Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - BREAKING: Bill Self Hospitalized with Concerning Symptoms | Kansas Basketball's Future Outlook

Starting point is 00:00:00 some concerning symptoms puts scary news. Obviously, we're going to talk about it and try to break it down as best we can on this bonus episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the

Starting point is 00:00:20 Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network network your team every day. Hey, what's happening? Derek Johnson here. And this is Locked On Jayhawks bonus episode here as Bill Self has been hospitalized. So not fun news there a bit of a somber show today, but we're going to talk about it. What's going on? What is the latest news? We wanted to get that to you. And I guess what does this mean? Thanks for making lock on Jayhawk's your

Starting point is 00:00:48 first listen every day. And thanks for making it anywhere you get your podcast, whether it's on YouTube, anywhere that you get your show on the audio side of things. And again, thank you to every dayers catching each and every episode of the show, including our bonus episodes of the show. We're going to break down the news here, it is inevitable that at some point, you know, things need to be talked about as well. Like, what does this mean long term, so

Starting point is 00:01:13 we're going to try to do a little bit of that here. Even though it feels a little uncomfortable to do that on its own, this probably should just sit as a story. But I guess here we are. So here is the news in case you missed it. This was a release from KU athletics. About Bill self, they said, Kansas men's basketball coach Bill self felt unwell and experienced some concerning symptoms on Thursday. He was transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where he had two stints inserted. The procedure went very well, and

Starting point is 00:01:46 he is expected to make a full recovery. He is in good spirits, spirits and expects to be released from the hospital soon. So all that at the end is obviously very well procedure went well, he's expected to make full recovery in good spirits, you know, expected to be released from the hospital soon. Like that is obviously all good news for Kansas and Bellself. And of course, this comes a couple of years after the 2023. I don't know what the proper term would be for the situation, whatever, that forced him to miss the rest of the Big 12 tournament,

Starting point is 00:02:15 miss the NCAA tournament, where he had some sort of heart issue where he had to go in and I think get a stint done for that specifically. Now, I don't know for sure. Maybe you could connect dots and say, hey, if he had to get a stent for his heart in 2023, maybe you would say, I don't know, does that increase the likelihood that you would just assume that's what it's going to revolve around in 2025? It's not a guarantee though. You can get stents in a lot of different things throughout your body. You can get it for, you know, something as major as your heart with one of your valves. You can get it for, you know, something as major as your heart with one of your valves, you can get it for something as major as like, I think with your brain, like

Starting point is 00:02:48 involving like strokes, you can get it for, I don't want to say minor anytime you're getting a stint anytime you're getting something that is involving opening up opening up what is it like blood vessels or whatever, like obviously, that is a very, I don't know, important to that is a very like scary, I guess situation for you and your family to be in. But there are other parts of like, if you have maybe a blood clot, possibly very dangerous situation, obviously, if you have a blood

Starting point is 00:03:14 clot, blood clot, excuse me, but the recovery from maybe having a blood clot, and then figuring that out and like what your your procedure is, what your, the things you have to do as an outpatient are going to be a little bit different than if you got a stint done because your heart, you know, something to your heart was blocked, right? So there are different kind of levels of this that we don't entirely know like what it all is. And again, the fact that procedure went very well, expected to make full recovery in good spirits, expected to be released from the hospital.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Like that's all great news for Kansas. That's all great news for Bill South. That's all great news for his family. And like I said, I feel bad even doing this. Like we should probably just cut the episode here. Like there's the news, like boom, we're moving forward. At the same point in time, I know you come here for analysis.

Starting point is 00:04:00 I know you might be listening to, okay, what does this exactly mean? And it's one of those things where it's like, Okay, if I wait to talk about what does this mean for a week? Is that okay, but it's not okay, right now? Or is this situation where it's like, like, when is the right time, right to talk about it? Because at some point, we do have to talk about what does this mean? Does it, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:21 handicap how long his coaching career could be at Kansas? Like, where does K you kind of go from here? So I do want to at least touch on that stuff while trying to be as sensitive to the situation as possible and understanding that the most important thing here is that Bill Self is healthy for him, for his family, for his own health. And that is what you're hoping out of all of this and a silly basketball game or who's going to be the coach of the Kansas basketball team, like those sort of things, those can you figure it out later. We're going to talk a little bit about them

Starting point is 00:04:46 because that's what we do here on the show. But that is obviously the most important thing is Bill self healthy for him and his family. So let's let's kind of switch gears and get some of that stuff. This is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for joining us on this episode of locked on Jayhawks. So again, Bill self hospitalized concerning symptoms was the exact quote that was given by Kansas athletics. And then obviously that can be a lot of different things, right?

Starting point is 00:05:12 And obviously it was concerning enough to get a couple stints in there. So a good thing that everything was done in kind of an orderly and timely manner here. So I mean, from a health perspective, obviously this is a huge deal. If we're talking about impact on the basketball season, which, as I said earlier, obviously pales in comparison to his health for him and his family. But this could be something that has no impact on the season, on however long the rest of his coaching career is,

Starting point is 00:05:42 ranging to the extreme of having a severe impact that very much handicaps the rest of Bill Self's coaching career in terms of limiting the amount of years or games coached that there could possibly be. And like I said earlier, part of what makes this difficult is you don't exactly know what the stints are for. You can assume one thing, you can assume something else, but like, there are different sever one thing, you can assume something else, but like there are different severities to you know what this could be. The lower range of severities that he's back on the

Starting point is 00:06:10 sideline ready to go for the start of the season, it has no impact. The other end of severities is that like, and I hate to even like bring this up because this is like the worst case scenario, right? Is there, there has to be at least a non-zero chance, could be 0.01%. I don't know, that like Bill Self has already coached his last game on the sidelines of Kansas. Again, I think that's an unlikely scenario. That's not one that I'm pointing to though. I have no idea.

Starting point is 00:06:33 I'm not looking at the medical charts and nor would I know what I was looking at if I was. But I think the natural question here would be, does this increase the likelihood of early retirement, so to speak for Bill self, there was already some scuttlebutt the right term, I don't know, you know, people discussing could this upcoming season be Bill self's last year at Kansas and I have no idea if there was truth

Starting point is 00:06:57 to that or what I also kind of was someone who you could convince either way that like, if you told me he had so much fun coaching Darren Peterson, he's like, I'm going to come back for another year after that versus, you know, maybe, I don't know, do you see it as like a send off here? I have no idea. Now, if this was if it was a plan to be like, this is going to be my last season, does it speed up that timeline? Or does it cement it? Does it guarantee that that's going to be the situation? I

Starting point is 00:07:22 just can't help but think you go back to the 2023 situation. And obviously, if this is heart related, obviously, the 2023 one was we'll see what this one is. But it's hard for me not to think like about the stresses that a college basketball, I mean, shoot any college coach undergoes just in general, but especially in today's day and age of everything going on, because it's not a situation anymore where you know okay well I'm gonna go take a month off trip during the offseason there is no off season anymore there's constantly you're working on you know the transfer portal you're working on high school recruiting you're working on NIL you're working on raising funds for your NIL for your current players and your future players you're working on oh no this player just came into my locker

Starting point is 00:08:06 room is now asking for, you know, $100,000 more because they think they're better than this other player on the team. And they ended up, you know, talking it out and figuring out that, hey, he's making more than I am. And I want to be making as much if not more than he is, like, there's so much more you have to deal with from a stress level. And then think about the standpoint of like recruiting now where it used to be about maybe this or that. And now it maybe is a bit think about the standpoint of like recruiting now where it used to be about maybe this or that and now it maybe is a bit more about the dollars and cents to where the back and forths

Starting point is 00:08:29 with agents the ups and downs of recruiting the hey they're going to come and then they don't the you know situations of feeling like you got fished a little bit like that's going to happen more often in the current structure and that is very very stressful So you wonder if it does speed things up? Because you can just think it's it's an every day of the year job now And it's very stressful each every probably one of those dates now Even if this is more of a minor thing like I said where he is back coaching the first game of the season It doesn't have an impact there It has to at least get you thinking as an

Starting point is 00:09:05 individual like, hey, this is starting to happen more often now. It at least makes you look in the mirror a little to be like, okay, how long do I want to do this? How long do I have in me? You know, it starts to become more of a question. It's like, would I be better off just not having these stresses and going, you know, living on a beach somewhere and just fishing and then I can watch the occasional college basketball game if I really want to, you know. So to be very, very interesting. Right.

Starting point is 00:09:30 And so I don't know what the impact is. Certainly, this doesn't lengthen the time that you would think he's going to be a head coach. I should also mention, though, I do remember like Coach K went through all sorts of medical stuff over the course of the back, I don't know what, like decade, 15 years of his coaching career at Duke. And he still was bouncing through that stuff. And then he find his way back on the sidelines. So there is no guarantee that this has an impact at all. Like maybe it just revitalizes, I guess, Bill Self, to where he's like, you know, he misses not being out there when he doesn't have the opportunity to do so. But obviously it is a very scary situation and it is one. Certainly it's good news and a good thing for Kansas that the jock Vaughn wound up signing on the dotted line. Let's get to that next.

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Starting point is 00:11:10 so if he does miss any time, Bill Self, that is, if he does miss any time, and even if that's the first few games of the season, nor Roberts, who was the guy who took over for Bill Self in 2023, he's no longer on staff, obviously, right? He retired. So who becomes that guy? I think the automatic answer to me would be Jacques Mon. Now you could say if you're going with senior seniority the guy who's been on the staff the most Curtis Townsend would be that guy But to me it just makes sense to be Jacques Mon in that situation, right? he's former head coach of an NBA team and From a perspective of life after Bill Self like when Bill Self does retire who is gonna be your head coach? You have a bit of an opportunity if that does happen. And again, you don't want it to happen. But if

Starting point is 00:11:47 that does happen, where he he has to miss some games, and somebody else has to coach, it gives you a bit of an auditioning period for what Jacques von can bring to the table, right? I mean, it's not the be all end all we've seen interim coaches come in like Rodney Terry at Texas, take over a talented roster and go to the elite eight. And since then, they haven't, you know, lived up to the talent level that the Texas can bring in and does bring in on kind of a year to

Starting point is 00:12:09 year basis. But it would be a good opportunity to, you know, give you at least more of a sample size of if Jock Vaughn is a future candidate to be the head coach at Kansas. Okay, now it's not just assuming, hey, he was an assistant here. In addition to his NBA stuff. Now you'd also have a little bit more game data to kind of pull off of and go off of. And it's a really good thing that KU has him because not many other schools

Starting point is 00:12:31 would be in a position where it's like, oh, no, our head coach might be in a situation again, maybe it's nothing, maybe Bill Sells back on the sideline as soon as possible. It's not a big deal. But in the the circumstance in the worst case scenario where Bill S Self can't coach, not many other schools have the luxury of saying, hey, the guy we're gonna name our interim head coach, the guy who is one of our top assistants,

Starting point is 00:12:52 was a former head coach at the NBA level, right? You also have Chase Buford, who was a head coach at the G League level in the NBL, the league in Australia, where both those guys were, or in the case of Buford, like he was an award winning head coach at his previous stops, not a lot of other schools necessarily have that luxury that Kansas would had have and certainly it adds

Starting point is 00:13:12 to the intrigue of like the jock von higher and what could possibly come of it. And it obviously makes you think a little bit more about the succession plan post bill self and it makes you think more about, you know, jock von and stuff and whether this is something that we just look back on in five years and bill self still it makes you think more about you know, jock Vaughn and stuff and and whether this is something that we just look back on in five years and bill self still the coach of Kansas and we got man that was cool that he he moved past that was able to get over that or if it's something that

Starting point is 00:13:34 you know we're we're looking at at the end of the year and bill self retires and we're like yeah I get it and you know and now at least we've we've had a little bit of those conversations kind of you, what would be next and what it means for kind of the future and the now of Kansas basketball. But again, let me reiterate, like obviously the most important part here

Starting point is 00:13:52 isn't the basketball, it's Bill Self's health, for him, for his family, and you hope that he's doing all right, and prayers up to Bill Self and his family coming out of this awful news. All right, that'll do it for this bonus episode of Locked on Jayhawks. You can find our show anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page,

Starting point is 00:14:06 or you can like and subscribe to the show. See you next time with LOJ.

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Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - BREAKING: Bill Self Hospitalized with Concerning Symptoms | Kansas Basketball's Future Outlook

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