Kansas coach Bill Self said that the near certainty of an NBA lockout creates a lot of uncertainty for potential draft picks.

Getting a first contract is one thing. Getting the second one three years later is where the real money is made.

“From a common-sense standpoint, not that I have much, but if there is a lockout and the season doesn’t start until February or whenever it would be, it’s hard for these young kids to go in when there’s no training camp and there’s no practice time, to show they need to be playing in games when the playoffs are only three months away,” Self said. “It could be a lost season for some of those guys because there’s not going to be an opportunity to grow and learn and play through mistakes when you’re playing five games a week and you’ve got to win.”

As many as four Jayhawk players have legitimate decisions to make about whether to return to school for the 2011-12 season or jump to the NBA.

According to SI.com’s Luke Winn, no Final Four team in the previous seven years has finished outside the top 50 in adjusted offensive efficiency, and -- more importantly -- outside the top 30 in adjusted defensive efficiency.

Virginia Commonwealth ranked 59th in pre-tournament offensive efficiency, according to kenpom’s rankings -- and 143rd in defensive efficiency, allowing an adjusted 1.008 points per possession.

The Rams held Kansas to 0.88 points per possession on Sunday – 25 percent below the KU's season average.

Just as he has throughout the tournament, Virginia Commonwealth coach Shaka Smart set up a television in the middle of the Rams’ locker room and played a motivational video for his team shortly before it took the court. Sunday’s video featured snippets of analysts such as Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis and Greg Anthony picking Kansas to beat VCU.

“There were all these clips of guys saying, ‘I got Kansas,’ or, ‘I’m picking Kansas,’ or ‘Kansas is going to win this one,’ ” Burgess said. “All we heard was ‘Kansas, Kansas, Kansas’ over and over and over.”

It was a brilliant motivational ploy by the 33-year-old Smart, who was hired two years ago to replace Anthony Grant. By the time the Rams met Kansas’ captains at midcourt just before tipoff, they were as fired up as they’d been the entire tournament.

Kansas jumped to a 6-0 lead before suffering a collapse that would extend into the second half. Jayhawks fans watched in horror as VCU made nine 3-pointers before intermission while forcing Kansas to shoot just 31.3 percent from the field.

VCU first staggered and then stunned the top-seeded Jayhawks 71-61 to advance to the Final Four.

"Coach told us we could attack them in transition," VCU point guard Joey Rodriguez insisted afterward. " ... He was absolutely right. They [were] the weakest in transition in the first half and we attacked them."

It took a handful of possessions -- and an easy 6-0 Kansas lead -- for VCU to find its footing, but the Rams' suspicions began to prove startlingly correct. Over the next 13:37, VCU unloaded a mind-blowing 39-15 run on the Jayhawks, who at first looked irked, then frustrated, then a bit panicked as the three-pointers kept raining and the deficit kept growing.

The Rams found secondary transition opportunities by the bushel, and the deluge of jump shots forced Kansas coach Bill Self to burn two timeouts and go deep into his bench early, groping around for some combination of guards that could find VCU's shooters. He never really got a handle.

"I think what hurt us more than anything in the first half is transition defense," Self said. "You look at the stat sheet, and at halftime, [we] had zero points in transition, and by our stats, they had 14."

The 21-year-old junior forwards for the Kansas Jayhawks — sometimes called by the pseudo-plural Morii — are difficult to tell apart. They are even more difficult to separate.

They have the same tattoo designs in the same places. They have identical haircuts and facial hair. They live together, drive the same car, have the same class schedule, like the same music. When one gets food, he gets the same thing for the other without asking. They even wait for each other before taking postpractice showers.

And neither can come up with anything different about the other.

“We are one,” said Markieff, often called Keef. “We’re the same exact person.”

Both said that they had made no decision about whether they would leave Kansas after this year to turn professional. But just the thought of it, of being drafted by different teams in different cities as happened to Stanford’s celebrated Lopez twins several years ago, makes them pause. They have never been apart for more than two days.

“We’re definitely not ready for that to happen,” Markieff said, adding that it would probably play a role in whether the two returned for their senior seasons.

During a 30-minute interview session Saturday, Tyshawn Taylor was told by a reporter that KU coach Bill Self had just complimented him a couple rooms away, saying Taylor had grown up as a person.

“I appreciate that, Coach,” Taylor said softly, as if Self were sitting there next to him.

For Taylor, the praise means a lot.

“I’m one of those guys — I think coach Self kind of knows this — when’s he’s happy with me, I’m a happier person. When he’s not happy with my play or what I’m doing off the court, it kind of gets me down,” Taylor said. “I’m happy any time he says good things about me, especially something like that, because it’s not just on-the-court stuff he’s probably talking about.”

For three years, more than anything, Taylor has wanted to please his coach.

“Anything I do on the court, I’m thinking about what he’s going to think or what he’s going to say about it,” Taylor said. “When I make a turnover on the court, my first instinct is to look: What’s his reaction right now? What is he thinking? Is he jumping up and down? Is he like, ‘It’s OK’? What’s his mood?”

The edict from Kansas University basketball coach Bill Self to his players in preparation for Friday night’s Southwest regional semifinal game against Richmond was twofold: 1. No layups off back-door cuts; 2. No three-pointers.

Then Self and assistant coach Joe Dooley spent three days changing their players’ basketball brains, altering where they stood in relation to the player they were guarding. Basically, instead of playing between the ball and your man, players were told to play between their man and the basket.

Instead of playing “down the line” in a position to help on drives to the hoop, the KU defenders blocked the cutters’ path to the hoop by staying in front of them. It frustrated the life out of the slower Spiders, who couldn’t compete and lost, 77-57, in the Alamodome, where Kansas feels right at home.

Kansas held Richmond to 0.90 points per possessions -- its second-worst mark of the season.

Josh Selby’s production fell off a cliff after the freshman guard suffered a stress reaction in his right foot in January.

In the 13 games before the injury, Selby averaged 26.6 minutes and 12 points and shot .419 overall and .435 from three-point range. In the 11 games since, Selby has averaged 13.8 minutes and 3.5 points and shot .280 overall and .167 from long distance. Before the injury, he hit multiple threes in nine games. He has not hit more than one in a game since. In his first 13 games, he reached double-digit points nine times and hasn’t reached it since.

Selby scored 21 points in 27 minutes off the bench in his much-awaited debut against USC. It remains a career high and is eight more points than he has scored in the past 61 minutes, spread out over six games.

Richmond features five starters capable of shooting the three, including Justin Harper, who has made 75 of 166 treys for 45.2 percent.

“I know they’re a very good defensive team,” Richmond coach Chris Mooney said of KU. “But I’m not sure if they’ve seen someone like (senior guard) Kevin Anderson. And (senior forward) Justin Harper is a difficult matchup for some teams.”

KU has enough depth at guard to throw a bunch of different looks at the undersized Anderson, Richmond’s second-leading scorer at 16.7 points per game.

But the skill set Harper possesses will make his showdown with the twins as interesting to watch as any on the floor.

“That’s one of the keys,” Richmond sophomore Darien Brothers said. “For them to come out and have to guard our bigs. If we bring them out of their element, it can cause some huge matchup problems.”

The University of Kentucky spent more on basketball recruiting last year than any public university in the six biggest conferences in college sports.

Kentucky spent $434,095 in fiscal 2010. The University of Kansas was second with $419,228; and Florida third with $326,306, according to expense reports from 53 schools obtained through open-records requests. Private schools such as Duke University aren’t required to divulge the information.

Kentucky starts three freshman who score 60 percent of the team’s points. Last year, the Wildcats lost four first-year players to the National Basketball Association draft after being eliminated in the regional finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament.

“Kentucky basketball is one of the most important things in our state and we are going to direct resources to ensure that it stays that way,” Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart said in a telephone interview.

Recruiting budgets include accommodations for official visits, scouting, communications and traveling expenses.