KU coach Bill Self speaks to this season — and his future — on Hawk Talk show
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bill Self signals desire to keep coaching a while longer while focusing on wins
- Self notes shift: proven transfer scorers can trump multi-year freshman development
- He praises team cohesion and expects Peterson to finish strong despite injuries
A Monday night Hawk Talk audience member congratulated Bill Self on his No. 8-ranked Kansas basketball team’s performance so far in 2025-26 while adding he hopes the Jayhawks’ 63-year-old Hall of Fame coach will continue to “represent the university hopefully for many more seasons to come.”
“I hope it does last a while longer,” Self responded to the fan, while perhaps providing a hint that he’d like to continue his college coaching career a season or two — or more — down the line.
“I can’t wait to see how things turn out, too, but it’s been fun,” Self, now in year 23 at KU, added of the current season — one in which the Jayhawks are off to a 19-6 start, 9-3 in Big 12 games.
KU next plays 8 p.m. Wednesday at Oklahoma State (16-9, 4-8).
“There have been so many things that have happened this year,” Self added, “where people comment on, ‘Well, he answered this question that way, so it must mean that he’s retiring, because he said he really enjoys playing in Manhattan, and if he was going to go there next year, he wouldn’t say that.’ Or stuff like that. I’m like, ‘What?’”
Self continued, speaking on those speculating he might retire after the season based on any number of things he’s said before and after games.
“People think about stuff a heck of a lot more than I do when I say things, but I hope it does last a while longer. But you know what I want to do? I want to win. I want to win today, and I want to win tomorrow the way it’s set up now,” he said.
“The way it’s set up now,” of course, is coaches are faced with the task of winning with basically an entirely new roster each and every season because of NIL and (the) transfer portal, which allows immediate eligibility for players that switch schools.
“This isn’t being remotely negative. But you look at the way things are going, the days of recruiting freshmen, watching them become juniors and seniors, that’s not how you recruit,” Self said. “Do you recruit freshmen if they’re two- or three-year players or do you recruit freshmen if they’re potentially good enough to be one-and-done and be starters as freshmen? Because if you can’t get that, are you better off going out and getting somebody that’s already proven they can score 12 or 14 points in a college game?
“There are a lot of different things to it that’s just different. And I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m saying it’s different and we still have to figure it out, because the way that we’ve always won here consistently was our second-, third- and fourth-year guys. People say to us, ‘You didn’t start Sherron Collins until he was a junior?’ If you told a kid that now, that is a third of the player that Sherron Collins is, he’d never come. It’s different, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse.”
On Monday’s weekly radio show he sounded like a coach who believes KU’s basketball program can vie for championships on a yearly basis during this new era.
“I think we’re gaining on it and figuring it out, but the time to play to the future is behind (us). Let’s play to today. Let’s win today and winning today is what recruits tomorrow. So you ask, ‘How’s it going to end up?’ I’m excited to see how this particular team ends up. And that will definitely spearhead how recruiting goes moving forward, too,” Self stated.
Self said from a coaching standpoint this year has been quite enjoyable. KU on Saturday had its eight-game winning streak snapped 74-56 at Iowa State.
“I’ve really enjoyed these kids,” Self said, quickly adding, “It’s been frustrating for everybody because of Darryn (Peterson)’s situation (missing 11 games) because we all want Darryn to play, and we all want him to be good, and expectations are so high.”
Freshman guard Peterson on the court has been as effective as advertised, averaging 19.8 points and 3.9 rebounds a game. He’s hit 47.9% of his shots while going 38-of-92 from 3 for 41.3%.
“There are some things that regardless of what we want and what others want, there are some things that sometimes health just doesn’t allow those things to happen, and we have to understand that.” Self said.
“That’s the thing that’s been most frustrating to me about this year is the crap that he’s taken, in large part just because he’s had a string of bad injuries. Now, if he would have, or if anybody would have, been out over a significant period of time because they separated their shoulder, nobody would say anything about it. But when you play a half and then don’t play the second half and then you get sick — and I’ve talked to him a lot about this — it gives people obviously the opening to talk and have an opinion.”
Self continued to discuss fan and basketball analysts’ speculation about Peterson’s availability in games.
“The majority of the opinions, that’s all they are, is just opinions with no basis for the opinion except, ‘Well, my experience when I had a cramp, I rubbed it off and then I went right back in,’’’ Self said. “That’s true. It does happen that way with some people. It doesn’t happen that way all the time with everybody, though.”
Self thinks Peterson will have a strong finish to his one-and-done college campaign.
“I still think it’s going to be the most rewarding, because he’s had to go through some stuff, and we’ve all had to adjust, and those adjustments and him going through stuff is what will make us tougher and harder whenever it counts the most,” Self said.
“So we can look at things negatively or we can look at them, ‘Hey, gosh, this has been actually a blessing, and we just don’t know it yet, but if we keep grinding and get better, it could be the best thing that’s happened to us.’”
Self continued.
“... Other than that, this has been the easiest group to coach and be around as any that we’ve had basically, in recent memory, and we’ve had some really good players,” Self said. “But I’m telling you that we’ve had some cats on our team that no matter what it looked like on game night, it was a challenge to get them to game night with everybody aligned and on the same page. And that doesn’t bother me at all. That’s fun. But this group has been easy when it comes to that kind of stuff.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2026 at 6:30 AM with the headline "KU coach Bill Self speaks to this season — and his future — on Hawk Talk show."
