LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -During his first year as a head coach, Bill Self’s Oral Roberts team lost 18 games in a row and he recalls thinking, “Maybe this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”
He won only 10 games the next year. Then he stumbled to a 1-3 start the year after that.
“I’d been thinking we would find ways to trick people and win games,” he said. “I realized real fast that players win games. That’s when the light went on.”
It hasn’t dimmed since.
In the next 13 years, Self’s teams at ORU, Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas have captured 10 conference championships and finished second twice. His worst season was 19-12.
After winning last year’s NCAA championship, all five starters and the top seven scorers departed. Self would have to incorporate eight newcomers into the mix. The Jayhawks were picked no higher than third and as low as fifth.
Big 12 regular-season title. Now they’re back in the round of 16 for the third straight year in what could be Self’s finest coaching performance.
“We try to please him the best we can,” Aldrich said. “Because if we listen to him, great things can happen.”
Tall and good-looking and brimming with folksy, disarming charm, the 46-year-old Self is an imposing presence on the recruiting trail.
“Coach is always going to bring in good players,” Aldrich said. “When he’s talking to a kid or their parents, how can they not like him? Everybody likes him.”
But Illinois State coach Tim Jankovich, who’s known Self since they were assistant coaches at Oklahoma State, says there’s “way more to it than that.”
“You know when you see a great athlete and it’s hard to really describe why they’re so good because they make it look so easy? As a coach, Bill is like that,” he said. “He has so much talent in all the areas where you need to be good that he makes it look easy. His greatest asset is what a great person he is and the people skills that he has.”
Jankovich spent one year at Illinois and four at Kansas as Self’s assistant.
“He has a natural way about him, a humbleness that is not fake,” he said. “But don’t let his easygoing manner fool you in terms of how competitive he is and how hard he works.”
The fact that Kansas lost at Michigan State by 13 points on Jan. 10 should perhaps alarm Spartans fans as they prepare to meet the Jayhawks on Friday night in Indianapolis.
Since he arrived at Kansas, Self is 7-1 in rematch games against teams that beat him the first time in a season.
“I don’t know if Bill Self is the best coach in America,” Nebraska coach Doc Sadler said. “But when the discussion comes up, his name is always going to be mentioned.”
Self has an ability to discern an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and exploit them. His teams also tend to get better as the season wears on.
“At halftime, if something isn’t working right, he’ll adjust something and it always seems to make an impact in the second half,” sophomore guard Brady Morningstar said. “That’s why he’s one of the best coaches in the country.”
Players say Self changed very little from the way he handled last year’s squad, which was loaded with NBA-bound talent.
“He’s ridden us hard through tough times and through times we excelled,” Aldrich said. “He’s always tough on us and he expects the best from us and we try to do everything for him.”
Tactically, Self has never forgotten those hard lessons from the early years.
“Be aggressive,” he says.
Which means?
“To really guard, to make sure we get a shot every possession, to rebound, to not allow your man to block you out,” he said. “To run. When you worry about intangible things, then scoring happens naturally. When you worry about scoring, then you lose all the intangibles and it puts too much pressure on your scoring.”
After winning the NCAA title last year, Self signed a 10-year, $30 million contract with Kansas.
“He’s 100 percent genuine, and he’s 100 percent natural,” Jankovich said. “If he continues for a number of years, he’s going to go down as one of the great coaches in college basketball, period.”
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