Notebook: Altman, Self use different approaches to prepare teams for Elite Eight battle

Oregon head coach Dana Altman watches from the floor during the first half, Thursday, March 23, 2017 at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.

Kansas City, Mo. ? Saturday morning, when the Oregon Ducks go through their final walk-through for a 7:49 p.m., Elite Eight showdown with top-seeded Kansas at Sprint Center, the players on their scout team will look and act a lot different than the players they’ll face at game time.

With injuries and a lack of walk-ons limiting the third-seeded Ducks’ available bodies, head coach Dana Altman and a couple of his assistants will actually be on the floor operating as the scout team against the Oregon starters.

Even if he wanted to try, the 58-year-old Altman could not match the speed and athleticism his team will see from the likes of Frank Mason III, Josh Jackson, Devonte’ Graham and the rest of the Jayhawks. So Altman doesn’t even try.

“Our run-throughs are never too full speed because I am out there,” he joked on Friday. “You can imagine they’re pretty low key. We run through things half speed, three-quarter speed. We’ve done that all year, done it in the past; it doesn’t change our approach much.”

What it does do is give Altman a very hand-on opportunity to show his team — in slow motion, of course — exactly what the Jayhawks will do during a game in which the winner receives a trip to next week’s Final Four.

So which Jayhawk will Altman be emulating?

“I’ll be Frank,” he said with a shrug and a smile. “I’m always the best player. No, I’m always the point guard because we’ve got a good feel for what they’re going to do and it cuts down the time.”

While the hands-on Altman is busy lacing up his shoes and breaking a sweat, Kansas coach Bill Self will be taking more of a hands-off approach. By this point, and with this team, Self has complete trust and faith in what his players can and will do when the lights are on the season is hanging in the balance. Rather than overemphasize the X’s and O’s and finer points of the game plan that are outlined in team meetings and during scouting report sessions, Self will remind his players of one thing.

“The biggest thing I think we have to do offensively is not think and play,” Self said. “If you have to come down every time and say, ‘OK, let’s study, what are they in,’ you’ve lost your momentum and your pace. We will encourage our guys to play and whatever we’re doing, just do it, whatever they’re in.”

Great expectations

The Jayhawks were asked on Friday whether their scorching run through the first three games of this year’s NCAA Tournament, along with playing for a trip to the Final Four in their own backyard, had added any pressure to what already is a tense time of the season.

Nobody blinked.

“You just kind of get used to it,” said senior forward Landen Lucas of the pressure and expectations that come with playing at Kansas. “We go through the same stuff during the regular season, with the Big 12 streak and everything. Everybody on the team is used to high expectations and I feel like we do well with the pressure of that and we handle it well as a team.”

Self agreed.

“The thing that I’ve kind of learned is that you handle expectations a lot better if you embrace ’em,” Self said. “It’s good that people believe that we should play at a high level. It’s good that people believe we should win. That means we’ve got good players…. I would much rather deal with the expectations than deal with the reality of not being able to play at a high level where there would be expectations.”

Amazing Mason

As if there were any question about how Self felt about his senior point guard, the Kansas coach fired a little more impressive praise at the Jayhawks’ national player of the year candidate during Friday’s meeting with the media.

“Frank Mason has had the best college season of anybody I’ve been around by far,” Self said. “The things that he has done, to be a point guard, to be totally unselfish, to play both ends, to lead, to be tough, to be an ironman and (to have) your team experience success, and all he does is average 21 (points) and five (assists) and gives your team its personality. It’s been an unbelievable year for Frank.”

To that end, earlier Friday, Mason (first team) and Jackson (third team) were named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches All-American teams.

The NABC honor is Mason’s sixth first-team All-American nod this season. Jackson, though yet to earn first-team honors, has received four second- or third-team nods.

Oregon Cyclones?

While the best college basketball comparison for third-seeded Oregon might very well be the team the Ducks are playing, Kansas coach Bill Self said the Jayhawks’ Elite Eight opponent also brought to mind Iowa State.

“I’m just thinking off the top of my head, so that may not be the best,” Self said. “You think of Iowa State, if they had a big guy and then play around four guards. (Deonte) Burton is kind of like (Oregon’s) Dillon (Brooks) in a lot of way. So personnel is very impressive. But if I was gonna say a team, I think they kinda remind me of us as much as anything.”

NBA ready?

If the rules were different, Kansas freshman Josh Jackson may very well have spent the 2016-17 season playing in the NBA instead of starring at Kansas.

But the likely one-and-done Jayhawk, who turned 20 in February, said Friday that being required to spend one season playing college basketball may have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

“I could not imagine playing (in the NBA) right now,” Jackson said. “I honestly don’t think I would be ready to go and play. Having a year in college is way better than coming out of high school in my opinion because I feel like now I’m a lot more ready than I would’ve been versus coming out of high school.”

As for his thoughts about his pro future, Jackson said that was the farthest thing from his mind right now.

“I’m just living in the moment,” he said. “I’m here at Kansas right now, I’ve got a job to do and I’m gonna do it. I’m not really too worried about the future or what may come, I’m just gonna take it all as it comes.”

Direct about discipline

As has been common throughout the 2016-17 season, questions about KU’s off-the-court issues continued to be tossed Self’s way this week in Kansas City, with the most recent batch coming Friday.

Self, who has offered his thoughts about everything ranging from expired tags to an alleged rape at the team’s McCarthy Hall dorm during the past few months, kept things mostly about basketball on Friday.

Asked if he felt he had a responsibility to discipline players for off-court incidents beyond whatever discipline may come from police investigations, Self said simply, “Yes, I do and I do. I do agree with that.”

Asked if he had handed out all the discipline that he was going to hand out for past issues, Self responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

This and that…

Kansas leads the overall series with Oregon, 4-3, including wins in four of the last five meetings. The most recent match-up, a non-conference clash in Dec. of 2003, went to Kansas, 77-67, and the Jayhawks own a 1-0 advantage over the Ducks in NCAA Tournament action, having defeated Oregon, 104-86, in the Elite Eight of the 2002 tourney in Madison, Wis…. The Jayhawks enter tonight’s game as a 7-point favorite, according to oddsmakers in Las Vegas.