Self takes coaching a step further
LAWRENCE, Kan.
Bill Self talks about the ceiling and how every college basketball coach understands where that surface exists for his team each season, that it’s his job to lift players as close to it as possible.
Self has taken it a step further most years.
He lifts teams straight through the plaster and onto the roof.
You don’t hear his name mentioned as much as others nationally, as Mike Krzyzewski or John Calipari or Rick Pitino or Roy Williams. That’s a shame. Self has more than earned a seat at the table of legends.
When you are one of the most successful branches on a Kansas coaching tree that includes the guy who invented the game (James Naismith) and the one for whom your school’s famed fieldhouse is named (Phog Allen), yours is a resume worthy of rivaling any.
It’s just not that Self wins. It’s when he does — those years when no one expects Kansas to reach the coffee table, never mind the ceiling.
Consider: The Jayhawks didn’t return a starter in 2013-14 but won 25 games, a 10th straight Big 12 regular-season title and were a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
In 2011-12, Kansas returned just one starter, lost seven regulars from the previous season and advanced to the national championship game.
In 2010-11, it had lost three players to the NBA the previous season and still made the Elite Eight.
“When you have a program that is used to winning, people don’t understand, and nor should they, that faces change,” Self said. “Common sense and logic would then say that if faces change, so should expectations. But they aren’t going to change here, and they’re not going to change at Duke or North Carolina or Kentucky or Louisville. If you wear the uniform here, we expect you to be good.
“I like that part. It puts subtle pressure on people to maybe work a little harder, focus a little more, be a little more committed. You can’t worry about what everyone else thinks.”
The No. 13 Jayhawks welcome UNLV and a CBS audience to Allen Fieldhouse at 1:30 p.m. PST Sunday, to a place where Self over 12 seasons has won more conference titles (10) than he has lost home games (nine).
Read that last part again.
That’s ridiculously good.
It’s one of countless impressive feats Self has produced at Kansas, along with a national championship in 2008, having coached 10 NBA lottery picks and posting the most consecutive 30-win seasons (four) in NCAA history.
It hasn’t been a perfect run, not with some eligibility issues with recruits and off-court issues with players over the years, the sorts of problems you will discover at any elite program and numerous ones that aren’t elite.
Williams, before departing to coach North Carolina, won 80 percent of his games in 15 seasons at Kansas; Self has won an all-time best 83 percent in 12 years, and there is every chance, given his contract runs through the 2021-22 season and will pay him just less than $50 million, he one day will depart more than solidified alongside Naismith and Allen as the best in school history. He’s probably already there.
“Kansas is great every single year,” UNLV coach Dave Rice. “Bill Self will be in the Hall of Fame. This is the type of game we need to play as we try to build an elite program ourselves. When you talk about the best programs in history, you don’t talk much before you get to Kansas. You might not talk about any before getting to Kansas.”
This could be one of those coffee table-to-roof years here. Kentucky embarrassed Kansas 72-40 in November, but then the Jayhawks beat Michigan State, Florida, Georgetown and Utah in consecutive games. Then they lost at Temple by 25.
Now, they get a Mountain West opponent on the first Sunday in January in preparation of beginning Big 12 play on Wednesday — the exact same scenario as last season, when San Diego State came into Allen Fieldhouse and shocked Kansas 61-57, snapping a streak of 68 straight nonconference home wins by Self’s team.
“We don’t have to say it to (the players), but we will say it,” Self said. “We didn’t handle that game well last year, and the result wasn’t good. We need to approach this game (against UNLV) with the same energy that we would opening conference play.
“The last Sunday before conference, a long, athletic team from the Mountain West with red as a school color and a game on CBS. There are a lot of similarities. Losing to San Diego State helped us a lot in moving forward, but I hope our guys will be better prepared this year.
“Against one of the best defensive teams in the country in Wyoming, UNLV went in there and shot 55 percent and made 10 3-pointers. Against Arizona, I thought they controlled basically the entire game. They’re a team that’s only going to continue getting better. I really like their team.”
Opportunity knocks again for the Rebels.
In terms of opposing team, coach, history, program, venue, environment, the entire package … it’s tough to beat Kansas.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.
