Self: In spite of pandemic, KU players to head home for holiday in a couple weeks
Kansas’ men’s basketball players, who reported to campus on Aug. 2 and have been focused almost entirely on hoops and classwork since then, will head home for the Dec. 25 holiday in a couple weeks, coach Bill Self said Monday.
“Well, we’re going to let our kids go home for Christmas,” Self, coach of the No. 5-ranked Jayhawks (4-1), reported on his Hawk Talk radio show. “That’s what we are planning on doing,” he added, while fully aware things can change quickly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve thought about so many things. Keeping your players away from family with no break at all during a time where they are almost totally isolated anyway … I’m not sure that would be best for us in February from a morale standpoint,” Self said.
The Jayhawks — they yearly break for three or four days at Christmas — play West Virginia on Dec. 22 at Allen Fieldhouse with the next game set for Jan. 2 against Texas, also in Allen.
Breaking on Dec. 23 would again provide KU’s players a significant amount of time at Christmas with their families and/or guardians or close personal friends.
“I’m not putting any blame on anybody,” Self said Monday, “but you are asking parents and distant family members if they do gather — and of course we’ll ask them not to do these things — if they do gather that everybody be conscientious of each other and certainly the player that went home and (recognize) his risk of exposure.”
So far, Kansas has been able to play all five games on the schedule to open the 2020-21 season entering Tuesday’s 4 p.m. home contest against Creighton.
“We’ve been fortunate so far. I like to say I hope this can continue. There’s a chance it can,” Self said, acknowledging there’s also a chance the Jayhawks could suffer positive cases of COVID-19 and be shut down at any time. KU has not reported positives in men’s basketball since the start of the regular season.
“There’s a few things to think of. First of all, Doc Magee (Larry, team doctor) and Bill Cowgill (trainer) and others in our athletic department, they’ve been terrific,” Self said. “It’s one of those things you do what you can. If you go into our locker room, everything is six-feet apart. If you watch us during timeouts we try to push the chairs all six-feet apart. Every chair is measured on the bench.”
There are additional measures taken to lessen chances of contracting the virus.
“We wear devices (in waistband of shorts) — Exon is what they’re called — that tell us exactly how close we are to everybody — opponents, each other, coaches in the locker room from the time we walk in the locker room basically until the time we leave,” Self said.
According to Forbes.com, “anytime someone wearing a sensor is within six feet of another individual with a Kinexon sensor, a red warning light will emit from both devices to warn the users to step back. If contact persists for five seconds or longer, an alarm sound will play for an additional warning.”
“It helps the contact tracing,” Self said of the Exon device.
As far as other ways of trying to avoid the virus. ...
“We test three times a week on non-consecutive days. We do things such as take the meals to the players’ individual rooms, not to open areas,” Self said, referring to McCarthy Hall, the dorm that houses the Jayhawks players. “We encourage the players to not socialize with each other in the open areas (of their dorm). They have to wear a mask everywhere.”
With players taking a vast majority of their college courses online — KU’s campus was closed to students the day before Thanksgiving until Feb. 1 — KU’s players spend almost all their time in either McCarthy Hall, the practice gym, James Naismith Court in Allen Fieldhouse or the weight room.
“We have as good a bubble situation as anybody in the country with McCarthy Hall,” Self said. “We wear a mask in the locker room and weight room all the time.”
KU senior forward Mitch Lightfoot says he feels safe in the Jayhawks’ dorm.
“I think it definitely has the ability to be a bubble. They made it in a way we can be secluded in a way,” Lightfoot said. “We get our own rooms, our own individual places to live. It’s something we can use to our advantage,”
Strength coach Ramsey Nijem recently explained KU’s weight room setup during a virtual Zoom call with KU fans during the recent “Ladies Night Out” program.
“Goggles and masks are the norm in the weight room,” Nijem said. “We tape off a section and make sure each athlete has their own training space. We try to make sure all our guys stay in their space. One of my biggest jobs is to remind them to pull up their mask and keep the goggles on. There’s hand sanitizer around the facility. When we leave we wipe down all equipment. These are some things we are doing to try to keep them safe and healthy,” Nijem added.
Of course the college basketball season includes road trips.
The Jayhawks already have completed trips to Fort Myers, Florida and Indianapolis in which nobody in the traveling party came down with COVID (although Marcus Garrett did suffer some type of illness in Indianapolis that, according to testing, was not COVID).
Self said the players do the best they can to wear masks and stay socially distanced on the road.
“If we have a team meeting we are required to be six-feet apart minimum. We hold them (meetings) in an auditorium (biggest conference rooms at team hotel) where we can spread out. We hold them in our theatre (at McCarthy Hall). We’ve maxed out what we can do social distancing,” Self said.
He told The Star he believes the team will continue to take one charter flight, not more than one, per road trip, obeying socially distancing guidelines as best they can on the charter planes.
Of an eight-day trip to Florida where KU beat Saint Joseph’s after losing to Gonzaga, Self said: “It was pretty much a normal trip other than no social activities. We wanted to take our guys out on a boat on Saturday (after a practice in Florida), maybe do a little sunset cruise, do anything. We couldn’t do it because of social distancing. We’d have to get three boats I don’t think the school would be very happy with us if we did that,” he added with a smile.
Junior wing Ochai Agbaji said whatever happens this season, the players are committed to safety.
““We talk all the time among the team about being smart, knowing the situation, social distancing when you can, leave any opportunity when there’s any chance (of being around virus), being safe and smart knowing it could have a big effect on our team,” Agbaji said. “We keep focused on school and basketball, things we are actually here for. We all want to play the game we love,” Agbaji added.
Self said he’s not stressed about what could happen this season in terms of game cancellations and extended time off the court if positives turn up.
“I am really not any more than I would be at any other time because I don’t think this is going to be a year you can be worried about everything that potentially can happen because there will be things that can potentially happen all the time,” Self said. “There’s so many things out of our control, (but) I don’t know anybody has done more with their guys than we have.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 8:33 AM with the headline "Self: In spite of pandemic, KU players to head home for holiday in a couple weeks."
