New Orleans ? Though it was nearly 2 1/2 years ago, Kansas University walk-on Jordan Juenemann still vividly recalls the practice when coach Bill Self introduced his team to the triangle-and-two defense.

After just a few minutes of going over it, guard Tyshawn Taylor was sold.

“I remember the moment. Tyshawn was like, ‘I like this, Coach. I like this, Coach,'” Juenemann said. “Lo and behold, look how it turned out for us.”

Without the change-up defense — from a coach who rarely strays from man-to-man — KU players and coaches acknowledged Sunday they likely wouldn’t be playing for a national championship.

In two NCAA Tournament games, KU used the set to stop opponents that had been scoring freely against KU’s man-to-man.

“There’s a lot of guys out there that as head coaches, they just say, ‘This is what we do. We’re going to stick to our principles, and if we can’t do it, doggone it, we’re going to go down with the ship,'” KU director of basketball operations Barry Hinson said. “Thank goodness you’ve got a captain of the ship that says, ‘There’s different ways to clean fish.’

“If he doesn’t figure out Purdue, if he doesn’t figure out North Carolina, then we’re not here today. We’re absolutely not here today.”

Eighth-year assistant coach Kurtis Townsend has seen KU tinker with many zone defenses during his time at KU. The Jayhawks started working with a 3-2 zone, then a 2-3, then even a box-and-one.

After all those, KU implemented the triangle-and-two in late January of 2010 — just a few days before an 81-79 victory over Kansas State.

Townsend knew KU might be on to something based on how effective the defense was against K-State. KSU guard Jacob Pullen got so tired of the defense that, when KU pulled it out in the first half of one of the games against him his senior year, he turned to the KU bench and said, “Come on, man. Really?”

The triangle-and-two was one of the zone defenses that Self had in his repertoire while coaching at Tulsa and is most effective when an opposing team has only two good outside shooters on the court.

“Coach is not a big zone guy, but his compromise is, ‘If half the guys are playing zone, and two other guys — almost half the team — is playing man, that isn’t a bad deal,'” Townsend said. “The thing is, it’s a unique defense. Teams don’t practice against it, because they don’t see it a lot.”

Many of the KU players and coaches refer to it as “Combo,” as it is actually a combination of man and zone. The signal for the defense is Self holding up a curved thumb and four curved fingers … which makes the letter “C.”

There’s some strategy involved as well. Townsend said that KU rarely goes to the triangle-and-two in the first half because it doesn’t want other teams to be able to make halftime adjustments.

KU’s NCAA success with “Combo” started in its second game against Purdue.

With the Jayhawks unable to stop forward Robbie Hummel, KU played the defense for most of the second half.

After scoring 36 first-half points, Purdue mustered just 24 after halftime.

The night before his team’s Elite Eight game against North Carolina, Self told his players at the hotel during a final run-through that they might play two or three possessions of triangle-and-two against the Tar Heels.

The Jayhawks ended up going to it for 12 possessions according to ESPN, and during that time UNC scored just six points.

North Carolina players John Henson and Tyler Zeller said after the game that they didn’t know what set KU was playing.

“You could tell they were kind of confused,” Juenemann said. “It was amazing.”

According to a statistic cited on ESPN, KU only played 36 possessions of triangle-and-two before the postseason this year.

In the NCAA Tournament, the Jayhawks have played 30 possessions of triangle-and-two.

At the most important time of the year, Self trusted his team with playing the set and ended up with two wins.

“Thank goodness you’ve got a guy that didn’t let his ego or his pride get in the way of making what I would consider a courageous move,” Hinson said. “There’s not a lot of guys that would do that, and he did.”