LAWRENCE, Kan. — Since Bill Self landed Hunter Dickinson two years ago, the Kansas coach has been trying to build rosters around Dickinson that could win a national championship.

It’s not unlike what Duke coach Jon Scheyer has successfully done with Cooper Flagg. Flagg is a generational talent and one of the best one-and-done freshmen to come through college basketball, and every move Scheyer made last spring was to get the best out of Flagg. Dickinson, at the time when he hit the portal two years ago, was the most accomplished player ever to transfer. He’d been a second-team All-American as a freshman at Michigan. He’d made three straight All-Big Ten teams. In the new free agency era of college basketball, there hasn’t been a more hyped signing. He was viewed as perfect for a coach who has always loved to play through the post.

After KU was derailed by injuries and a lack of depth and shooting last season, Self doubled down on Dickinson, convincing the big man to return for a fifth year of college basketball and going back into the portal to find players who fit the best around Dickinson. If he could just add shooting and depth, then he’d have a title contender again.

The consensus was that Self had done it, as Kansas was voted preseason No. 1. But from there, it’s gone about as poorly as anyone could have dreamed.

The Jayhawks are not bad — they will make the NCAA Tournament — but they’ve been incredibly average. And at Kansas, average feels unacceptable. This is the program that’s been more consistently elite than any in the country in the last four decades.

This group has been historic in all the wrong ways. Two weeks ago, the Jayhawks fell out of the Top 25, only the second time that’s happened in the last 16 seasons. They will likely be below a No. 4 seed when the bracket comes out next Sunday, which has never happened during the Self era and only twice during KU’s streak of 34 straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

Two weeks ago after a 34-point loss at BYU, Self was compelled to make a Hail Mary pitch to his team: We’re starting over.

This was a new season. One last hope to get this right.

On Friday night during a film session at McCarthy Hall, after a 2-2 start to this “new” season, Self made one more psychological play. He looked at Dickinson and told him he’d done some good things since he’d arrived at Kansas — and statistically speaking, he has — but what he’d never done was put the Jayhawks on his back and carry them over an extended period. And that was his challenge to him.

This thing, after all, was built around him.

On Saturday, it looked as close as it ever has on the floor to how Self envisioned these two years would go. Dickinson was dominant, matching his career high with 33 points to go along with 10 rebounds, and the rest of the key Jayhawks were (mostly) the best versions of themselves in an 83-76 win over No. 24 Arizona.

“We needed that bad,” Self said. “We needed our best player to carry us, and we need everybody else to play well, really well. And that’s exactly what happened.”

And for the first time in a few months, there’s a feeling of hope and belief around this program.

In this new season, Dickinson is playing the best basketball of his career — averaging 23.2 points and 11 rebounds and giving more effort on the defensive end.

It’s his defense that has often drawn criticism and made experts wonder if he can be the centerpiece of a great team because opponents have taken advantage of his lack of foot speed and picked on him by putting him in endless ball screens. But the numbers suggest Kansas is a pretty good defensive team — eighth-best in adjusted defensive efficiency at KenPom — and when the Jayhawks are engaged and playing with maximum effort, they’re usually pretty good on that end.

What’s defined success for this team and Dickinson has been his offense. Because not only do the Jayhawks need him to put up numbers — they need him to do it efficiently.

Dean Oliver, who wrote the basketball analytics bible “Basketball on Paper,” developed a statistic called offensive rating that measures a player’s offensive efficiency. A 120 is a very good rating, and it has been the target number for Dickinson that’s led to wins for his team.

In games when Dickinson is over 120 the last two seasons, Kansas is 24-2. When he’s under, the Jayhawks are 19-20.

In the last five games, Dickinson has been above 120 three times — all wins — and below in KU’s losses to Texas Tech and Houston.

The good news is that what held Dickinson and KU back in those two losses was turnovers (he had 10) and not his ability to finish around the basket. He’s always had great touch, but this year, he seems to get the yips whenever the team starts playing poorly. On the disastrous two-game road trip in Utah, for instance, Dickinson shot just 36.8 percent inside the arc.

But the confidence appears to be back, as Self’s message of a new season resonated with Dickinson, almost as though he could put all those misses behind him.

“I’m trying to make sure I don’t leave anything on the table, making sure that, if we go down, we go down swinging,” Dickinson said. “That’s kind of my mindset. I don’t want to be playing on my heels anymore. Just try to be aggressive as much as I can and really try to take charge and help my teammates in any way I can.”

There’s also been a recommitment to making sure the offense goes through Dickinson and KJ Adams, who has also had the best stretch of his career — averaging 15.8 points over his last four games.

That’s helped the Jayhawks get by with guard Zeke Mayo struggling to make shots or plays. Mayo, the team’s second-leading scorer, let that old season carry into the new one. After scoring 15 points against Oklahoma State, the first win after Self hit reset, Mayo had his worst three-game stretch as a Jayhawk, averaging only 5.3 points, making 1-of-10 3s and turning the ball over 14 times. Mayo received some therapy from KU coaches this week, who encouraged him to be aggressive and insert himself early in the game.

“When I play hesitant, that’s when I turn the ball over more,” Mayo said.

Mayo found his confidence again Saturday, hunting for his shot and playing aggressively out of ball screens. He scored 20 points, made 5-of-7 3s and most importantly, finished with six assists and zero turnovers.

Point guard Dajuan Harris, who has also played more tentatively lately, was also vintage — the version who started in the 2022 title game — and not the one who is sometimes scared to shoot. Harris scored nine points, made his only 3 and racked up nine assists with just one turnover.

While Dickinson was the star, the defining moment belonged to Harris and Adams, the point guard finding Adams free on the baseline for an alley-oop that sealed the win, and Adams letting the emotion of the moment pour over him.

You can see Adams, who is the spiritual leader of this group, celebrating every big play lately with more oomph than he ever has, almost like he’s trying to force his energy to seep into his teammates.

And while the record of these last five games may not indicate it, the Jayhawks are playing well for what they are. The worst indictment of this group might be that the goalposts have moved, but this is a roster that doesn’t have a no-doubt NBA player on it, and Self usually has multiple. There is a reason this has been his worst team.

But this is also a group that’s now defeated the best team in the ACC (and maybe the country) in Duke, Big Ten champ Michigan State and had Big 12 champ Houston beat until a freak comeback by the Cougars.

“I think our margin for error isn’t near as much as what a lot of people think it is,” Self said. “And there’s been times where we haven’t been as good, but were we bad or are we just kind of average? There’s been times where we’re bad, too. I think the frustrating thing for me and for others is we’ve seen the best, and when we drop a level, I think it’s not really understandable as to why, when in large part, that’s kind of who we are. That’s not making excuses. That’s just kind of the facts.

“But seeing today what we are, if guys are at 90 percent as opposed to 75 percent, there’s a big difference. We have no option but to be 90 percent. If we’re that, we can play with anybody.”

That’s what Self has sold to this group, and they seem to be buying it. And while they’re not performing like the preseason No. 1 team, the quality of this version is much closer to Self’s typical teams. The Jayhawks are the ninth-best team in the country if you put Feb. 22, the start of the “new” season, in as the start date at BartTorvik.com.

And if we were to make an All-America team for that same stretch, Dickinson would be part of it.

What’s next is what matters to Self and Kansas fans, and maybe this postseason will play out like the season has — the thinner margin for error catching up to the Jayhawks. But there’s a vision now that can be sold. If Self can somehow keep getting this version of Dickinson, then maybe the Jayhawks can continue to build on these last two weeks.

It’s certainly a different feeling than a year ago when they were limping into the postseason, and Self said at the end that he’d been thinking about the next season for about a month. While Self probably has his frustrations with the roster he built and how it’s performed, he is all-in on making this right, in part because he has extra motivation for a happy ending: It’s the final run for Harris and Adams.

“Those two are different to me,” Self said, sharing that Harris has been through more tragedy in his childhood than most people would go through in their life, and Adams has had to play through losing his mom to cancer last season. “Even though you want everybody to have an unbelievable experience and all seniors are important … to see how (those two) kids are actually tougher than adults and to see how they can rally around a situation I don’t think I could have done, to me, adds a little bit extra value to it.”

As Self told his team on Friday night, they may not remember every game, but they will always remember their last. And if this team can somehow put together a memorable March, it can change how its fans feel about this two-year run with Dickinson.

And it’ll be Dickinson’s play, more than anyone else’s, that determines how far they go.