LAWRENCE, Kan. — Delivering his Senior Night speech on Tuesday night, Kansas forward Jalen Wilson looked in coach Bill Self’s direction and said, “With a guy like him in my corner, I feel like I can do anything.”
Wilson stars on a team that rallied to win three conference games this season when it trailed by double digits. A team that lost three straight games in mid-January and two weeks later had a 6-4 league record. A team that won a national title, then lost 74 percent of its scoring and wasn’t picked to win the Big 12 — because even the Big 12 coaches were a little skeptical the Jayhawks could do it again — but they did it anyway.
Advertisement
Because that’s what’s expected here, and what’s expected usually happens.
Yes, Kansas won another Big 12 regular season title on Tuesday night, right before the calendar flipped to March. That’s old hat in Lawrence these days, but the significance is not lost on the man in charge.
This team deserves everything ❤️💙 pic.twitter.com/0qvDkWNbxz
— Kansas Jayhawks (@KUAthletics) March 1, 2023
Self left his press conference after Kansas’ 67-63 win over Texas Tech and was shown a loose leaf piece of paper. On it is a list of schools with the most regular-season conference titles among the high-major leagues. All but one of the conferences started before Self was even born. The Big Ten has been playing basketball since 1905. Eight schools are circled on the paper. At the bottom is Self’s name with a 19 next to it. That’s the number of conference championships he’s won at the high-major level — two at Illinois and 17 (and counting) at Kansas.
If Bill Self were a university, he’d rank ninth all-time in regular-season, high-major conference championships.
“It’s been going on for a while, too,” Self says as he studies the sheet. “Even go back to Tulsa, we won the last two years there.”
That’s where this ridiculous run started. Self coached four seasons at Oral Roberts, but the school operated as an independent. In 1997-98, he was a head coach in a conference for the first time. He’s now won the conference he’s coached in 21 of 26 seasons. He has won the Big 12 regular season 17 times in 20 years.
“The thing about this is, we’ve been so good over the course of three or four months,” Self says. “The NCAA Tournament is who’s hot at the right time. I would obviously rather be hot at the right time than win the regular season. But to me, it’s the epitome of consistency.”
And it’s not common. No one else comes close.
Advertisement
Since Self started at KU, the team with the next-most regular-season conference titles from a high-major league is North Carolina with nine. Among coaches, he’s chasing Adolph Rupp, who won 28 regular-season titles. Rupp coached for 42 years to get there. If Self were to last 16 more years — he’s 60, so it’s not unreasonable — and keep winning at the rate he’s always won, he’d finish at 34.
“It’s been remarkable,” he says. “And the thing that makes it remarkable, in the years that we’ve had the most turnover, those have been the years where we’ve never taken a step back. Think about that.”
That, too, isn’t common.
Since Florida repeated as national champs in 2007, no defending champion has advanced past the Sweet 16. That shows how hard it is to win in the NCAA Tournament the year after a title, because usually it means you’re replacing most your team. But it’s not just hard to win in March; it’s hard to win at all the next season. Since the Gators repeated, only five champs have won their league the following year. Two of those league titles belong to Kansas and Self. Three defending champs since then have failed to have a winning record in their league.
Self’s worst record ever in league play? 9-5. His worst finish? Third, in 2019. That’s the only time he’s ever finished outside the top two. That team finished the regular season without a starter from the previous season. The next year, Kansas finished No. 1 at KenPom and would have been the betting favorite to win the 2020 NCAA Tournament had it not been canceled.
He is not just the greatest regular-season coach in the modern era. He’s the greatest regular-season coach in the history of the sport.
You cannot argue he’s done this in an inferior league, because the Big 12 has ranked as the best league in the country in eight of the last 10 years. Those other two seasons it ranked second.
Advertisement
Before last March, the only blemish on Self’s legacy was that he’d only won one national title. Now he’s among the exclusive club of 16 coaches with multiple titles.
Maybe he never wins another, but his chances every year are just about as good as anybody’s, because the man never has a down year. It obviously helps that he’s at one of the sport’s premier jobs, but look at every other blue blood. They have down years. North Carolina returned four starters from the national runner-up, was preseason No. 1 and might not make the NCAA Tournament. Self lost six of his eight rotation players and is on his way to receiving a No. 1 seed for the 11th time. Since taking over at Illinois in 2000, he’s never been lower than a No. 4 seed.
His March success long went overlooked because of some of the memorable exits, but in the next three seasons, he’ll likely move into third in all-time NCAA Tournament wins.
Most coaches do not get better with age. Some struggle to adjust. (Hello, John Calipari.) Sometimes the fire just doesn’t burn like it once did. Self is as good as he’s ever been. He’s adjusted with the times.
This season was one of the first years he’s ever had to operate without an elite back-to-the-basket big man. A coach who built his career on feeding the post is hardly playing through the post at all. His previous 15 teams finished 9.2 possessions per game with a post-up, per Synergy; this one averages three. He starts three players whom no one would consider great shooters, yet somehow KU has great spacing and efficient offense.
He changes his defense every year to fit his personnel. This is like the third or fourth iteration of KU’s defense just this season — Self altering his ball-screen coverage almost game to game — and it keeps getting better. The Jayhawks will enter the postseason with arguably one of the best defenses in the sport.
GO DEEPER
Halftime adjustments help Kansas complete comeback win over Baylor
NIL, transfer portal … it’s arguably driven some coaches out of the game. Self hasn’t flinched. Those close to him say he enjoys the business side of sports. These changes have only sparked his curiosity. He’s been the best in this era at building and managing a roster. Always old. Always developing a star. Last year, it was Ochai Agbaji. This year, it’s Wilson. Next year, it’ll be someone else.
Advertisement
He’ll feel invincible too, because that’s what it’s like to play for the man.
On Tuesday night, Self looked up from the paper detailing his accomplishments to tell freshman Gradey Dick’s family about the plan to celebrate afterwards. Then he looked back at the page.
“It’s unbelievable how consistent we are,” he said.
He headed off to celebrate, because these accomplishments are always worth celebrating. But his attention had already turned to Saturday’s season finale at Texas, with a chance to win the Big 12 outright — unless the Longhorns lose Wednesday at TCU to clinch it for the Jayhawks first. Self has no interest in sharing a title.
“All this does is ensure that we’ve had a good year,” he said. “Now you got to go make good great, and then you got to go make great special, and we’re a long ways away from doing that.”
Someday the chase will end. He might not see the finish line yet, but it’s close enough that he allows himself to be reflective. But winning is as fun as it’s ever been. He loves figuring out how to solve each new puzzle.
No one has ever done it better.
(Photo: Ed Zurga / Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2ttbG9kaXxzfJFsZmlrX2V%2BcLfAp6qaq12XrrS3xK2ZmqScYq%2BquMtmqp6klmQ%3D