‘Happy New Year’: KU basketball coach Bill Self discusses his scary fall at gas pump
For Bill Self, the year 2025 started on a rather unsettling note.
Self, Kansas’ 22nd-year basketball coach — whose Jayhawks fell to West Virginia 62-61 on New Year’s Eve at Allen Fieldhouse — suffered a nasty fall while filling his car with fuel at a West 6th Street gas station in Lawrence on the morning of New Year’s Day.
Self, in explaining the incident on his Thursday Hawk Talk radio show, indicated there was so much blood in the immediate aftermath of his off-balance face-plant, it resembled a “crime scene.”
After grabbing some paper towels near a windshield washer-fluid container, he drove back to his West Lawrence residence — not the hospital — to stop the bleeding and ice his face to cut down on swelling.
Self is OK and in fact had the Jayhawk players in the fieldhouse for six hours of film session and practice on Thursday as the team regroups ahead of Sunday’s 3 p.m. game against UCF in Orlando, Florida.
“It was bleeding profusely,” Self told Hawk Talk host Brian Hanni of his face, noting that he had his wallet in one hand and trash in another when he stumbled over the fuel-pump’s hose while trying to get to a garbage can.
“The first thing to hit the ground was my face,” Self explained. “I’m thinking all my teeth are knocked out.”
He was pleased to run his tongue over his teeth and learn that the dental implants he’d recently had inserted by local doctor and friend Justin Anderson had survived the frightening fall.
“They (implants) are as strong as titanium. They are tougher than concrete. A semi truck could run over them and not break them,” Self said of his front teeth.
There were no broken bones, either, so aside from a few scratch marks and swelling of his upper lip, Self survived the incident without stitches.
“I go to work the next day (Thursday) with Band-aids across my face. I told the staff, ‘Nobody better laugh at me,’’’ Self said on Hawk Talk.
“The moral of the story, long story short, is as you get older (he’s 62) don’t take for granted doing pedestrian-type things because you get in a hurry and do stuff and end up paying for it when you get in a hurry. I could have taken my time and looked at the deal and stepped over it (pump) but, ‘No, let’s be in a hurry and throw trash away so you can stay in the cold the same amount of time.’
“It was not very bright. It was not a great New Year’s in that regard, but we find out later on what happened on Bourbon Street (tragedy in New Orleans) and then you realize how good we all have it. (Yet) it was not the most fun 24 hours. Happy frickin’ New Year.”
Self spent the rest of the hour-long Hawk Talk show discussing KU’s first conference-opening loss in 34 years. The defeat on New Year’s Eve came at home against a West Virginia team that was missing two of its top three scorers.
“Let me answer the first question: I’m still (ticked), OK? We all are,” Self said. “That can get the first question out of the way.
“The thing that bothers me more than anything is why?” Self said of the sub-par KU effort, which included the Jayhawks scoring just 20 points in the first half and falling behind by 15 after 10 minutes.
“No energy. No enthusiasm. Little personality, if any,” Self said. “No sense of urgency when we are playing the first game of the conference season, and everybody knows intensity will be ramped up and we are playing a team responsible for creating a negative start to our conference season last year and they kicked our butt (in Morgantown, 91-85, in the fifth game of the 2023-24 conference season).
“How can you not be ramped up? With the students not there there’s still not an empty seat in the house. That to me is a situation … that stuff bothers me. It is ‘Why, why?’’’
Self said the Jayhawks, who are 9-3 this season, had held great practices since returning from Christmas vacation.
“You preach your team to be tough. I’m not sure ‘message received,’ or is it being delivered in a proper way?” Self said. “I do think there are some things from a teaching standpoint and a player standpoint we need to definitely be a lot better than what we were and maybe different methods to put us in position to be better than what we were because, ‘Message (is) not being received.’
“I know in the six hours we were together (Thursday) there was a better chance hopefully message being received a little better. We built a camp fire and passed around cookies and had a ‘kumbaya’ experience for six hours today.”
Self didn’t discuss any possible lineup changes or minutes distribution for Sunday’s game against an UCF squad that’s 10-2 overall and is off to a 1-0 start in league play after defeating Texas Tech on 87-83 on Tuesday in Lubbock, Texas.
Instead he listed some intangibles KU needs in order to win.
“I could list energy, enthusiasm, leadership, poise, toughness, trust, attention to detail. I could list a lot of things I think would be important to us winning,” Self said. “There are things we need to tighten up. Every team we’ve had goes through stuff like that.”
He said the 20-game conference season “will be a long journey but a part of the journey is you realize it’s going to be difficult especially difficult away from home. You have to take advantage when you have home opportunities. We already failed (at home) once. Does that mean the season is lost? Gosh no. No reason to push a panic button.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2025 at 8:22 PM with the headline "‘Happy New Year’: KU basketball coach Bill Self discusses his scary fall at gas pump."
