At the end of every Kansas basketball season — especially here lately — we enter a stage of great uncertainty, with transfer portal comings and goings, guys testing their NBA draft stock and the unknown of what the incoming freshman will bring.
This year, however, makes recent uncertainty look like a walk in the park.
Because now, for the first time in 23 years, we’ve entered the stage of wondering about Bill Self’s future as the Kansas basketball coach.
Self has explained in no uncertain terms that he wants to keep coaching as long as he feels good enough to do so.
A couple of things that none of us know the answer to include (a) how good does he actually feel right now, (b) how good is good enough, and (c) who else might have input on Self’s health and how he’s feeling.
All of it — and more — brings to the forefront the very real possibility that Self is considering calling it a career.
He said after the Jayhawks’ loss to St. John’s that he’d take some time to visit with family and consider all of the factors involved in a decision like this. I know he’d love to keep going. But I don’t know if that means he will.
There are a couple of things, regarding the timeline here, that are important to remember as we move forward with Bill Watch as it now seems to be.
I’ll spell them out here so you don’t forget them and I’ll keep my ears open for any information that I can find out in the days ahead that might help us learn more about what’s going to happen.
• First, you can’t forget that the transfer portal is a major factor in any offseason. And it comes with a timeline. This year, the Division I men’s basketball transfer portal main window is set to be open from April 7 (the day after the national championship game) through April 21. A two-week period where players from across the country will flood the portal looking for another team, a new opportunity or a fresh start. It would behoove Kansas — or any program, really — to have its head coach in place during that time because things move incredibly quickly in the portal and guys aren’t always available for long. One thing that’s critical to remember here is that the April 7-21 window is merely when players can formally enter the portal. The work of choosing their next school does not have to be done in that time frame. Guys can still commit to and pick schools well after April 21. But a lot of the top talent does come off the board pretty quickly and things move lightning fast in those two weeks.
• This second piece might be true either way — if he decides he’s staying or hangs it up — and that’s that I don’t think Self will announce anything on a day that matches up with the NCAA Tournament. Especially now. We’ve got the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games this weekend. After that, it’s the Final Four the following weekend. Those are really good times for schools to announce hires because the attention of the entire sports viewing public is already on those games and a school’s new hire scrolling across the bottom of the screen and being talked about in every pregame and even halftime studio sessions is great publicity for a new hire. But Self has always had such reverence for the sport, the game, its greatest traditions and its unspoken rules that I’m not sure he would want his news overshadowing anything happening with this year’s tournament. I could be wrong there. And maybe it’s more likely that he wouldn’t want retirement news to overshadow it and would be fine with the infomercial if he winds up returning. But I do think the timeline of when the tourney is full go could be important to him with this decision. So that leaves the rest of today, tomorrow and then all of next week leading up to Final Four Saturday as days to watch.
• The final piece of this timeline post has to do with Self’s boss, KU AD Travis Goff. If you think that Goff is sitting around waiting for a decision from Self and then will act, you’re crazy. If you think Goff only started acting after the Jayhawks’ loss to St. John’s on Sunday, you might be even crazier. Someone in college athletics told me a long time ago that every AD arrives at a new job with a short list of coaches he’d like to hire in the major sports one day. Sometimes that list exists only in their minds. Sometimes it’s on a file on the computer. Sometimes it’s actually written out on a piece of paper and stored under lock and key for safe keeping. Either way, I assume Goff has thought about this for a long time now, with his thoughts and the importance of them growing a little each year as Self has gotten older and had a couple of new health scares. I’m not saying that he would have a deal done for the new guy the day Self makes his decision public. But I am saying that he won’t wait until then to start the process if Self does, in fact, decide to call it a career. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Goff and perhaps others at KU have reached out to agents and possibly even candidates quietly and passively during the past couple of years in an effort to gauge their interest should the job ever come open. That’s good news for KU. It means they won’t be starting from zero if a search does become necessary in the next couple of weeks.
• One bonus note here, just because I took the time to do it. I don’t think the timing of past hires actually can tell us much this time around. It’s a completely different world today than when Self and Roy Williams before him were hired by KU. By the way, can you even imagine Kansas — KANSAS!!! — hiring a little-known assistant coach who had never been a head coach today the way Bob Frederick did with Williams back in 1988? Such a move in the current landscape would blow peoples’ minds. Back to the timeline… Roy was hired by KU on July 8, 1988, 25 days after Larry Brown announced he was leaving. And Self was announced as Williams’ successor on April 21, 2003, just 7 days after Williams left for North Carolina. If Self does retire, I think we’d be looking at a timeline for his replacement much closer to Self and Williams than Williams and Brown.
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