Samford’s a 13-seed, but coach Bill Self says it’s Kansas with something to prove

In its 48-year Division I history, Samford University hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game and last qualified 24 years ago.

If you’d heard of the school before, chances are you didn’t know it was in Homewood, Alabama, until you learned the 13th-seeded Bulldogs would become No. 4 seed Kansas’ first-round opponent in their Midwest Region opener Thursday night at the Delta Center.

Five years ago, Samford coach Bucky McMillan didn’t register on the college basketball radar because he was leading his high school alma mater in Mountain Brook, Alabama.

And his team is made up of players who once were about as incognito: a “throwback” group he’ll tell you plays for all the right reasons in the day and age of the transfer portal and NIL and “me, me, me, me.”

“We have a unique team with players that probably at some point coming out were told they weren’t good enough,” McMillan, in his fourth season at Samford, said Wednesday. “They’re coached by a coach that never coached college basketball before he took this job.

“So our bus is a unique bus, and it’s filled with players that aren’t going to have any entitlement. … I look for players that aren’t entitled, that play extremely hard, that play unselfish. When you have that and play with a chip on your shoulder, you’ll see guys that play like they have something to prove and they play with a lot of confidence. It’s hard for me to coach players that aren’t that way.”

Funny how things go, though.

As Samford seeks to make a national splash by beating one of the bluebloods of the game, a KU program that has won 112 NCAA Tournament games and four national titles, Kansas coach Bill Self figures the best way to avoid its first first-round loss since 2006 is to seize a little more of what Samford has: embrace the mindset that animates the Bulldogs (29-5) of the Southern Conference.

Because after losing four of their last five, having their depth deficiency exposed and with the acknowledgment Tuesday that star guard Kevin McCullar won’t return for the rest of the season because of a debilitating bone bruise in his knee, Kansas (22-10) is downright wonky entering this tournament.

It adds up to a different kind of vibe than what KU is accustomed to, Self acknowledged — though last year was a departure of its own because of the scary sudden illness that hospitalized Self during the Big 12 Tournament and kept him out of NCAA play.

In this case, Self seemed to suggest that KU can’t count on a significant talent advantage: “I think that when you feel you’re more talented,” he said, “you go into it believing that you can score enough.”

And that it’s still sorting out its personality: “I know what I want it to be; I know what we stressed,” said Self, presumably meaning leaning on defense.

Put it all together, and what he’s preaching and seeking goes something like this: the chance to appeal to the very points McMillan and his program live.

Never mind that it’s a different kind of sell to a team whose best players were widely sought and is favored by 7.

“I kind of like (the situation), to be honest with you,” Self said. “I think even though people will equate ‘Kansas’ and (think of the) seed and all this stuff as, ‘Well, you positively should still do well,’ I equate it to this is one of the first times I’ve been in a tournament where we should be the ones with the chip on our shoulders. I think that will be good for us.”

That thinking apparently was part of Self’s choice of movies for the team to watch when it rented out a theater the other day as it recuperated from the first-round Big 12 Tournament blowout loss to Cincinnati.

He may or may not have been kidding when he said the choices were “Barbie” or “The Boys In The Boat.” But he chose the inspiring latter on the advice of a friend he said works as a sports psychologist with the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees.

“I think he knows far better than me what to watch,” Self said, smiling.

Self framed the movie — about the adversities faced by the University of Washington rowing team on the way to winning a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics — as being about “kids that have been dealt a hard hand and rallying out of that.”

That point of persuasion could pay off for KU, and goodness knows it needs some sort of fresh rallying point after slogging to the finish.

But it’s also true that Samford far more naturally owns that mentality in this matchup.

That’s true even in the “Bucky Ball” style with which it plays, including prolific (and top-10-in-the-nation accurate) 3-point shooting and pressing everywhere all at once as a reflection of McMillan’s high school coaching roots.

“Everything that I wanted to experiment with, I got to do it in some back gym with three or four people watching,” McMillan said, later adding, “I think pressing and playing fast, you’ve got to coach your personality. You have to. You’re a risk taker. (Or) you’re not. …

“I’m not saying our system is better than somebody else’s. I do know for me this is the best because I’m comfortable doing it.”

In part because it’s made so many other teams so uncomfortable.

“I don’t remember ever playing against anybody that presses after misses, that presses on missed free throws, that presses on missed field goals …” Self said. “I think it is different than anything I’ve ever gone against. I think it’s actually more aggressive.”

The chip-on-the-shoulder outlook also is more authentic and likely internalized in Samford in a broader respect.

Because there is one way in particular that Kansas absolutely can’t replicate that sort of hunger.

“What makes March Madness unique is the Cinderella stories …” McMillan said. “In America, let’s be real, you have your upper percentage, then everybody else is an underdog. You know what I’m saying? Everybody else is an underdog to get to the top.

“That’s why they can identify with underdog teams. Most people are that team. If you take that out, this ain’t America, right? They identify with underdogs.”

It’s been a while, but Self can remember what it was like to be in McMillan’s position. McMillan was 10 years old when a 30-year-old Self got his first head coaching job at Oral Roberts in 1993.

Self’s first team went 6-21 and lost 18 games in a row, he recalled with a smile, adding, “We didn’t get an at-large bid that year.”

In fact, Self didn’t guide a team to an NCAA Tournament berth until his sixth season as a head coach and second at Tulsa.

McMillan, he said, is “in a far better place than I was early in my career.”

A place that Self hopes to hold in check by convincing his team it’s the one that actually has something to prove.