Andrea Hudy, the gatekeeper of the Kansas weight room whose actual title is wordier and much less fitting, has a theory about senior Frank Mason III that perfectly summarizes the ferocious and efficient way the KU point guard has played during his magnificent senior season.

“He’s a high-end sports car that needs to get tuned up all the time,” said Hudy of KU’s leading scorer, who is gunning to become the first player in Big 12 history to average 20 points and five assists in a single season. “We’re talking about performance, health and durability. Frank takes a beating, and because (of that), you just need to take care of that sports car and make sure it stays on the road.”

In Mason’s case, that road is one he hopes will lead to the Final Four. But there have been plenty of pit stops along the way and figure to be more in the coming weeks.

In the mix for multiple national player of the year honors, a virtual lock for the Big 12 player of the year hardware and the heart and soul of a top-ranked Kansas team that has visions of hanging KU’s sixth national championship banner, Hudy said Mason would not be where he was today without paying careful attention to building, maintaining and nurturing his body.

This is nothing new for the man whom Hudy compared to a Ferrari or an Aston Martin.

Since arriving on KU’s campus in the summer of 2013 — and even before — the 5-foot-11 point guard from Petersburg, Va., always has made taking care of his body a top priority.

Last summer, however, Mason shifted his mentality from maintaining his body to putting it through hell.

“I just pushed myself harder than I ever had before,” Mason told the Journal-World during a recent interview. “I set more goals and focused on that and worked really hard to achieve them. That was my mindset coming into this year — try to do the most work I’ve ever put in. I got after it, and here we are today.”

All work and no play

To Mason, it really was that simple, even if most of the work he did — often all alone in an empty gym — would have killed many players on the Kansas basketball roster.

While waking up to a total-body workout every day, Mason said he emphasized conditioning more than ever — think running stairs, short sprints, long distances and pushing through the pain of it all to do a little more — and wanted to get bigger and stronger to be able to better finish better near the basket.

Think about all of the hard falls that Mason took during his first three years as a Jayhawk. And now think about how many of those types of spills — the ones where you weren’t quite sure if he was going to get up or wondered if he had seriously injured himself — you saw Mason suffer this season.

Instead of getting hit and falling, Mason now has found the ability to absorb the contact and finish through it.

“It’s not our goal to get big chests and big upper bodies, because that doesn’t do well for change of direction,” explained Hudy, noting that lifting lighter weight at a faster rate, and not bulking up, was a major point of emphasis for Mason in the offseason. “Let’s get you faster and maybe that strength can transfer to lateral agility or posturing or prolonging force production so that, when you do get hit, you can take that force and keep going with what you’re doing.”

Hudy gave an example.

In the past, Mason may have pushed 300 pounds at a speed of 0.4 meters per second. According to Hudy, that’s pretty slow. But by decreasing the weight and lifting 150 pounds instead, Mason now adds strength by exceeding speeds of 1.0 meters per second.

“Basketball isn’t a slow sport,” Hudy said. “So what we’ve really started to focus on is this velocity of movement. And we can measure it with the software that we have. We’ve really focused on high-end speed things that will hopefully transfer to the court.”

'He's just a competitor'

While focusing on faster movements in the weight room was somewhat new to Mason, to Hudy, the whole thing was merely a continuation of a four-year process that has been marked by physical growth and mental understanding.

“The weight room is part of our practice culture,” she said. “We’re on a 46- to 48-week commitment. We see them 4-6 times a week. It doesn’t have to be hard, it just has to be consistent. And we get our results based on the consistency.”

Mason is nothing if not consistent. From the minute he arrived in Lawrence to today, the all-business athlete who has become a fan favorite and one day will have his jersey hanging in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse — Self said as much on his radio show Tuesday night — Mason has let his work do the talking for him and added layers to his game that have taken him from nice piece to potential player of the year.

Want to know what Mason did upon returning to Lawrence back in November after hitting a game-winning shot in the final seconds to beat No. 1 Duke in the Champions Classic in New York? After a two-hour bus ride to the airport in NYC and a four-hour trip home from there, he dropped off his bags in his room and went to the practice gym to shoot.

“I’ve been with him for three years and I know his work ethic, just being with him, playing with him,” said junior running mate Devonté Graham of Mason. “He’s just a competitor. And I think I got a lot of my competitive spirit from him when I first got here, just watching him compete.”

Giving his all

To the casual observer, Mason’s bigger biceps, neck, shoulders and chest suggest that the work he put in last summer was a success.

For what it’s worth, while a glance at side by side images of the Kansas point guard from 2016 and 2017 shows subtle changes, Hudy, who sees these athletes nearly every day, said she did not notice much difference in Mason’s body and Mason said he both saw it and felt it.

Regardless of the physical differences, and whether one eye sees them or another does not, everyone can agree that the foundation for one of the best seasons a Jayhawk has had in the Bill Self era did not come from a few months of extra effort.

Instead, Mason’s monster year was the result of ongoing effort and an attention to detail that goes beyond X’s and O’s, watching film and executing in crunch time.

Back to that sports car analogy, Mason has never missed an oil change, constantly keeps his parts cared for and firing, and is never afraid to put the pedal down on game days.

“He’s just always in the gym, always taking care of his body,” Graham said. “He tells me to get in the cold tub all the time, but I just can’t do it because it’s too cold. He gets in there almost every day.”

With the Jayhawks down to the regular-season finale — 5 p.m. Saturday at Oklahoma State — and whatever their postseason fate holds after that, Hudy can’t help but look back at all that Mason has accomplished this season with great pride.

There were no magic moments when Mason requested to get bigger and Hudy dialed up a plan to make it happen, just a mutual understanding of what was desired and how to get there.

“Frank really speaks our language,” Hudy said. “He’s a proud Jayhawk, this means a lot to him and he’s going to go above and beyond to do right by himself and this university.”

Added Mason: “I just wanted to do everything I could to put us in the best position possible. And that’s what I told the guys — just do everything the right way and give us the best chance.”