Bill Self has been able to put Kansas University’s season-ending basketball loss to Northern Iowa in perspective.

“This is not life or death, although in our world it’s serious,” Self, KU’s seventh-year coach, said Tuesday at his season-ending news conference in Allen Fieldhouse. “I am not in mourning. I am down. I’ve been down before. I’ve been down during the season.”

Aside from being down … Self said he’s “sad, disappointed, hurt and then my emotions will turn to mad, upset, competitive and ‘let’s get back to work.’ So I’m not quite there yet, but I think I can get there pretty quickly and then your emotions will turn to excited about the next group you get an opportunity to work with because I do think regardless of what happens with who stays or who goes (to NBA), I think we have a chance to be very good next year.

“I’m getting closer to the point of being a little angry and ready to get back to work, to be real candid with you.”

Who is he angry with in the wake of Saturday’s 69-67 second-round NCAA setback?

“Nobody. The situation. They (16 teams) are playing and we’re not. That upsets me. I’m jealous,” Self said. “I want the best for our guys and I feel we didn’t get the chance to experience the best of the best because we just didn’t get it done.”

Self, who led KU to the 2008 NCAA title, has experienced agony in the NCAAs before.

“I’ve been to the NCAA Tournament 12 years in a row and I think 10 of them have ended on the last possession one way or another,” Self said.

One media member asked Self how he felt about the fact this 33-3 team, which rolled to the Big 12 regular-season and postseason tourney titles, would only be remembered for its work in the NCAAs.

“I don’t know if you are right. That is one person’s opinion,” Self said. “I don’t look at it as being the only thing. Winning championships is something at most places you should not take lightly. Here I think sometimes we as a group do not see the significance of it because there’s always a bigger prize, which is good. You want to be in a place like that. We still shouldn’t take away from the fact … hey, going 15-1 or winning the Big 12 championship is an accomplishment. I’d rather be in the Final Four than that, but still, I don’t think it makes the season a failure by any means.”

He said he was proud of the team for handling the No. 1 ranking well for almost the entire season.

“I do think that sometimes when you coach at a place like Kansas, the expectations are high, which they should be when you are preseason No. 1 — that winning becomes a relief and losing is awful,” he said. “I do sense that over time expectations were high enough when sometimes we did win, it was ‘whew’ as opposed to jumping on each other like you would at Tulane or you would at Tulsa. It’s something that certainly is not a bad thing, not a good thing, just the way it is. These kids are expected to perform at a pretty high level here and for the most part they’ve accomplished that.”

The bottom line?

“This is the best regular season we’ve ever had, dominant and all those things, but we just didn’t finish it off,” he said.

More on the press

Self was asked again about not using a full-court press earlier in the game against Northern Iowa.

“You don’t go 33-2 and decide we’re going to play differently because we’re down by six. Maybe some coaches do. I don’t,” Self said. “If that was what we were really good at, I’d say sure you could do that, but that’s not who we are regardless of what people think. Are there things we could do differently looking back? Absolutely … The press, the last 12-14 minutes when we really turned it up, it really helped us. But could we have done that for 30, 35 minutes? I don’t know if we could.”

He also indicated Northern Iowa was in the bonus early and “you don’t want to make plays that give them free points.” Also that pressing, “opens up the floor.”

“The other thing about a press a lot of people don’t realize, you have to score to make the other team take it out of bounds before you can really press. Our problem was the first half we didn’t score and we didn’t shoot free throws,” Self said. “I think when you lose your last game that you are supposed to win, you can look back on a plethora of things on why, what could we have done differently and why did it happen this way? I do the same thing. It doesn’t bother me that other people would do the same thing. To say this is the reason, I don’t buy into that at all.”

Recruiting

Self, who has signed 6-foot-3 guard Royce Woolridge, said he’d like to sign one or two more players this spring. Those still considering KU include Josh Selby, 6-2 guard from Baltimore, who is Rivals.com‘s No. 4-ranked player; No. 1-ranked Brandon Knight, 6-3 from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and No. 21 Doron Lamb, 6-4 from Mouth of Wilson, Va.