SAN JOSE, Calif. — It happens almost every year, but it still has that same devastating feeling.

This time, an entire game of strong defense and key turnovers came down to the most elementary of plays. The Jayhawks couldn’t make their layups, and the Bruins held on in the final minutes.

UCLA 68, Kansas 55. The season ended.

“It hurts,” coach Bill Self said. “I really felt like this was our year.”

An impressive 14-game winning streak ended at the door to the Final Four, a door Self has never entered.

Kansas lost to an experienced UCLA team that played in front of a home-state crowd. Had the Bruins not lost a week before the tournament, the seeds would have been reversed, and No. 1 UCLA would have defeated No. 2 Kansas.

In the locker room afterward, the players hung their heads and tried to make sense of what had just happened. There was no anger in the room, just a silent disbelief. This wasn’t the year.

Still, they pointed to the positive things that happened, including the Big 12 regular-season title and the postseason championship. It wasn’t a bad NCAA tournament, either.

“It was very special just to get over that first-round hump and then come to the elite eight,” sophomore guard Brandon Rush said. “We had two championships, so it was a pretty decent season for us.”

The season ended with two weeks at the NCAA tournament, which included visits to Chicago and San Jose. There was no shortage of stories in either city.

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It was the ultimate no-call.

To prepare the team for a physical weekend in San Jose, the Kansas backups were allowed to do whatever they wanted during practice. No whistles were blown; no fouls were called.

“Basically, they just get a free pass to whack at you all day,” freshman guard Sherron Collins said. “You get hit in the face or scratched in the arms.”

The red team, as the backup players are called, was allowed to do that to simulate Southern Illinois’ punishing defense. Self wanted to make sure his players were ready for a physical game and wouldn’t complain to the officials if they get bumped on a play.

The starters were unanimous in their assessment of who the best fouler was: sophomore guard Brennan Bechard.

“He just grabs you,” sophomore guard Mario Chalmers said. “That’s all he does is grab, grab, grab. He does it almost every play.”

Bechard attributes his success to his ability to get under the players and swat at them from a position low to the ground. He’s not shy about enjoying it, either.

“Oh, it’s definitely fun when the coaches say to foul them,” he said. “I just slap at them a little bit, try to not let them go where they want to go.”

On the other side of the ball is the blue team, the top players, who don’t necessarily enjoy being poked at for an hour.

“They get us frustrated, but that’s a good thing, because it means we’re going to be prepared,” sophomore forward Julian Wright said. “You can’t really be mad, because they’re trying to help.”

The Jayhawks used the strategy during practices at Bellarmine College Preparatory School in San Jose. They didn’t have much time to prepare, because most of Tuesday was taken up by the flight out. On Wednesday, Self let the backups swing away one last time before the games.

Not all the backups had fun fouling, though. Junior guard Jeremy Case followed directions, but reluctantly.

“I really don’t like playing like that,” he said. “I’ll foul them a little bit, I guess.”

He said that the players take it well, for the most part. Collins used to get feisty when the players would grab him, but he’s become used to it during the season and said that doesn’t happen anymore.

While the Southern Illinois defense did cause Kansas some problems, the Jayhawks were able to escape with a victory in the Sweet Sixteen game. And nobody complained about it being too violent. After all, the Jayhawks had it much worse during practice. Take freshman guard Brady Morningstar, for instance. When asked what his fouling strategy was, he laughed.

“I’m just trying to break as many bones as I can,” he joked. “They get tougher that way.

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Saturday was the final game as a Jayhawk for assistant coach Tim Jankovich. He will be leaving to take the head coaching position at Illinois State.

“I absolutely love this team,” he said. “I’m leaving here, on one hand, with a great deal of excitement, but also so much sadness because I love coach Self and I love this team.”

Jankovich was originally an assistant with Self at Illinois. His job will be filled by former Jayhawk great Danny Manning, who has been a part of the staff for the past four seasons. Manning’s job will not be filled.

Self said that Manning had been anticipating this for some time, but didn’t want to take the job four years ago because he wanted to spend some time at home after a long NBA career. His duties will now take him on the road as one of the Jayhawks’ recruiters.

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While in Chicago, Collins was not an easy man to track down.

Playing less than a mile from where he grew up, the freshman guard made an extra effort to be unapproachable, so he could keep his focus on the game.

He put his uncle in charge of distributing his tickets, turned off his phone and tried not to look into the stands at any point during warm-ups.

He may not have seen the people he knows, but they all saw him. Collins had a strong weekend as Kansas defeated Niagara 107-67 and Kentucky 88-76.

The Kentucky victory came on his birthday, but after the game he had something on his mind other than basketball. In the parking lot, the team bus parked next to a Range Rover.

“It was crazy, because at first we were just like, ‘Look at the Range Rover,’ and it had some rims in it,” Collins said. “But then we saw in the rims it said M.J., so everybody started taking pictures of it.”

The ride belonged to Michael Jordan, the NBA legend, who had his initials spelled out in diamonds on all four of the rims.

He was on hand as a scout, and saw each of the hometown players light up the scoreboard. Wright had his strong game on Sunday, shaking off some jitters he felt on Friday.

“I’m not going to lie. I was definitely nervous,” he said.

Those early miscues didn’t mean much, though, in an uneventful first-round blowout.

When the Jayhawks returned from Chicago victorious on Sunday night, Collins said he would celebrate his birthday at the bowling alley with Wright. On the court, the two fight for scoring supremacy, but at the Jaybowl it’s a little more lopsided.

“He wins most of the games,” Collins said. “But I did beat him once.”

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In a hallway underneath HP Pavilion, Self looked back at the season that had just ended.

“The thing I’ll take away from it is that we had a bunch of talented kids that sacrificed for the good of the program,” he said. “We liked sharing the ball.”

Somebody always stepped up in the clutch for the Jayhawks, leading them to big victories against Florida, Southern Illinois and twice against Texas.

But it didn’t happen against UCLA. After the game, the Kansas players knew they were just as good of a team, but in the cruelness of March Madness that doesn’t matter. For two hours on one day, the Bruins were the better team, and that’s why they were still playing.

“It was just one of those days where things weren’t going right,” Rush said. “One day the shots are all falling, and the next day they’re not.”

For the 2006-07 Jayhawks, the shots fell most of the time, resulting in 33 victories, two short of the school record. Those two were ones that the players badly wanted.

Chalmers said that this loss hurt more than exiting in the first round because the title was within sight.

“We didn’t want to stop here,” he said. “We wanted to go all the way.”

Kansan senior sportswriter Michael Phillips can be contacted at mphillips@kansan.com.

— Edited by Darla Slipke