Last March, Bill Self sat at the podium after an embarrassing loss to the Gonzaga Bulldogs that ended the Kansas Jayhawks’ season and admitted an uncomfortable truth: He had been thinking about next season for about a month.

The quote was controversial at the time and was widely misinterpreted on social media as Self giving up on his team that had limped to the finish line. In reality, Self simply knew what had been clear for much of the season: his 2023-2024 Jayhawks were fatally flawed. They lacked the depth, three-point shooting and overall shotmaking needed to make the deep marching runs that KU fans have become accustomed to. And in ’24 college basketball, putting together a plan to draft a roster through the transfer portal in the spring requires a lot more forethought than opening the portal the day your season ends.

“If you don’t have as much firepower as you have in recent years, this year certainly showed that,” Self said at the March press conference.

The firepower Self amassed in the weeks following the season-ending loss was on full display Tuesday night in Las Vegas in Kansas’ 75-72 win over the No. 11 Duke Blue Devils, the kind of statement victory that cemented the Jayhawks. ‘ off-season reloading efforts. Kansas got 32 of 75 points from its newcomers and was able to get through the final 10:26 in most impressive fashion without its best player, Hunter Dickinson, who was ejected after appearing to kick Maliq Brown in the head as he fought for a loose ball.

“If you can switch guys in and out and not have to worry about the talent going down, I think that’s a big step forward for us,” said senior forward KJ Adams, one of the holdovers from last year’s team year. “You’ve got a bunch of three-point shooters, a lot of athletic guys that we have this year.”

Kansas entered Tuesday with a lot to prove. The Jayhawks picked up a nasty win over the mediocre Michigan State Spartans two weeks ago. Before that, they laid an egg against North Carolina in the second half and almost gave away a huge first-half lead at home. Kansas was an underdog (at least in the eyes of the sports books) on Tuesday night, a rarefied atmosphere for any preseason No. 1 and especially for a blueblood. This was the clearest possible opportunity for the Jayhawks to prove their mettle as a serious threat for the national title, and they delivered in a big way.

The core of this Kansas team is largely the same as it was a year ago: Dickinson carries the scoring down low, Dajuan Harris Jr. sets the table and Adams is the glue that holds it all together. But the Jayhawks’ margin for error in 2023-2024 was so small because of the lack of other options, and then Kevin McCullar Jr. went down with a knee injury, the Jayhawks largely fell apart. That’s the problem itself solved in the portal, with AJ Storr, Rylan Griffen and Zeke Mayo all added to give Kansas more defensive juice. All three had their moments Tuesday: Storr was essential to the Jayhawks’ first surge to take an early lead, Mayo played a steady floor game en route to 12 points and Griffen delivered two huge buckets after Duke took the lead late.

Dickinson’s ejection could easily have been a major turning point in the game. Last season, it probably would have served as a reminder of the Jayhawks’ limitations. But in this case, the moment was, in Self’s words, “probably the best thing that (could) have happened to us” because it allowed freshman Flory Bidunga to step up and help the Jayhawks take steps toward determine their identity.

“This is too early to be a pivotal moment… but this team didn’t have an identity yet,” Self said. “I think maybe we can take a little pride and say we have more of an identity now because we won in an ugly way, which we had to play that way to have a chance to win without (Dickinson) dropping out . there.”

Things have been slower than many would have liked for Storr and Griffen, the team’s two most touted additions to the portal. To be clear, this wasn’t a perfect performance from the duo. Self-noted, he still feels after the game that Griffen and Storr are “about a month away” from truly acclimating to the expectations of playing basketball in Kansas. Tuesday’s show more clearly showed the benefits of KU’s busy offseason: more options late in games, more pieces who can step up in key moments and more players to keep an eye on at all times when they’re on the floor.

After surviving an early-season stretch of three blueblood battles (North Carolina, Michigan State and Duke in the first 23 days of the season), the Jayhawks now have a chance to stay at No. 1 for a while . The December schedule looks more manageable, although the road tests at the Creighton Bluejays and Missouri Tigers won’t be a cakewalk. Self should have time to continue building Storr and Griffen, continue integrating the five-star Bidunga, and fine-tune which lineups work best in the late game. There is room for growth, scary considering how KU has handled these first big tests.

Have the Jayhawks picked up the necessary style points from a No. 1 team in the sport? That’s up for debate, and other teams have certainly pushed for top spot in November, packed with top-level fixtures. But Tuesday’s victory, and the manner in which it came about, emphatically proved that Self’s Jayhawks have the necessary pieces to make a serious push for its third national title…exactly what Self had in mind going into that season 2023-2024 came to an unceremonious end.