Kansas head coach Bill Self tries to rally his players with little time remaining in the game, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017 at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.

Kansas basketball coach Bill Self joked after last Saturday’s six-point win at No. 4 Kentucky that nobody was going to use KU’s zone defense in that one to make a how-to tape for coaches and players to study.

“Guys, they shot 50 percent (51.9) in the second half,” Self said as he walked out of Rupp Arena. “It’s not like our zone was unbelievable.”

Maybe not; but it was a game-changer, it proved critical for Kansas against the Wildcats and it very well could become a key ingredient to the Jayhawks’ attack the rest of the season.

“It might be the answer, at least in short spurts,” senior forward Landen Lucas recently said of KU’s 2-3 zone. “Maybe not for a long period of time, but it’s definitely something we’ll work on.”

Throughout Self’s time as the head coach at Kansas, tough, man-to-man defense has been a staple. There have been moments when Self has gone zone to change a game or used a junk defense to survive in March. But, for the most part, Self’s Jayhawks have played defense like chess players — man against man, thinking ahead, digging in and trying to dictate everything that happens.

So far this season, Self often has critiqued his team’s defensive efforts and, on occasion, been so disappointed by what he’s seen that he’s all but had to go zone.

The 2-3 look, which Self says is best when played active, helped the Jayhawks win a game over Georgia in November and has been used in each of the last two games to varying degrees of success.

In the loss to West Virginia, the Jayhawks played it late, after they were tired, and did not impress their coach much. Against Kentucky, Self called for it in the first half and watched it change the game.

“Switching defenses I think really threw them off a little bit,” freshman Josh Jackson said.

Jackson’s use of the plural form of the word defense was important because Kansas used more than just man and zone to top the Wildcats. For what Self remembered as four or five possessions, Kansas tried a triangle-and-two to keep Kentucky’s Malik Monk and De’Aaron Fox under wraps, but Derek Willis drained 5-of-6 from 3-point range and that was enough of that.

“If that’s 2-of-6, then we stay in it and it looks good,” Self said.

Truth be told, that might be Self’s preference. The 2-3 zone can be effective when run right, but KU never has spent much time practicing it and Self might prefer to play 2-3 only as a last resort.

“I feel more confident with our combination defense than I do our zone,” he said.

Regardless of which zone the Jayhawks use, or whether they even use one at all, Self on Monday revealed one hidden advantage to the strategy.

“I think it allowed the guys to stay in the game because maybe the fatigue factor wasn’t as much,” he said of his starting five, which averaged 34 minutes apiece against Kentucky. “I hate to say that you could ever rest on defense, but, with our particular zone, the way we played it, I think it kind of bought us a little time (and) we didn’t have to sub quite as much.”

Although this veteran KU team has pride in playing man-to-man defense, it also appears to have taken on the mindset that it will do whatever, whenever, to get a victory, and at least one Jayhawk said the 2-3 zone seemed like a good fit.

“Zone is one of those things you learn when you’re a little kid so you kind of understand the basic principles of it,” Lucas said. “I think our personnel fits it pretty well. We’ve got really long wings who can deflect passes and disturb people and the two little guys up front can create some havoc on their point guards, so it could be something that could change up some pace and be good for us.”

As for Lucas himself, KU’s lone big man who absolutely must stay out of foul trouble night-in-and-night-out for the Jayhawks to play at their best, he seems fine with whatever defense Self calls and said zones typically put him in good spots.

“Yeah, I mean if it’s a team with a 5-man (center) that goes out on the perimeter, at least that way I can stay on the inside,” Lucas said. “And it gives me pretty good position for rebounds.”