They talk about last season’s historic run to the championship, but only half the players on Kansas’ roster this season were even part of it.

They reflect on the national championship game against Memphis, but only two current Jayhawks played in the game.

Defending national champions, the Jayhawks are. Same team, they are not.

“There’s going to be a lot pressure coming from winning the national championship,” freshman guard Travis Releford said. “We just want to be able to come out every game knowing that we are the defending national champions.”

It might be tough to tell, however, by looking at the roster. Sophomores Cole Aldrich and Tyrel Reed and junior Sherron Collins are the only scholarship players left on the roster who played last season.

The five starters are gone. Eight of the top ten players in minutes — the two remaining are Collins and Aldrich — either graduated or declared for the NBA Draft. So where do the Jayhawks go from here? Kansas coach Bill Self hauled in a class of seven recruits that Rivals.com ranked as the second-best in the country. Most of them will contribute right away.

“I don’t know what the ceiling is, but I can tell you this: Expectations will not change one bit, regardless of how young we are,” Self said.

Defending national champions returning without the bulk of their roster is nothing new. In fact, it’s common. Florida, which won back-to-back national championships in 2006 and 2007, lost its top six players going into last season. The Gators struggled throughout the year and missed the NCAA Tournament.

But the Jayhawks aren’t expecting that to happen. Aldrich said the Jayhawks were confident they’d get back to an elite level, although it might take a little longer than usual.

“We all know we’re going to be good,” Aldrich said. “It might take a little while to get there because we have such a young team and don’t know how to play with each other yet. It’s all going to come.”

Perhaps a better comparison than last season’s Florida team for Kansas would be the 2005 North Carolina Tar Heels. North Carolina returned only one of its top eight players a year after winning the national championship.

The Tar Heels, however, reloaded with a recruiting class ranked as the best in the country.

They still made the NCAA Tournament as a three seed before being upset by George Mason, who eventually made the Final Four, in the second round.

The Jayhawks think they have enough talent to be a force by the end of the season. Self said the goal, as always, was to win the Big 12 Conference this season. He’ll worry about everything else after that.

“I’ve thought a lot about last year and why last year was so special and how we can put ourselves in a position to duplicate that in the near future,” Self said. “It’s going to be very, very difficult, but it is for everybody.”