Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell. Bucknell.

Just trying to help the Kansas University players prepare for what they’ll be bombarded with once they arrive in Auburn Hills, Mich., for their first-round NCAA Tournament game against Bradley.

“I was in North Carolina somewhere,” Brandon Rush said of the Bucknell game. “I didn’t pay any attention to it. I’m getting kind of tired of hearing about it. We didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Kansas wasn’t on his radar yet. The NBA was. Good thing for Rush he ended up at KU because he’s having a blast, and the smart money says he’ll have even more fun for the Jayhawks next year.

There is one thing Bradley has in common with last season’s Bucknell. The Braves, like the Bison, are a better basketball team than many think. (The Sagarin computer ranking “predictor” column that ranks KU sixth in the nation ranks Bradley 23rd). Bradley got it together in midseason after coach Jim Les made it clear in a tough talk with the team he isn’t afraid to bench anybody, even star Marcellus Sommerville, who has had better shot selection since.

Still, Bradley has about as much in common with Bucknell as, well, as this year’s Kansas team has with last year’s. Not much.

Last season’s Jayhawks were a blend of Roy Williams recruits and Bill Self recruits. Two different groups who knew a couple of different ways of doing things. This year’s players, save for transfer Micah Downs, all tuned into Self with undivided loyalty.

Even beyond attitude and loyalty issues, the personnel of the teams are different.

Last year, the team had a clear-cut, go-to guy through whom everything ran because Self believed to do otherwise would have been to give the team less than its best shot at winning. KU doesn’t have a big man as strong, skilled and experienced as Wayne Simien, but these Jayhawks are more upset-proof.

KU’s personnel is such that playing at a faster pace is the best way to win, which means more possessions. Generally speaking, the more possessions, the greater chance the favorite wins.

Bucknell walked the ball up the floor. Bradley likes to play at KU’s fast pace.

Toughness, as always, comes into play. Physical and mental toughness can be difficult to separate, and one area where they overlap is an area where KU excels: conditioning. To play at as fast a pace as KU plays at, defensively, in transition, and offensively, requires well-conditioned athletes. Led by Rush and Russell Robinson, KU has players with good stamina and a strong enough bench (Jeff Hawkins, C.J. Giles and Darnell Jackson) that Self can rest players without feeling as if he’s losing much.

The Jayhawks don’t have the go-to scorer they had in Simien, though Mario Chalmers is emerging as the guy who takes the big shot in a way that says he knows he’s going to make it.

They’re playing with an in-your-face style, a relentlessness that results in opponents eventually getting heavy legs, and that’s when the KU guards pounce.

“Defense, long rebounds, steals : coach wants us diving for loose balls so that every 50/50 ball is ours,” Rush said.

It worked against Texas.