of respect and appreciation and just earn more, baby!

As some conveniently forgot, I wrote on March 10 that “Â This group from the outset is fully capable of winning the national collegiate championship. Let’s hope it knows how to enjoy it with poise if it happens and deal with it like thoroughbreds if it doesn’t. Â Please, none of this, ‘We believed in ourselves even if nobody else did.’ Not true, a helluva lot of us think these Jayhawks have everything it takes to bring home the big trophy and won’t be surprised if they do.”

That was the day before KU let relentless Oklahoma outplay it in the Big 12 tournament title game, and before the Jayhawks tiptoed so fearfully in edging Holy Cross. An ankle injury to the indescribable Kirk Hinrich created even more doubts. The Jayhawks responded like champions.

I offered some honest views on March 17. Even though Nick Collison and a couple of other Jayhawks (and some fans) didn’t read the piece in its full context, I can see why players might have become irked and were eager to play with vindictive fury. How about “deja vu all over again” against a fearsome Oregon bunch? Everybody better show up at his best.

There was ire about my remark that IF Collison continued to take disappearing potion in key games, a la Holy Cross, KU was in serious trouble. Never dreamed I enjoy that much influence. And I surely don’t. The sensational game Collison and his mates had in plastering Stanford came about because they willed it to happen, not because of comment by some ink-stained wretch. It’s all in the Jayhawks’ hands. They’re total masters of their own fate. However, if coach Roy Williams wants to send me a finder’s fee check, I won’t object. But isn’t motivation his job?

Man, if I have that kind of power, I’m going to write that Osama bin Laden takes disappearing potion all the time and hope it brings the louse out of his cave, or whatever, to fight.

The fabled Phog Allen told me a number of times, “When we play like bums, write us up like bums.” If KU did and I did, Phog would vigorously defend the jocks and take shots at the crummy messenger, but he’d get his point across. It was fun playing that role, even after some players caught on.

I had absolutely not one word with Williams about all this before or after the Stanford game; I absolutely wasn’t shilling on his behalf. Roy’d never do that; the craftier Phog would and did.

However, I’ll bet at least the Jayhawk assistant coaches made sure Collison and the other Jayhawks read my critique several times. That’s part of coaching, bulletin-board stuff; any tutor is nuts not to use something like that. Coaches love to find a little red-hot to drop into key jock straps at crunch-time. The “us against them” angle can be a wondrous elixir.

Got criticism from one fan for my “vitriolic and acerbic” attack on the Jayhawks. Hell, nobody accused anybody of running guns to the Taliban or selling porn to kids. This is athletics, not cancer research.

Notes from a couple of critics showed they need to look up some fairly simple words in the dictionary  and also learn how to spell names like “Collinson, Goodin, Heinrich, Bochee, Lankford, Myles and Simion” if they’re so blindly devoted.

All this goes with the territory. Nobody’s gonna be happy all the time, even some of the time, with printed stuff. Coaches and athletes can be quite myopic about what’s written or said about them. You can glorify them day after day and laud their ventures (I’ve done a little of that in my time). Funny thing, you seldom draw even a hint of gratitude. Too many seem dedicated to the proposition that they are endowed with inalienable rights to nothing but praise and adulation no matter what they do. But uncork a less-than-flattering item or two and you’d think you’d run a Nazi death camp.

It doesn’t take somebody very long in this business to recognize that many, many times people consider newspaper guys like cops, firefighters, lawyers, doctors and such  they’re only to be tolerated, until you want or need one really bad for something. Wow, does the charm flow then!

All that’s negated by the countless really good people in sports, and everywhere else, who give you cornucopias of reasons to keep trying. As I’ve told people who were happy with something I did: “You never, repeat never, can make it quite good enough for the really fine people; there is no way for any writer, at any level, to make it verbally as bad as a Hitler, Milosevic or bin Laden deserve.” That’s the No. 1 frustration of my calling, never being able to verbalize the zeniths and nadirs the way I’d like.

As for these 2002 Jayhawks and their challenges: You’re smart enough, you’re good enough and, doggone it, you gotta like yourself (and each other) well enough to vow you absolutely will not let each other down. I also remember writing that KU’s three freshman whizzes eventually will be regarded in the same favorable light as the current junior Three Amigos. Keith Langford, Aaron Miles and Wayne Simien are off to a pretty good start.

Now, Jayhawks, cut all the talking, bust loose with another Stanford-game explosion and bring home that coonskin.