Connecticut head coach Kevin Ollie and Kansas head coach Bill Self congratulate each other as they pass in the hallway during a day of press conferences and interviews, Friday, March 18, 2016 at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

Des Moines, Iowa ? Phil Martelli, Jay Wright, Fred Hoiberg, Tom Izzo, Billy Donovon, John Calipari, Tad Boyle. Today, Bill Self will attempt to do what those seven big names failed to accomplish: defeat UConn coach Kevin Ollie in an NCAA Tournament game.

UConn, which won three national titles under Ollie’s mentor, Jim Calhoun, won another two years ago in Ollie’s second season as head coach, after two as an assistant to Calhoun.

Ollie, 43, takes a 7-0 NCAA Tourney record into the game as well as a level of respect that fourth-year head coaches seldom attain.

That doesn’t surprise former Kansas University athletic director Lew Perkins, impressed with Ollie since the day he met him on his recruiting trip to UConn when Perkins was AD there.

“When he came to campus, you knew right away that he was going to be successful at whatever he did,” said Perkins, who plans to watch the game with family, including grandchildren, in New Orleans.

“He was, still is and will always be one of the most charming individuals you ever met in your life. He’s not a funny guy. He’s not a wise guy. He’s not any of that stuff. And when you meet him, you’re just going to say, ‘Wow, what a guy.'”

That’s pretty much what those who had not been around Ollie were saying about him after his Friday news conference in Wells Fargo Arena.

“He was a great player,” Perkins said. “He is a great coach and a better person. I wish both teams could win, but I know only one team can win. I also would tell you that in my opinion, Bill Self is the best coach in the country.”

Perkins also was AD at Maryland and Wichita State, and he played at Iowa, all schools that have advanced to the Round of 32.

Today’s UConn-Kansas game is scheduled to tip off at 6:45 p.m. and is the only one so far in the tournament that features a coaching matchup between two of the 11 active college basketball coaches to win a national championship.

The coaches took different paths to their jobs.

Ollie, who grew up in gang-torn South Central Los Angeles and played at UConn, was playing in the NBA while Self, a native of Edmond, Okla., who played for Oklahoma State, was climbing the college-coaching ranks.

Self was graduate assistant at Kansas, full-time assistant at Oklahoma State, head coach at Oral Roberts, Tulsa and Illinois.

Ollie played for 11 NBA franchises in 13 seasons. It wasn’t that coaches had to have him for his production. He averaged 3.8 points. They wanted him because he was so coachable, such a great teammate, at once a great pupil and teacher to younger players.

As much moving around as Ollie did, he was bound to cross paths with Larry Brown, under whom Self learned as graduate assistant at Kansas.

Ollie signed as a free agent two times (1999 and 2000) to play for Brown with the Philadelphia 76ers.

“It was the world to me,” Ollie said of playing for Brown. “Coming in from the CBA, he really gave me opportunity to play and cement myself as an NBA player. Before, I was going back and forth. … He loved spending time with the guys on the bench more than he loved spending time with the starters.”

So much so, Ollie said, that on days there was no official practice, Brown would come in and coach reserves having three-on-three games.

“He was coaching us as hard as A.I. (Allen Iverson) and (Dikembe) Mutombo and George Lynch,” Ollie said. “I thought that allowed us to become better basketball players and better men.”

Ollie called Brown a “relationship coach. He loves his players, and he will do anything for his players. To this day, I love him to death because he taught me how to be a great man, first and foremost.”

Ollie, who said he counts former Kansas guard Jacques Vaughn among his closest friends, drew praise from Self on Friday.

“Seems like to me that his players really care about each other, and he has good relationships with his players,” Self said. “But not one that is friendly. I think he does a great job of getting after them and drilling them and really pushing them.”

Ollie said he uses various tactics aimed at drawing teammates closer together, including one he shared Friday.

“We really want our guys to stay connected, and that’s by communicating, that’s by huddling, by touching each other’s hand,” Ollie said. “We call it dabbing each other. We want to get 1,500 dabs during practice and during the game, and that’s just touching each other and staying connected. We really try to reach that throughout the game so they understand they need each other, and you can’t do it alone.”

The true test of a team’s unity arrives when things are heading in the wrong direction during a game. UConn knows how to bounce back, as it did when coming back from a deficit Thursday against Colorado.

“We really preach recovery through games,” Ollie said. “How you recover and how you respond to adversity. How you make, you know, the ashes of the game, let that become beauty.”

So far, that approach has worked in March and April for Ollie, whose Huskies are seeded No. 9 and are facing the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed.