Uncertainty reigns as Bill Self’s Jayhawks prepare for 2020-21 college hoops season
Nobody knows what college sports will look like during the 2020-21 school year, which at the University of Kansas begins on Aug. 24, still three months away.
The group of individuals wondering what’s in store for college football and basketball during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic includes 18th-year KU hoops coach Bill Self. He, like everybody else, will have to wait and see what games will entail in terms of crowds in tradition-rich Allen Fieldhouse.
“As far as access to fans, Allen Fieldhouse could probably be a good homecourt regardless (of how many are allowed in the building),” Self said Wednesday in an interview with Midco Sports Network.
“It’d look weird playing in front of 3,500, 4,000 people. It’d look really weird. That may come to be true, but I’m hopeful it’s not,” Self added. “I’m not in on all the latest stuff going on and everything. I’m hopeful we can all gradually get back into this and see our way to resume to a little bit of normalcy. Maybe medicine will catch up (in controlling the virus) faster than what we think.
At the start of the season, games could be played in front of 12,000 empty seats at games. There are just a lot of unknowns right now.
“It is different,” Self conceded.
No projections have yet been announced or released to the public. Athletic director Jeff Long said Wednesday the athletic department has modeled for many scenarios, including 100% capacity at Booth Memorial Stadium and Allen Fieldhouse. Long, however, said KU was still planning for other outcomes that could call for fewer fans than that.
“I mean, look at contingency plans. No fans? Selling season tickets? Do we have a season? Scheduling? There’s a lot of different things going into it. I think it will be real important to have many contingency plans,” Self said.
Self, who has been allowed to return to his campus office, said the situation with the pandemic seems to change every day.
“It’s one of the most fluid things I’ve ever been around,” Self said. ‘What you think it is one day can be totally different the next day, two days or three hours later. I think we’re getting a pretty good grip on how to gradually open the athletic department, how to gradually reopen campus.
“Still, you make all these plans to do it one way and it could blow up in your face the day before. I think you’ve got to have several alternative plans, contingency plans. I think our administration up on ‘the Hill’ and in the athletic department has done a really nice job in being safe and still yet trying to be as aggressive as we possibly can. I think it’s a pretty tough mix right now.”
He said it would be a shame to have the fieldhouse at less than capacity this season.
“It’s going to be a monster,” he said of KU’s schedule, noting his team would be playing Kentucky in the Champions Classic and two of these three teams (UCLA, Georgetown, Virginia) in the Wooden Legacy tourney, plus USC at home, Colorado on the road and 18 games on the Big 12 Conference slate.
“Creighton is going to be a Top 10 team,” he said of the Bluejays, who visit Allen on Dec. 3. “Then you throw Missouri in there, who should be much improved based on their returning players, based on what I’ve heard. Throwing them in there definitely adds a little spice to it. I’d hate to have Missouri and Creighton, those type home games and not play in front of fans. That’d kind of be defeating the purpose. We wanted to bring good teams in to certainly help our season ticket-holders.”
The Missouri game, which will be held Dec. 12 in the Sprint Center, is a KU home game this season on KU’s ticket package.
Self reiterated what he told The Star Monday — that the KU players would likely be returning to town by July 6 in accordance to Big 12 guidelines regarding men’s and women’s basketball. The league will allow players to hold voluntary workouts without coaches starting July 6.
They are currently working out in their respective hometowns.
As far as the KU coaches … “I’ve watched some tape, done a couple (online) clinics,” Self said. “Even breaking down this year’s tape, I haven’t even done that yet. I’m still a little saddened and depressed that we didn’t get a chance to play (in NCAA Tournamet) this year. I’ve kind of taken a step away from it, to be honest with you.
“I’ve got plenty of other things going on at work that can occupy my time. Certainly I’ve learned how to Zoom with the best of them — everybody has I guess across America. It is unbelievable. You can probably get more work done at home because there are less distractions than there are at work because at home there’s nobody around and at work there’s always somebody coming to your office or whatnot. We’ve still been able to get quite a bit done.”
He said the world’s problems are “far greater than a basketball tournament.”
“I’m not hung up on that (not playing in 2020 NCAAs) too much,” he said. “I think I’ll be more hung up on it moving forward when I look back and say, ‘You know what there’s a vacant champion in 2020 and we had the best chance to be it.’ I felt no matter who the other team put on the floor from a perimeter player to an interior player we were going to be better defensively than they were offensively.
“Not that we’d play great all the time, but we could make other teams play poorly. That was a formula for our success, an Eddie Sutton-type team to be honest with you (built on defense). Not that we always looked great offensively (but) you’d look up and we’d win by eight. That’s something our guys would take pride in,” he added of winning grind-it-out games during a 28-3 season.
Self likes team’s GPA
Self said he was impressed with his players for recording a combined 3.21 grade-point average for the spring semester. It is the highest GPA for a semester in the Self era.
“My staff is in touch with them (players) every day with different things, different responsibilities,” Self said. “Academically we finished off our best semester ever. We spent a lot of time via phone and Zoom making sure those guys were in the best position to do well in school.
The 2019-20 second semester at KU started with coursework on campus and online and concluded with all online classes. KU’s players will also take classes online this summer. Summer school at KU is online only for all students in June and July.
Gooden to enter Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
Former KU forward Drew Gooden has been named a member of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020.
Gooden, 38, will be inducted with nine other individuals on Oct. 4 at the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane, Kansas.
Gooden earned first-team all-Big 12 honors in 2001 an 2002 and was a consensus first-team All-American in 2002.
Also in 2002, Gooden, a native of Richmond, California, was the Big 12 Player of the Year, Basketball America National Player of the Year and Co-National Player of the Year by the NABC.
Gooden ranks 21st in scoring (1,526), sixth in rebounds (905) and 18th in blocked shots (107) in KU history. He played at KU three seasons then went on to play 14 years in the NBA. Gooden’s KU jersey was hung in the south fieldhouse rafters in a ceremony in 2003 and he has also been an inducted into the Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame located in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics.
Others in the Hall’s Class of 2020: former K-Staters Jordy Nelson, Terence Newman and Darren Sproles of Olathe, Kym Carter Begal, Casey Blake, Heather Leverington Dotterer, Steve Fritz, Adrian Griffin, Bill Morris.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Uncertainty reigns as Bill Self’s Jayhawks prepare for 2020-21 college hoops season."
