Bill Self revisits his ‘thinking about next season’ comment during 2024 NCAAs

An injury-riddled Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team dropped five of seven games to conclude the 2023-24 season. That included an 89-68 grilling by Gonzaga in a second-round NCAA Tournament game in Salt Lake City, Utah.

In his postgame news conference at Delta Center after the loss to the Zags, KU coach Bill Self, whose team finished the season 23-11, made a statement that some deemed controversial.

“I think for the last month I’ve been thinking about next season to be honest,” Self said, asked if his attention already was focused on the 2024-25 campaign. “Not in the moments during the game but obviously we played — we had eight guys on scholarship that were healthy late, and injuries are part of the game so that’s not an excuse — but we could have done a much better job as a staff of putting more guys out there that we could play.

“And so that’s something that I’ve thought about for a long time. And the thing about it is in basketball, early on you can play through some things. But through the course of a season, there’s a grind that goes with it and bodies get run down, injuries occur, that’s all part of it. And when you don’t have as much firepower that maybe you’ve had in past years it certainly showed this year.”

Seth Davis, who hosts a podcast for Bleacher Report, revisited Self’s quote last week.

“I don’t regret that statement at all. That’s 100% accurate,” Self said of relating he was looking ahead to 2024-25 while 2023-24 was still in session.

“If it wasn’t accurate, why would people be making recruiting calls during the NCAA Tournament? I mean, those are things you’ve got to have a strategy. I’m not saying ours is the best, but of course we talk about that. Last year was probably tougher for me because what I learned is getting guys to be their very best at playing to a ceiling, and getting guys all to buy in, is obviously the fun thing about taking a team from September through March.

“Nobody knows what a team’s ceiling is more than their head coach and their staff. How the fans view it and how the media views it, based on recruiting rankings and stuff like that, doesn’t really matter as much as how do the pieces fit and how are you going to do things in certain situations? Last year we put ourselves in a situation that if everything went perfect we could have made a deep run.

“We were coming off the NCAA thing. We took away two scholarships last year (in response to losing three over a three-year period; KU must be one under the limit in 2025-26 to complete the self-imposed sanction), had an off the court incident (in losing Arterio Morris in the preseason). We had a first-team All-American (Kevin McCullar) get hurt and be out for the season, and all of a sudden I learned too much is better than not enough.”

Self pointed out that he and his staff members currently are focusing on this season and 2025-26.

“I’ll put my foot in my mouth again,” he said, “because our talks today, tomorrow, for the next month, are going to be more on 2025-26 than are actually going to be on ‘24-’25,” Self said last week on Davis’ podcast.

The Jayhawks coaches will be on the road a lot in coming weeks, making in-home visits with high school prospects and their families during an open period in recruiting. Also, several high school seniors will be making campus visits to KU.

“Now, we’ll have our coaching talks, we’ll go over practice plans, we’ll do this,” Self said, “but don’t think for a second we won’t have to figure out how to recruit the guys that obviously are going to be available to us and available to other programs as freshmen.”

KU is in the running for several blue-chip prospects, including consensus No. 1-rated AJ Dybantsa, who is scheduled to visit the KU campus this weekend, and No. 3 Darryn Peterson.

“When that is over with,” Self said of high school recruiting, “then your focus will probably turn to guys that would be available potentially through the (transfer) portal. So you are always (looking ahead).”

KU has a full allotment of 13 players on scholarship this season. Self has said one will likely redshirt. Another player, Elmarko Jackson, is out for the season following knee surgery.

Self has said he likes his current roster, one that he started to put together during the 2023-24 season when he signed incoming freshmen Flory Bidunga and Rakease Passmore.

“Through the portal and then what we were able to do recruiting-wise,” Self said, “I did want to get our numbers back to where I felt like there’s more competition at practice. It was hard to practice last year, because you couldn’t practice as much because you had to save them for games.”