Kansas Jayhawks coach Bill Self feels late father’s presence during Final Four run
The day his long-ailing father suffered a precipitous turn for the worse in January, Bill Self went to see him back in Edmond, Oklahoma. Never mind that this was near where Self’s Kansas team would play two days later.
Because welcome a sight as he was …
“Dad was kind of mad he was visiting him in the hospital so much (that week),” Self’s sister, Shelly, said.
Laughing through her tears after Kansas swamped Miami 76-50 on Sunday at the United Center to advance to the Final Four, she mimicked her father’s voice and added, “‘You’re not going to have them ready. You should be with your team.’”
So Bill Sr. declined his son’s offer to stay longer when he told him he didn’t have to coach on Jan. 18 at OU, telling him, “They pay you to do a job; you’re going to go coach the team.”
A team the father might have thought wasn’t going anywhere special at that point but, as ever, wanted very much to watch.
Even having suffered for years from lung issues (not to mention the cumulative effects of what Self once told me was nearly 20 orthopedic surgeries) and contending with what The Athletic reported was pneumonia and COVID-19 and one way or another arriving at a new tier of agony.
“I remember him telling the doctors, ‘Doc, I can’t do this; I can not do this …’” Self told The Star outside the KU locker room long after the game on Sunday. “‘It’s too hard. I can’t breathe.’”
When the doctor told him he could make it a little longer, Bill Sr.. said, “For what?” Then he remembered.
“‘Oh, yeah, what time’s the game tomorrow?’” Self recalled the father saying.
It’s at 6, the son said.
OK, the father said, “I can definitely make it until then.”
Self mostly smiled and maybe misted up some as he spoke not just of that last visit with his father, who died Jan. 21, but also an abiding sense of his presence since then — including a little halftime chat they had as top-seeded KU trailed 10th-seeded Miami 35-29.
“I don’t want to overplay it, because everybody goes through stuff; everybody’s got situations they go through,” he said. “But I have found myself having more conversations with him as we’ve gotten deeper in the tournament and when the stakes are a little higher. ….
“You know he would be, like, ‘You need to quit worrying about things that don’t matter and go do your job.’ That would be his mindset the whole time.”
As he pondered the feeling of the last few weeks, during which Kansas claimed a Big 12 co-championship, won the Big 12 Tournament and advanced to the fourth Final Four of Self’s career, he added a deeply poignant point.
“His absence has actually made it more special,” he said. “Even though I told him today, I said, ‘I certainly wish you were here.’ ”
That wasn’t the only emotional pinnacle of the day for Self, who after the game promptly made his way to his mother, Margaret, to kiss and hug her before the postgame celebration began in earnest.
That sweet moment was a snapshot of the connection among them all, beautifully chronicled by The Star’s Jesse Newell in January, but also about the fall she took earlier this week that included her head hitting a marble floor.
“We spent Friday night after the game in the hospital …” Self said on the court after the game, noting his sister had been with her for hours and hours overnight and that they felt fortunate there was nothing major. “Friday night was a long night for a lot of reasons.”
Meanwhile, there was the “flip side,” as Shelly noted, using one of her brother’s favorite terms: The fact she’s been able to travel with the team these last couple weeks, attending as many as 10 games or so, after years of largely staying home to help take care of her husband.
Off the top of his head, in fact, Self thinks the last time she had been able to go to games was when they attended the 2018 Final Four.
“Since he passed, she’s been everywhere,” he said. “Which has been a blessing.”
In some way or another, though, his dad has been ever-present in KU’s run, too.
Heck, let’s remember that even the fact he took this job may be a direct reflection of his father’s influence, to say nothing of the infinite other elements of his impact on him.
When Self was debating whether to leave Illinois for KU after the 2003 season, he asked his father if he thought it was a good idea to follow Roy Williams.
“You know what: You probably should stay at Illinois,” the father said in an interview with Newell at their home. “If you’re scared to follow Roy, then that’s probably not the place for you.”
The next day, Self took the job at KU, where he’s 554-124 and will be in pursuit of his second national title when the Jayhawks tip off against Villanova in the national semifinal on Saturday in New Orleans.
That trajectory didn’t seem evident earlier in the season.
But in a certain way, Self can see a parallel track between the ups and downs of the season and the loss of his father.
Citing setbacks such as the 80-62 loss to Kentucky, he said, some of “the biggest gifts we had this year were the hardest things we went through.”
It’s something he can trace back to the K-State game a day after his father died.
“That was an emotional time,” he said. “But, to me, for whatever reason, it seemed like to me we became better during that time, too.”
Kansas was down 17 in the second half before rallying to beat the Wildcats 78-75. Afterward, Self spoke about how the result would have delighted his father because it was “exactly the way he lived — grind-it-out, make the most of every situation even when it doesn’t look good. That means something to me.”
Not that it was smooth ever since, including back-to-back losses at Baylor and TCU down the stretch.
But an obvious grit emerged in this team the last few weeks, including defensive intensity that KU unleashed in the second half as it outscored Miami 47-15 and held the Hurricanes to six-of-28 shooting.
Along the way to that turnaround, Self said he spoke with his dad “more today than I have in a while” and at halftime found himself saying, “Hey, Dad, we’re here. What do you think?”
Whatever he said back, Self must have been reassured. He actually was calm with a team that his dad would have come to love.
“I know that if he were here he would be having more fun than anybody else,” Self said.
Even as he again thought of how singular his presence is in his absence.
“It’s also,” he added, “made it more special.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2022 at 8:00 PM.