After brief thought of retirement, Kansas’ Bill Self is back for his 34th season as a college coach

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self acknowledged this week that he’s “probably not yet ready” for the start of the new college basketball season.

Don’t read too much into it, though.

It’s not because the 63-year-old Hall of Famer is having second thoughts about returning for a 34th season, the last 24 of those with the Jayhawks. Or because of a series of health problems over the past few years that have resulted in multiple hospital stays, a heart catheterization and two cardiac stents to be inserted to help open his coronary arteries.

No, it’s simply that Self is still recovering from offseason knee-replacement surgery, and that might hamper his ability to stomp up and down the sideline with his usual gusto when the Jayhawks play their exhibition opener against Pittsburg State on Friday night.

“I’m still limping around a little bit from some knee complications,” Self said. “Other than that, I’m good.”

That’s certainly good for the Jayhawks.

Self acknowledged over the summer that he had thoughts about retiring after last season, a frustrating one for myriad reasons. One-and-done phenom Darryn Peterson struggled with injuries, often leaving Self with a disjointed version of the team that he envisioned coaching, and everything ended in a heartbreaking, last-second loss to St. John’s in the NCAA Tournament.

It was the fourth consecutive year that Kansas was bounced on the tourney’s opening weekend.

Then there’s the ever-changing nature of college basketball: those name, image and likeness deals, the ubiquitous transfer portal, and the court cases that even now, on the eve of the season, have left players and teams wondering who will be able to suit up.

They’re enough to make a coach pull out his hair. Or force him into retirement.

In the case of Kansas, it recently learned that forward Tre White had won an injunction in Indiana to return for a fifth season, while Melvin Council Jr. won an injunction in New York to play a sixth season of college ball — though the NCAA on Thursday filed an appeal in his case, which could ultimately change his status should a higher court decide to intervene.

Many of those issues are what drove Oregon coach Dana Altman to announce his retirement just weeks before the season begins.

“I don’t think somebody else would influence in any way or shape or form the way I go about this,” Self said, when asked what factors would play into his decision to retire. “I just want to get after it. That’s what I think about. But I do think this is a strange time, and it’s easier for a person in today’s time to feel they’re not as into it as when they were younger.”

Virginia coach Tony Bennett and Villanova’s Jay Wright are among those who have retired early, citing the way the college game has changed; the latter will be inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame next week in Kansas City, Missouri.

“There’s more things involved in our sport today that you kind of have to decide what is 100% (committed to coaching),” Self said. “Everybody is driven by different — you know, it could be health, a family incident. It could be wanting to be around grandkids. It could be that you don’t feel the same way walking into the office. It could be a lot of things.”

Those are the things that one day — and Self wouldn’t say what day — will inform his decision to retire.

“A lot of guys have been doing it a long time, and a lot of people have hard professions,” Self said. “In college athletics, it’s pretty much life in the fastlane nonstop, and depending on how long you’ve been doing that, you know, it can take a toll.”

For now, though, Self insisted he’s ready for another college basketball season, his rehabbing knee notwithstanding. And it’s one that carries the same high expectations as any other season inside Allen Fieldhouse.

Tyran Stokes, the consensus No. 1 national recruit, will headline a rebuilt roster that includes fellow five-star freshman Tylan Kinney, and both will be surrounded by an experienced group that, for now, includes White and Council from last year’s team.

“He’s been coaching for a very long time. He’s gotten a lot of players to where they want to be,” Stokes said of Self this week. “A lot of players come back and tell us how crazy of a coach he was, but it’s all for the better, because he wants you to be great.”

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