KANSAS CITY — It took Kansas basketball until the second half Wednesday before the Jayhawks were able to hit a 3-pointer.

The Jayhawks went a combined 0-for-8 on 3s against Cincinnati before halftime. Then, a little more than three minutes into the second half, freshman guard Jamari McDowell ended the drought. The shot came during a run that gave Kansas some life during its second round matchup in the Big 12 Conference tournament, but clearly not enough as the Jayhawks still lost 72-52 against the Bearcats in Kansas City.

So when Kansas coach Bill Self stopped reflecting on the health scare he experienced a year ago that kept him out of the Big 12 tournament, and started to talk about the Jayhawks’ shooting woes Wednesday, it seemed clear what was affecting his team right now was first and foremost on his mind. Kansas (22-10) needs to get healthy. It needs to start hitting more shots, especially from behind the arc.

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“We’ve got to get our swag back, jeez, guys are aiming the ball instead of shooting it,” Self said inside the T-Mobile Center. “I haven’t asked these guys this, but we had four starters go combined 8-for-39 tonight. It’s like they’re shooting at the fair where balls can’t actually fit through the goals. So, we’ve got to start shooting at a bigger basket and we’ve got about — what do we have, about seven-to-eight days that we can get some of that back?”

That neither graduate senior guard Kevin McCullar Jr. nor senior center Hunter Dickinson were available Wednesday, due to injury, softens that 8-for-39 statistic Self brought up. Two guys who would have otherwise come off the bench and had to start, graduate senior guard Nicolas Timberlake and freshman guard Elmarko Jackson, struggled. But it’s not as if those guys are bereft of talent, and they’ve shown this season they have the potential to hit shots.

Timberlake especially was brought in to hit 3s as a transfer from Towson, and in addition to going just 1-for-5 from behind the arc against Cincinnati he hasn’t been able to string together much consistency this season. The performance Wednesday came on a night Kansas shot 3-for-20 from behind the arc, and the Bearcats shot 9-for-26. Both are things that, if they happen during the NCAA tournament, would put the Jayhawks at risk of an early exit.

Kansas isn’t necessarily going to be a team that rides 3-point shooting to a deep run, but at least keeping an opponent honest and ensuring the 3-point disparity isn’t too great is going to give the Jayhawks the best chance at advancing. It’s not all on Timberlake to make happen off the bench, or as a starter if injury issues persist. But he needs to be more reliable for Kansas to be at its best, freshman guard Johnny Furphy needs to break out of his shooting slump and redshirt senior guard Dajuan Harris Jr. needs to be good for a 1-for-3 type of night.

The return of Dickinson and McCullar will also help. Dickinson can step out and hit 3s and McCullar is the Jayhawks’ other lead scorer. But while Self thinks Kansas can stretch a defense and run good offense with its full complement of guys, their return also has to come with better shooting performances for the Jayhawks as a team if they’re going to spend much time in the NCAA tournament this year.

“When you can’t stretch it, it puts a lot of people around Hunter,” Self said. “But the bottom line is we haven’t shot the ball well behind the arc since the second game of the season. But what we have done is run really good offense and score a lot of 2s, a lot, probably as efficient as anybody in America inside the arc. But the bottom line is, we need to be able to make six or seven 3s.”

What Self could be referring to about the second game of the season is that’s the last time Kansas has hit at least 10 3s in one game. Since then, there have been games where the Jayhawks have acquitted themselves well from behind the arc. But Self’s line about hitting six or seven is what really stands out.

Each of Kansas’ last six losses the team has hit less than six 3s in the game. That comes in a 10-game stretch when the Jayhawks are 4-6, with a 2-6 record in games where they hit less than six 3s. The two wins they had when they didn’t reach six 3s both came inside Allen Fieldhouse.

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Can Kansas basketball get its ‘swag back’ ahead of NCAA tournament?