KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Coach Bill Self has spent a lot of time with his team this season, certainly more time than should be necessary. But that’s expected when many of your players entangle themselves in off-the-court troubles.
Away from the basketball court, he has counseled them to be good. In late-night talks, he has begged them to stay focused. In one instance, when the freshman star Josh Jackson was questioned by the police in December about the possibility that he damaged a car belonging to a Kansas women’s basketball player, Self was right there in a study room of the basketball player’s dorm, at Jackson’s side.
It also happened to be 5:46 a.m., on a Thursday in early December, not exactly the normal meeting time for a coach and a player.
Self, who is in his 14th season coaching at Kansas, likely had better things to do that morning. But his team — which is the No. 1 seed in the Midwest and on Thursday will play No. 4 Purdue in the round of 16 — has demanded more than just Xs and Os and motivational speeches from him. And he has given more.
Continue reading the main storyYet he wants to talk about it less. On Wednesday, he deflected a question about what it has been like for him to deal with players’ behavior problems in a season when the Jayhawks could win it all. Yet he should know that if the Jayhawks keep winning, those questions will keep coming.
“I couldn’t be prouder,” Self said at a news conference. “And I’m proud of how they’ve handled everything.”
There has been a lot to handle. Just in the last few months, too.
Here’s a quick list:
On Jan. 25, The Kansas City Star reported that the University of Kansas police were investigating a possible rape of a 16-year-old in the dormitory where the basketball players, and other male students, live. Five players were listed as witnesses — Frank Mason III, Mitch Lightfoot, Lagerald Vick, Tucker Vang and Jackson — subjecting Self to a crash course on criminal justice.
“From what I have learned,” Self said, “a witness can be many things,” including someone who might or might not have even been at the scene of the crime.
During that rape investigation, the police found two glass smoking devices, one with residue, in the junior forward Carlton Bragg Jr.’s dorm room and charged him with possession of drug paraphernalia. Bragg was suspended indefinitely from the team. Indefinitely, as in three whole games.
At the end of January, The Star again reported bad news for the Jayhawks. A university investigation found that Vick, a sophomore guard, most likely hit a female student in the arm multiple times in 2015 and kicked her in the face. The report recommended two years of probation for Vick for committing domestic violence. Two years of probation, but he continued to play basketball.
Then in March, McKenzie Calvert, the player whose car Jackson is accused of damaging, said she was temporarily suspended because of the incident involving Jackson, and that her subsequent playing time decreased dramatically. She said it bothered her that Jackson did not receive similar punishment.
At the Big 12 tournament this month, Jackson was suspended for the first game, but not for the car incident. Instead, he was punished for backing into a car on campus without telling the police and then getting three tickets in connection with the incident. At that tournament, Self praised his team for playing through all the distractions.
Self explained himself some more last week, saying his players took responsibility for what happened and have since moved on.
“It’s not easy to have your name across the ticker each and every day about something when somebody keeps bringing up an additional thing or two when we already know this took place a long — quite a while ago,” he said of incidents that, actually, didn’t take place all that long ago.
His players also have gone out of their way to keep their season from being irreparably stained. Several said on Wednesday they had a meeting before the N.C.A.A. tournament to remind themselves to just keep their heads down and play. Focusing on basketball meant talking only about basketball.
Jackson said, “A lot of guys on our team made mistakes, I have as well,” and that Self “has done a great job” in keeping the team from being distracted by its off-the-court issues.
Vick said he considers Self to be just like a father because he protects the players and teaches them to simply do their jobs. Bragg said Self teaches them “so many off-the-court lessons.”
“Like how to be a man,” Bragg said. “Little things. How to talk to people. How to give handshakes. Just the little things.”
When asked if the team had learned a lesson from all of this season’s problems, Bragg said: “I don’t really want to go into that. No comment.”
The silence was all part of Self’s plan. He wanted his team to rally around Jackson, and it has. He asked his team to forget about the past, and it has, at least for these next few weeks.
He said his team is aware of what’s going on when it comes to its problems outside basketball, but is trying to look at the big picture. That picture features a basketball court and a shiny trophy.
“I think it’s just, sometimes, families go through stuff and you just gotta put blinders on and go at the job at hand,” Self said last week. “And I think they’ve kind of found their basketball court as their safe haven.”
Until they have to head to another kind of court.
Jackson’s next court date in the property-damage incident was supposed to be Monday. But within the past week, according to a clerk at the Lawrence Municipal Court, that date was changed to April 14.
After the basketball season is over.
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