KU coach Bill Self discusses starting lineup for Saturday’s Senior Day game
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bill Self plans to start five seniors, including walkons Wilder Evers and Justin Cross.
- Self must choose one of Jayden Dawson or Gee Ngala for the final starting spot.
- Senior Day focus on players’ tenure and team performance against Kansas State.
Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball coach Bill Self is planning on starting five seniors, including walk-on players Wilder Evers and Justin Cross, in Saturday’s Senior Day game against Kansas State.
Self made that known during Wednesday’s “Hawk Talk” radio show. Tipoff is 1 p.m. Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.
Regular Kansas starters Tre White and Melvin Council Jr. figure to fill two of the remaining three spots for sure, meaning Self will need to choose between one of two additional seniors — non-rotation players Jayden Dawson and Gee Ngala — for the final slot.
Self, the Jayhawks’ 23rd-year coach, and his predecessor, Roy Williams, have made it a KU tradition to start all seniors on Senior Day most years.
“This particular group is more about Wilder and Justin than it is even Melvin and Tre, in my opinion, because they’ve been here the longest,” Self said. “Wilder’s been here four years, and Justin’s been here three. Both have got their degrees from here and have sacrificed a lot and been great teammates here for the time in which they’ve been here.
“So I’m excited for them, and I’m planning on starting those guys.”
Evers is a 6-foot-4 guard from Birmingham, Alabama, and Cross is a a 6-8 forward from Oak Park, Illinois. Evers has scored three points while playing 11 total minutes in five games this season. Cross has not scored while playing eight minutes.
Dawson, a 6-5 guard who transferred to KU from Loyola of Chicago for his final season of college basketball, has averaged 2.2 points in 22 games. Ngala, a 5-10 guard from Montreal, Quebec in Canada, has scored 16 total points while playing 35 minutes in 10 games.
Council and White have started all 30 games for No. 14-ranked KU (21-9, 11-6 Big 12).
“The bad thing is one senior can’t start, so we’ll have to sub him (a sixth) in, but I look forward to seeing them,” Self said. “Of course, Tre and and Melvin have been great this year in their one year here. They’ve just been fabulous. We couldn’t ask for them to have better years, I don’t think, than what they’ve had. And Jayden hadn’t had a chance to play a lot, but he’s been a nice addition, and a great teammate. Then Gee obviously hasn’t played a lot, but he came in and he’s done exactly what we asked him to do when we brought him in — be an unbelievable practice player, and he’s done that.
“Six great kids, but certainly one of the great things about college, in my opinion, is you get to see the kids grow up right before your very eyes in so many instances. Even if they’re great players they may leave before they grow up, but it’s still they’re yours.
“And in the portal now, kids are coming in and they’re really not yours because they’ve been at other places first and then they are only going to be here for a year, maybe two at the most. So I think it’s a little bit harder for our fans to get connected to the guys.
“But there’s some guys that are just different and I think that Melvin, as much as anybody, has connected to our fans in a way that we could have never anticipated before he got here: personality, energy and joy. It’s contagious. And I think he’s rubbed off on us, and we have rubbed off on him, which is a really good thing.”
Self was asked by “Hawk Talk” host Brian Hanni if he had determined the fifth starter for the game against the Wildcats — who will start alongside White, Council, Evers and Cross.
“I’ll keep that to myself for right now, because I could change my mind,” Self said. “I think with Roy (Williams), one year he put six out there to start (the game) knowing he was going to get a technical and he got a technical which is fine if you’ve got Pierce and Vaughn and LaFrentz and Pollard and all those cats out there, too. I think that’s fine. We will not start the game out that way. We’ll start five. But I do want those guys to actually get an opportunity to be out there early in the game.”
K-State enters the 2025-26 regular season’s final Sunflower Showdown with a 12-18 record, 3-14 in the league.
“The most important thing is we’ve got to play well. We got to get back to playing well and beat K-State,” Self said. His team has lost four of its last six. “I’m all for Senior Day and having it be a fun day for the guys and their families. I’m a lot more so for us playing well. Them playing and starting hopefully adds to us playing well because the energy level will be pretty good.”
The game Self was referring to in the Williams era was a season-ending 78-58 victory over Kansas State to conclude the 1996-97 regular season. KU coach Williams had Joel Branstrom, Scot Pollard, Jacque Vaughn, B.J. Williams, Jerod Haase and Steve Ransom take the court before the opening tip to the roar of the fieldhouse crowd.
Ransom and Branstrom exited right before the jump ball with junior Raef LaFrentz remaining to start with Pollard, Vaughn, Williams and Haase.. Roy Williams wanted to make sure LaFrentz started every game of his college career. The refs by the way did not assess a technical foul to KU for trying to start six players since Williams waved the walkons off before the actual tip.
Self said he “assumed so” when asked if all six seniors on the 2025-26 roster would speak to the fans after the game.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do that but I do know there will be a time limit on everybody,” Self said.
Council has said he’d like to come back for a second season at KU if he could get another year of eligibility. There have been some cases in the court system that could ultimately give players another year. Self is not expecting relief from the courts.
“I was wishing that all the kids (throughout the country) won their lawsuits, so that way we would get Melvin and Tre back. But obviously that’s not the case,” Self said. “By rule, it’s time for it’s time for everybody to move on by the way the rule is now.
“But the way that people have been appealing the rule, if you had a judge say, ‘No, we see it as the way that these kids see it (wanting to play another year),’ then that would open up doors for for guys to be there longer. But obviously that hasn’t happened yet.”
