Three days removed from a hospital trip that kept him in Lawrence while the Jayhawks went to Colorado to take on the Buffaloes, Kansas coach Bill Self was back in his usual seat in the Allen Fieldhouse media room to preview this weekend’s matchup with Kansas State.
If you hadn’t read about Self’s latest health ailment, you would not have thought that anything about him on Thursday was amiss.
He looked good, said he felt fine and appeared no worse for wear after receiving treatment for AFib (atrial fibrillation), which, essentially, is an irregular or racing heart rate. According to various medical web sites, it’s the most common type of heart arrhythmia, where the heart’s upper chambers beat irregularly and chaotically causing an erratic and often rapid heart rate.
Self checked into LMH Health on Monday and was given IV fluids to treat his symptoms. Both the assessment and the treatment immediately made him feel better and he said Thursday that he was back in the office on Wednesday.
Truth be told, had the timing of his hospital trip been a little different, he might’ve even joined the Jayhawks in Boulder and coached on Tuesday night. He plans to coach Saturday at K-State and said that he was told that Monday’s incident would not have any impact on him in any way, shape or form moving forward.
On his weekly “Hawk Talk” radio show with Brian Hanni on Wednesday night, Self said the combination him being very dehydrated and dealing with AFib “that was pretty significant in a very small snippet of time,” along with the fact that flying on the team plane would take him to a new altitude, led to the decision to stay in Lawrence.
KU assistant coach Jacque Vaughn led the Jayhawks against the Buffs in Boulder, and Self said Thursday that he picked Vaughn because of his vast head coaching experience, albeit at the NBA level.
In doing so, he referenced that KU assistant Jeremy Case’s recent promotion to Associate Head Coach could have made him an option but not under the circumstances KU faced Tuesday.
“Jeremy is our Associate Head Coach, there's no doubt,” Self said. “But we were trying to win a game over a two-hour period of time. It wasn't an extended period of time. It was two hours. So Jacque had the most head coaching experience of anybody to do that.”
Self, who missed time with his team during the 2023 postseason because of a heart stent procedure — and had more stents put in last July — was asked on Thursday what it’s like for him to watch his team play on television instead of from the bench.
“Sitting back would probably be a little bit of a stretch,” Self joked. “Yelling may be a little bit of a stretch too, considering I didn't need to be doing that at the time. But I know now what it means to be an armchair quarterback, because I sat there and watched and I had all the answers.”
Self then explained one such instance during KU’s 75-69 win over Colorado that featured him coaching from home like fans have done for decades.
“I watched the game, and I'm like, going, they're playing zone. The middle is wide open. Why don't we get to the middle,” he began. “Well, that was something that was emphasized the whole time, and it just didn't quite happen the way we wanted it to.”
The Jayhawks (14-5 overall, 4-2 Big 12) have won three straight Big 12 games after opening conference play at 1-2, and Self hopes that they can continue their mini-roll of late while finding a way to snap a 3-game losing streak in Manhattan on Saturday night.
Self called K-State’s Bramlage Coliseum the best opposing home-court advantage in the Big 12 that Kansas faces, in large part because the Wildcats — and their fans — tend to elevate every aspect of everything they do when the Jayhawks come to town.
Self believes that’s how it should be in these types of rivalry games, and he’s looking forward to the latest challenge in Manhattan.
KU has not won at K-State since the 2021-22 season and even in that one, which came a couple of months before the Jayhawks were crowned national champs, Kansas needed a late rally to win.
KU then dropped overtime games to K-State in 2022-23 and 2023-24 before getting beat by 8 in regulation in Manhattan last season.
“They'll play at a high level on Saturday, and should, and we should have to play at a high level in order to have success.”
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