Kansas head coach Bill Self takes down the remainder of the net as the Jayhawks celebrate after defeating Miami, 76-50 to advance to the Final Four on Sunday, March 27, 2022 at United Center in Chicago.

When you rack up wins and collect trophies the way Kansas basketball coach Bill Self has, you automatically find yourself into the conversation about the best coaches in the sport and even the best of all time.

But even with all of the Big 12 championship trophies he has brought to KU and the 554 wins he has been responsible, Self firmly believes that the Kansas program still can and should do more.

Asked Tuesday what adding that elusive second national title would mean for his legacy, the KU coach now in his 19th season in charge of the program said it wasn’t about him.

“I’ve given thought about what a second championship would mean in our tenure here,” he said. “But I haven’t thought much about it from a legacy standpoint.”

It’s been 14 years since Self broke through for his first Final Four and won a national championship in 2008. The Jayhawks have gotten close to adding to that haul a couple of times since then.

Whether that includes the years when the Jayhawks reached the Final Four again in 2012 and 2018 or the years they felt they had one of the best teams in the country but caught a bad break in the NCAA Tournament like 2011, 2017 and 2020, Self’s Jayhawks have remained in a constant state of pounding on the door but waiting for it to fall down again.

That’s what makes the opportunity in New Orleans this weekend so meaningful, and Self on Tuesday was not shy about discussing its importance.

“Our program is, without question, one of the top programs in the country,” Self said. “I mean, nobody can debate that at all. But for it to be thought of as the equal of anybody else’s, we’ve got to cut down nets on Monday night (and) do more of that.”

The three other teams fighting for the 2022 title in New Orleans this week have won seven of the 17 national titles since Self arrived at Kansas.

That includes a stretch of four in a row from 2015 to 2018 — Duke first in 2015, followed by Villanova in 2016, North Carolina in 2017 and Villanova again in 2018.

Villanova — Saturday’s opponent for Kansas in the national semifinals — defeated the Jayhawks along the way in both of its national title runs.

Self said Tuesday that he began thinking about those numbers this week and realized that, in order for Kansas to claim it’s the best of the best, his program is going to have to keep up.

“I don’t want to put our program down,” Self began. “But Villanova’s won a couple here recently,” Self said. “Duke’s won a couple in the last decade or 11 years or whatever it’s been. Hey, Carolina’s won a couple in (the past 13 years). We can stack up against anybody in any particular area, but when you talk about total number of national championships, we’re behind some of the other blue bloods that we compete with. So, I don’t know about my legacy, but for the program and the historic nature of it, it certainly would add something very significant to it.”

The fact that this latest opportunity comes with all three of those programs vying to add another title of their own has only added to the intensity and excitement surrounding this year’s Final Four run.

But Kansas being favored in its semifinal matchup with Villanova — 5:09 p.m. Saturday on TBS in Game 1 — has Kansas fans everywhere moving forward with guarded optimism that this might be the year that the Jayhawks add to their total.

That’s the goal every year for every player who suits up at Kansas, of course.

But for veteran forward Mitch Lightfoot, who actually played against the Wildcats in that 2018 Final Four loss, the fact that Kansas gets a shot at Villanova on this year’s run adds to the excitement as much as anything.

“It’s kind of like fate almost,” Lightfoot said. “It’s like it’s written. We played them in the Final Four and lost to them in 2018 and it’s only fair to go out there and play them again and give them our best shot.”