Late, great Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire was the king of basketball one-liners packed with street-wise wit.

One of Al’s best: “A team should be an extension of a coach’s personality. My teams are arrogant and obnoxious.”

Most of the players on this Kansas University basketball team gunning today for the school’s second Final Four trip in four years didn’t arrive in Lawrence with the same relentless intensity as their coach, Bill Self.

Now there is no disputing this team has taken on its coach’s in-your-face personality, the one he shows his players during practice with the doors closed.

For athletes participating in the NCAA Tournament, no doors are closed in a world where everybody is a reporter, even spectators carrying iPhones that shoot videos of pregame scuffles between teams, videos that end up on YouTube.

Self minimized the harmless incident, and part of him had to like that his players were so keyed up, storming through Richmond’s huddle in the hallway leading to the court.

“Coach Self likes tough dudes who like to play hard,” maturing junior point guard Tyshawn Taylor said. “I don’t think he likes that we’re pushing around in the huddle. I think he’d like us to show it with our play, but I don’t think he frowns upon it or gets mad at us.”

Self fosters a combativeness in his players, who are younger, less mature than he is and make mistakes of youth, but at least they err on the side of aggression now.

“I think coach Self, what he gets frustrated with us is when we don’t understand when enough is enough,” Taylor said. “Like, if we’re getting technical fouls, we have to understand we can’t do that. I don’t think he dislikes the trash-talking, but he wants us to understand if the ref pulls you to the side and says, ‘All right, don’t talk anymore,’ and we talk right after that, then that’s when he gets upset with us.”

He likes the mentality, but wants them to be disciplined enough to suppress it on command. Self sets a good example in that regard by riding refs hard, but rarely getting tagged with a T.

“What he always says is, ‘hard-rocking cats.’ He loves hard-rocking cats,” Taylor said. “I think that’s the personality we try to take on.”

This is Brady Morningstar’s fifth year in the program.

“I think all the teams since I’ve been here have taken on the personality of coach Self,” Morningstar said. “He’s a heck of a coach. I know you don’t get to see us in practice, but the way he teaches the game and the way he preaches the style he wants us to play is huge. He really gets into his players’ heads and gets us to play the right way, regardless of whether we like it.”

During KU’s impressive postseason, the team’s two best players have used psychology of their own to get into the heads of the opponents to get them to play the way the twins want them to play. Markieff Morris encountered the Texas players before their Big 12 Conference tournament title game and told them he wanted to play them, not Texas A&M. Marcus Morris told a couple of Richmond players passing by in a golf cart the day before Friday night’s Southwest regional semifinal, “You boys better be ready.”

Tough to say whether Self loved or hated it. His response, implying the local media pretty much created it out of thin air, was a non-response that conflicted with Marcus Morris explaining his remark was aimed at getting into the Spiders’ heads. It worked, and there was nothing inappropriate about it, no reason to run from it, no reason to pretend it didn’t happen.

Some might grow uncomfortable with the twins’ unconventional methods of getting up for games, but can’t argue that it seems to have an intimidating effect on the opposition.

Those uncomfortable with it might be comforted in learning this Kansas team, among the six I have covered at home and on the road, is without question the most polite, humble and engaging during sessions with the media. Interviewing the players is anything but intimidating. These Jayhawks, pretty much to a man, are friendly, candid, smart and blessed with excellent people skills. And they’re tough, tough competitors.

In many ways, they truly are an extension of their coach’s personality.

“At times, I’d say we are,” Markieff Morris said. “Our coach doesn’t take nothing from nobody. He tells us that all the time. We’re always the aggressors. At the end of the day, we’re still Kansas. We’re always the aggressors, and we don’t take nothing from no one, and I guess that’s how coach is.”

The years the coach has on his players gives him a better feel for where to draw lines: “If we talk too much, he tells us that’s not who we are, and he definitely wants us to respect our opponents.”

Driving a team to go 68-5 in two seasons requires a coach to instruct with a rugged, intense edge that pulls players out of their comfort zones. Going 68-5 also means players drive opponents out of their comfort zones, and playing nice all the time doesn’t cut it. A fine line distinguishes intimidating play from foolishness. These days, Kansas is staying on the right side of it.

In December, Marcus Morris got into the head of an opponent with an elbow and drew an ejection. In March, he used his tongue. He doesn’t do it all the time. He picks his spots. He tends to hit the right spot now. That’s progress.