Why KU Jayhawks coach Bill Self won’t sleep on Cal Baptist star Dominique Daniels
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- Bill Self watched tape and noted their strong defense, perimeter scorers.
- Dominque Daniels Jr. averages 23.2 PPG and is the team’s offensive engine.
- Cal Baptist is No. 50 in adjusted defense, with a slow offense in a seven-team league.
Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball coach Bill Self has watched plenty of tape over the past several days of California Baptist, his team’s first-round foe in the NCAA Tournament.
Overall, he came away pretty impressed.
“They are very well coached and good defensively, “ Self said Wednesday after the Jayhawks touched down in San Diego ahead of Friday’s first-round matchup. “They’ve got multiple guys that can score on the perimeter, but they’ve got one guy that maybe is as good at getting his own shot as we’ve gone against this year.
“He can go get it. We will have to do good job on him and their other guys are good players.”
The player Self is referring to is Lancers senior star Dominique Daniels Jr. He’s averaging 23.2 points and 3.7 rebounds per game. He’s essentially the offensive engine for Cal Baptist, shooting 43.2% from the field (32.8% on 3-pointers).
The Jayhawks are set to play the Lancers at 8:45 p.m. Friday Central Time at Viejas Arena. KU is a 14.5-point favorite.
A 5-foot-10 guard, Daniels can score from any spot on the floor and made All-WAC second-team for this season despite missing 10 games. He scored at least 30 points in three games, dropping 41 on Utah Tech in the WAC Tournament semifinals.
Daniels helps carry an offense that isn’t great by most metrics. Cal Baptist runs a slow attack that ranks No. 302 nationally in effective field goal percentage (48.1%) and No. 278 in turnover percentage (18.1).
Like KU, defense is the Lancers’ calling card. Cal Baptist ranks No. 50 in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency (101.9), which measures number of points allowed per 100 possessions. The Lancers also play in a unique league.
There’s only seven teams, so scheduling is different than typically seen in other conferences.
“They play each other three times,” Self said. “I’ve never seen that before. ... (T)here’s only seven teams, so they’ve got to get to enough games. But depending on where you play, the best teams twice would be an advantage, and they finished a game out (of first place in the standings) in large part because they had the disadvantage.
“They didn’t lose at home. They are 15-0 at home. They’re capable. They’re more than capable.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2026 at 8:21 PM.
