What's wrong with Kansas after blowout loss to BYU?

The Kansas Jayhawks have spent the last two weeks trying to figure out exactly where rock bottom is for them. After Tuesday night's blowout loss to BYU, they might just have found it.

The Jayhawks sit 17-9, having lost five of their last eight games, with four of those losses coming against unranked opponents, and all five coming by at least six points.

Things weren't supposed to go like this for the Jayhawks this year; they were the preseason number one team in the country, had a veteran roster that included a potential national player of the year in Hunter Dickinson, and multiple upperclassmen in the rotation. They scored early wins over North Carolina, Duke, and Michigan State, and looked every bit the part of one of the country's top teams.

But after a strong start to the season, cracks started to show in December. Back-to-back double-digit losses on the road to Creighton and Missouri showed this team might not be as good as previously thought, and a one-point home loss to West Virginia followed shortly by a blowout loss to Iowa State in Ames had fans profoundly worried. Since then, Kansas has looked less like world-beaters and more like pushovers, going just 5-5.

Things have gotten ugly in Lawrence, but where did it all go wrong?

While pundits may have liked Kansas' veteran core coming into the season, careful observers would have clocked some pretty significant flaws right from the jump.

Dickinson and South Dakota State transfer Zeke Mayo are both prolific scorers, but Kansas was banking hard on forward KJ Adams making a leap in his senior year. That leap hasn't come, and it's limited the Jayhawks offensively. Adams is a high-energy player, but he lacks any kind of outside game, and his inconsistent aggressiveness has always been an issue. He's a spirited defender at power forward, but his lack of size makes him a firm tweener; too small to guard bigger teams, too slow to stay with quicker wings and guards.

Point guard Dajuan Harris is a pass-first player who has never found his shot in four years in Lawrence, and the rest of the roster is a cavalcade of guards who have struggled to find any kind of rhythm.

While Dickinson remains a high-performing player, his style of play has never been the best fit in Lawrence. He's not the fastest moving big man you'll see, and the offense gets bogged down when it runs through him. He hasn't been the best fit in his two years at Kansas, and many fans will be glad to see the back of him after this season. The offense runs through him, especially in the half-court, and as a result it often feels slow and plodding, while also being fairly ineffiecient.

Without a reliable offense, the defense needs to be on point, and in the last 10-plus games, it simply hasn't been. Kansas' switching has been slow and they've given up easy baskets on a regular basis. Couple that with an offense that can best be described as bleh, and you have a recipe for disaster, especially on the road (where seven of Kansas' nine losses have come).

Making matters worse, we've seen some of Self's worst coaching tendencies come out over the course of this season. For much of his career, the knock on Self was that his ability to make in-game adjustments was virtually non-existent. The offense was the offense, the defense was the defense, and you were going to win or lose with that style.

In recent years, that's changed; Self looked capable and adept swapping styles and adjusting play on the fly. Kansas became a second-half team, capable of taking a punch and coming back stronger.

That is not the case this season; these Jayhawks are slow to adapt, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. There's been a disturbing lack of fight from Kansas when they get down early, or at the very least, an inability to fully close gaps they build early in the game.

Their road loss to Kansas State is a great example of this; Kansas went into the half down eight, and couldn't get closer than five in the second half (and even that came on the first possession of the half; other than that, the Jayhawks failed to close the deficit to less than eight at any point). They can't get stops, and when they do, they can't turn those stops into baskets.

The back end of the schedule could get even uglier for Self and company; a pair of seemingly winnable games against Oklahoma State at home and Colorado on the road are followed by three games against ranked teams in Texas Tech, Houston, and Arizona. If Kansas loses two of those five (which, given their current run of form seems very possible), they'll have more losses than they've ever had under Self; if they lose three games, they'll tie their worst record since 1988-89, when they lost 12 games in Roy Williams' first season.

Regardless of their end of season fortunes, it's hard to envision this team making a deep run in the postseason; they have too many flaws and not enough offense to overcome them.

There is some hope for the future, though; five-star freshman Flory Bitunda has looked promising off the bench, averaging 6.5 points and 5.3 rebounds per game in just 16.7 minutes per game. And the Jayhawks will be getting a trio of top 100 players next season; five-star guard Darryn Peterson, and four star wings Samis Calderon and Bryson Tiller will add some much-needed juice to a roster that feels awfully tired.

While it's too early to say it's time for Self to ride off into the sunset, it's clear that the margin for error is slimmer than ever in Lawrence, and this season may already be lost.

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