Jeff Haynes / Reuters

Guard Doneal Mack, center and forward Shawn Taggart, here pressuring TD.J. Augustin, are part of a swarming Memphis defense.

Opponents are shooting 37.9 percent against Kansas this season. Opponents have turned the ball over 592 times, giving the Jayhawks a margin of almost plus-100. Kansas doesn’t press much, but Self will have his guards play it tight in the halfcourt set. Mario Chalmers (90 steals) and Russell Robinson (75 steals) play with tremendous anticipation.

They flick the ball away, and that turnover leads to easy points at the other end for the Jayhawks. That’s how they won 35 games this season.

“Bill’s just got a great philosophy and a system of everybody being willing to help,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said of Kansas. “Their big guys can make switches and get out on the floor. It’s really a defense that can guard you and put pressure on you. They can also block some shots.

“It’s just a marvelous defense. I think it does start with the pressure that the guards can put on you and their ability to just take the basketball away from you and go the other direction.”

The highlight of the Memphis-UCLA game might be the defensive assignment drawn by guard Russell Westbrook, the Pac-10 defensive player of the year. UCLA coach Ben Howland, who introduced the nation to his philosophy when he coached at Pittsburgh, will ask Westbrook to slow down freshman point guard Derrick Rose, who has been sensational in his first NCAA Tournament.

Calipari says Howland “changed the culture” of UCLA basketball with emphasis on defense. He calls it mano-a-mano defense. He says his Memphis players better be ready for physical battle, featuring hands to the body.

“Do you know how hard that is?” Calipari said.  “And especially this day and age, where kids are hearing how good they are, that they do nothing wrong.

"They're coached in the summers. They've just go do what you want to do. All of a sudden you're going to go to UCLA, one of the most storied programs, and you're going to guard. If you don't guard, you're not playing. You're gonna be physical. You're gonna rebound, be tough. We're not going to play as fast as you want to play. We're going to grind it out, set screens, and we're going to win.

“For him to do that in L.A., it's just — it blows me away. We played them two years ago early in the season. We beat them pretty easily. By the end of the year, it was a different team. That's what coaching is. But it's also getting a team to buy into how we're going to play and how we're going to win and have it collectively thought of, which he's done.”

It makes for a refreshing Final Four, watching players work so hard on defense and seeing that hard work pay off. Hopefully, other coaches are paying attention. Maybe more will give it a try. Defense — real good, lock-them-up-and-shut-them-down defense — is back at the Final Four.

Maybe this will start a trend.

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