Seated at a large table inside Hadl Auditorium, coach Bonnie Henrickson called this season a failure.

Moments before, up a winding flight of stairs and inside a basketball office on the second floor, the Jayhawks watched as their NCAA tournament dreams were put to rest. For Henrickson, that alone deemed the season unsuccessful.

“Our goal is to make the NCAA tournament and you can’t look at being 2-9 in the league at one point as being a success,” Henrickson said. “Yes, they should take some pride away from it, but we missed opportunities earlier. If we play with that same sense of urgency earlier, we’re having a different conversation.”

Kansas’ current conversation — that of a team having just missed the NCAA tournament — lends itself to introspection.

For the second consecutive year, the Jayhawks finished nonconference play with an 11-2 record. But even that healthy start foreshadowed Kansas’ problems this season.

Kansas committed 28 turnovers in a loss at Marquette. In that game, the Jayhawks held a six-point lead at halftime. Two weeks later, Kansas never grasped control of a game at UCLA, letting another solid chance at a road victory slip away, 67-64.

“That’s a big kick in the butt when you lose to those teams and then those teams aren’t even playing now,” junior forward Danielle McCray said. “They’re done with their seasons.”

The Jayhawks began conference play 2-9 and all indications pointed toward a miserable end to a once-promising start. Yet, after losing four consecutive conference games, something clicked — or perhaps snapped — with Henrickson’s team.

Kansas won five of its final seven games, including a blowout victory against then No. 5 Baylor, a team that earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament.

“In a micro season, the last five or six games we really turned the corner and played with a sense of urgency,” senior guard Ivana Catic said. “Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s a failure or it’s a success. There’s always better. We didn’t make the tournament but we did a lot of good things.”

Perhaps Catic’s summation fits Kansas’ season best.

Sure, the Jayhawks were deeply disappointed with being left out of the NCAA tournament — a fact Henrickson and her team blamed on themselves. But moments after learning the Jayhawks were destined for the WNIT, McCray stood and offered an optimistic assessment of the situation.

“We can be in the WNIT, and it still means something,” McCray said. “A tournament is a tournament. When you’re playing for something, you might as well win it.”

“Our team needed to hear that from someone,” Catic said.

And after the self-inflicted disappointment of being spurned by the NCAA selection committee, the WNIT offers Kansas a fresh start.

The Jayhawks will finally escape the grind of conference play, where every team knows every opponent’s defensive scheme and offensive set.

But, more importantly, the WNIT simply allows Kansas the opportunity to continue playing meaningful games late in the season.

“That’s what I told Ivana and the seniors: There are a lot of seniors who have been done and crying for a week already,” Henrickson said. “We are fortunate to still be playing in a quality tournament.”

— — Edited by Andrew Wiebe