A video surfaced Sunday evening of a drenched Bill Self addressing his Kansas locker room.

Periodically using a white towel to dab his moistened eyes — he later joked it was water, not tears — an emotional Self looked around at a group of jubilant players and explained how this was “the best I’ve felt about a group.”

“You guys have no idea how much this means to so many people,” said the veteran coach who now has three Final Fours to his name. “I said before, you’re going to be loved by this place forever. All you can do is add to it, and you’ve added to it.”

As Self later explained at the podium for his postgame press conference, he’s not the most emotional coach. Sometimes, though, things happen and feelings happen.

The emotions spilled out following No. 1 seed Kansas’ win over Duke in the Midwest regional final. The outcome — KU’s first Final Four since 2012 — was overdue in the eyes of some fans after Kansas (31-7) had knocked on the door with consecutive Elite Eight appearances.

For the seniors, like Devonte’ Graham and Svi Mykhailiuk, it was three consecutive seasons of falling short of the Final Four as a No. 1 seed.

That is until this year.

“It was emotional for me because of all the teams that we’ve had,” Self said Monday during a Final Four conference call. “This may not be the one that I would expect to do this, and for me to obviously be on these guys pretty hard for things that I thought were shortcomings and were some basically personality traits, and to see the reason we won was because they 100 percent flipped those, that gives a coach a lot of pride.”

Ever since Kansas lost National Player of the Year Frank Mason and NBA lottery pick Josh Jackson from the 2017 roster, the general consensus was Kansas would take a step back in 2018.

Even Self had lingering questions.

A few early-season Big 12 losses seemed to confirm that narrative, with many wondering if this was the year a run of 13-straight Big 12 regular season championships would come to an end.

By Sunday, they had scaled the mountain.

“All the media stuff, it was all about how you’re going to get over the hump, the last two years, this and that,” said Graham, who referred to Elite Eight losses in 2016 and 2017 as ‘heartbreaking.’ “So you think about it all the time.”

Kansas found new and unique ways to win to win both the regular season and conference tournament championship. The Jayhawks then added another notch to their belt against Duke. A previously inept rebounding team managed to slay the Blue Devils on the boards, grabbing a 15-rebound advantage in that category. A team known for its scoring and 3-point sharpshooting clanged around with Duke’s talented frontcourt for 45 minutes.

They received some breaks along the way, too. Sunday’s final seconds was a prime example. A last-second shot from Duke’s Grayson Allen spun around the rim twice as everyone in Omaha, Nebraska held their breath. A hair to the left or right sends Kansas packing. Instead, an overtime win followed. A game of inches, indeed.

Some national media pundits have gone to great lengths to categorize this as one of Self’s best coaching jobs.

There have been more talented Kansas squads in the past that failed to make it this far. He was previously 2-6 in regional final games, making this year’s run of adaptation and on-the-fly thinking that much more memorable.

“No,” Self said Sunday when asked if a Final Four was a possibility just a few months ago.

“We didn’t even know who was going to finish the season with our roster a couple of months ago. I mean, we were — we had some hard lessons to learn, and I had to do a better job of motivating and coaching and pushing the right buttons.

“But I didn’t think that we were — we were winning, but I didn’t think we were a very good team even though we were winning. Sometimes when you win, that camouflages what you don’t do well. When we got exposed, visually and by losses, I think that that helped us in the long run and changed our mindset.”