Each day this week, we’ll be previewing one of this year’s Final Four participants, little gunners that they are. Oops, we’re about to drop something. What? Knowledge. (That’s powerful, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. We’ve already handled UNC, Memphis, and UCLA; finally, the Kansas Jayhawks, with the help of Cory from Rock Chalk Talk.

We feel some sympathy for the Jayhawks, reviled by Tournament fans for holding off upstart Davidson and giving us the all-chalk Final Four that we currently enjoy. (We’re somewhat familiar with the sensation of everyone cheering against our team.) So we held their preview for last, hoping that cooler minds had prevailed. (We’re not convinced. We still haven’t put away our red and black banners. Sorry. We’ve never claimed impartiality.)

But there is great beauty in this Kansas team making its way to the Final Four. Bill Self, who has won everything but a Regional Final since first becoming a head coach at Oral Roberts (!) fifteen years ago, gets to pull a monkey off his back. Brandon Rush, who would be in the NBA were it not for a season-ending injury last spring, reaps a benefit for staying in school an extra year. And all of the KU fans we’ve met have been good-hearted, extremely knowledgeable fans who engage in surprisingly few couch burnings, considering they live in Lawrence.

But can they keep going and win the title? We turned to Cory from Rock Chalk Talk, who provided expert biased analysis as requested, and plenty of it. His responses to our questions, after the jump.

So, how did it feel to be the team that everyone was cheering against on Sunday? Any worries that there will be some carryover Davidson bias in the non-affiliated crowd in San Antonio?

I’ll admit, I wasn’t a big fan of being the Wicked Witch of the East. Or whoever is Cinderella’s enemy, or whatever. Obviously, being a fan of the Jayhawks, I understand that we are rooted against by the average fan far more often than the average fan turns on the TV and starts internally cheering for the Jayhawks, but this had a much different feel to it. Davidson, very similar to the 2006 version of the George Mason Patriots, had the feel of America’s team to it, and Stephen Curry looked like a thirteen year old that was thrilled to be playing varsity.

Plus, I consider myself a huge fan of the underdog, so it was doubly hard to root against a 10 seed in the Elite Eight. However, I doubt there will be much carryover in San Antonio. At least I’d like to think there won’t be.

On the scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “are you kidding me?” and 10 being “we’ve already begun looking for his replacement”, where do you rank your anxiety that Bill Self will actually consider the Oklahoma State opening? More importantly, are you worried that this could create a distraction similar to 2003 with Roy Williams and UNC?

I would say 1, but I have heard $5 million as a possible per-year salary, and that would be incredibly hard to turn down. Plus, the whole Roy Williams situation has kind of scarred me with the whole “returning home” business.

And no, I don’t think this distraction will approach Roy’s 2003 distraction. By that time, everyone and their brother knew about the whole scenario, and how Roy would “love” to return back home to his “dream” job of Carolina. Plus, North Carolina’s tradition is considerably greater than Okie State’s, and while Self-to-OSU would be a substantial step down, Roy-to-UNC was at worst a level move, and possibly a mini-step up. So, no, they are two very different situations IMO.

With an admittedly small sample size of games watched, the one worrisome trend we noticed was that the Jayhawks seemed to let their opponents determine the pace of the game, making some games closer than they should have been (or, indeed, turning them into losses, like the OSU game in February.) Assuming you agree (and feel free not to), are you worried about that for Saturday against a team that runs the floor as well as Carolina?

I’m actually really excited to run the floor with Carolina. Obviously, we won’t be a fan of Carolina’s incredibly frenetic, NBA-style pace, I don’t think anybody does, but we aren’t afraid to run. We have an interesting dynamic, where our players seem to play better (at least in my eyes) the faster we play, and seem to “enjoy” it more, while our coach has publicly said numerous times that he is a fan of slow, grind-it-out contests. So, not really sure which pace we “prefer”.

So no, I’m not worried about Carolina’s up-and-down style, but obviously we will have to slow it down at least somewhat.

That said, the one thing that has consistently impressed us about this KU team is their defense. With a couple of exceptions (all in-conference hiccups, most of which you won anyway), your defense has held opponents to right around 60 points a game. Besides the obvious talent of your players, what has been the key to KU’s success on defense?

That is a tough question for me to answer, for some reason. We don’t run any real tricky stuff, we ran some box-and-one against Davidson and Stephen Curry but that probably won’t happen the rest of the way out, and just play tough, man-to-man defense. Which relies almost exclusively on our players’ talent, an answer you have disqualified.

So, with that obvious answer not allowed, I will just go with the tremendously cliche “toughness”. We lost to UCLA last season because they out-toughed us, as the refs allowed more contact (a game I much prefer, not for KU’s benefit but just my opinion of how basketball should be called) and we didn’t know how to handle it, so we lost.

But this season, with a couple of exceptions, we have been the tougher team in almost all of the games, improving a ton on last year’s team. Some of that has to do with the departure of Julian Wright, who was as thin as a toothpick and wasn’t a big fan of roughing it up with bigger, stronger players, but it also has to do with another year of maturity and all that jazz.

So, “toughness”, I guess. (Ed. – We put Cory between a rock and a hard place here. We appreciate that he at least felt guilty falling back on toughness as an explanation. This is the difference between him and Jay Bilas. That, and an ACC career and possibly a law degree – but we’ll admit there is a lot about Cory we don’t know.)

You’ve given some pretty high praise this past week to Sasha Kaun, KU’s streaky center who you begged to be benched for most of the regular season. Do you think the light bulb just turned on for him once the tournament started, or what? Is there another player who may similarly “make the leap” this weekend?

Say it out loud; lie and say you don’t love it.

Sasha, Sasha, Sasha. As you noted, I have been on his case all season long, but he proved me wrong big time in Detroit, putting together the two best individual games of his career back-to-back. As to why he suddenly broke out, I can’t really tell you. I would assume it would be some combination of him growing as a player (he didn’t start playing basketball until he was a sophomore in high school after growing up in Russia) and him finally “getting” the one-and-done mentality of the Tournament. It seems silly, but there was an article in the Kansas City Star a week or so ago about how Sasha didn’t realize the heartbreak involved in the Tournament until last year’s loss to UCLA. I don’t know if that has any impact whatsoever on his breakout, or if he just capitalized on playing two really short teams, but it is interesting to talk about.

If anyone “makes a leap” this weekend, it would be Sherron Collins. And that only happens if he becomes healthy, a seeming impossibility this season. Most experts around the nation had him as a breakout player this season, and I generally agreed, especially since he was going to have some extra opportunity early in the season because of Brandon Rush’s early injury. But in the second game of the season he thought he sprained his ankle, so he went in for an MRI. Turned it out he had an stress fracture in his foot from a completely unrelated incident, and once he came back from that he bruised his left knee. Then hurt his right knee. Then, in Detroit, he labored through the two games suffering through tonsilitis. However, if he is healthy, he is one of the quickest guards in the country, and could be just as good as Ty Lawson next season if he can stay healthy.

Fill in the blank – If we get Tyler Hansbrough in foul trouble in the first half, I’ll be confident that we’ll defeat UNC.

All season long I have considered Psycho T overrated, but Saturday’s game against Louisville was pretty impressive. Still, their front line isn’t all that deep after Psycho T, and their offense is almost completely reliant on his production. So, as long as we can get a couple of fouls on him early, we should be able to walk away with a W.

Fill in the blank – If we are missing our three-pointers in the first half, I’ll be extremely worried.

As talented as we are, when we aren’t nailing our shots from the perimeter we become a pretty average offense. And while defense isn’t North Carolina’s strong suit, they are certainly talented enough to shut down our offense if we don’t force them to respect the outside J. So, the game hinges on three-point shooting in my eyes. I just didn’t want to put it down for two questions (6 and 7).

Finally, settle this once and for all: are KU fans still pissed off at Roy Williams? And, either way, is this game more important because the Jayhawks are playing the Tar Heels?

Ah. I already kind of hinted at the first part of the question, as far as my opinion, but it completely differs based on who you ask. Some people are still incredibly pissed off at the man, calling him ‘Benedict Williams’ and considering him a traitor. This is ridiculous, considering how often coaches switch places and all, and he never was shy about the fact that North Carolina was his dream job.

And no, at least IMO, this game is no bigger because Roy is on the other end of the sideline. I love the man, but he is just another coach in my eyes, one of my favorite non-Self coaches sure, but just another coach, and playing him would make the victory no sweeter. I don’t want any revenge or any of that, I just want a Final Four victory. And I would want it just as bad if we were playing some team we had never played before ever in the Final Four.