Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - SUCCESSION PLAN | If Bill Self Has One More Year, Where Could Kansas Look for its Next Head Coach?

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Who will succeed Bill Self as Kansas Jayhawks basketball coach? Recent health concerns spark succession speculation and IF this were Self's final season, how would that affect the crop of candidates for KU Athletic Director Travis Goff?Derek Johnson analyzes top candidates to potentially replace the legendary Jayhawks leader. From external options like Nate Oats at Alabama, Matt Painter at Purdue, Dusty May at Michigan and Tommy Lloyd at Arizona and more to internal possibilities like Jacque Vaughn, Johnson breaks down each coach's strengths and fit. The discussion covers rising stars, established veterans, and dark horse contenders who could take the reins in Lawrence.Will Kansas look outside or promote from within? Listen for an in-depth exploration of the program's future and the coaches who could shape it.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!5-Hour ENERGYTime to fuel up and turn it up with 5-hour ENERGY®️ Transfusion! Go to https://5hourenergy.com today and use my promo code LOCKEDONGOLF to receive 20% off your order. This offer is only valid until September 30th on one order and cannot be used with other promotions. The code is not good on subscription orders.  GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE at www.monarchmoney.com/lockedoncollege for 50% off your first year.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

Bill Self's latest health scare certainly has, I'm sure, Travis Goff thinking, do I have that succession plan ready? So we're going to break down what should that succession plan look like? Who's a short list of candidates if this were to be Bill Self's final season at Kansas? You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast podcast network your team every day. What's going on Derek Johnson here at D Johnson radio on Twitter and this is locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day.

Thank you to the everydayers catching each and every episode of the show. Thank you to every dayers who stop by if you see me out and about in public and let me know shout out Pete, you know, and let know listen to the show. We really do appreciate it from our end of things because this would be nothing without you guys. Anyway, on today's edition of the show, Anywhere You Get Your Podcast or on our YouTube page, we're going to be talking post succession planner, I guess, for Bill Self whenever his career is over. And you know, specifically we're going to talk about what if this is Bill Self's final season. Maybe it's not. Maybe the health will be great and maybe Bill Self will be able to coach another

seven seasons and Kansas will win a couple more national title for him. That would be great. Right. But what if it is what would be that succession plan? Who are a short list of candidates for Travis Goff to have right now? Today's episode of the show is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLege for $20 off your first purchase with Game Time. Okay, so we're going to start off with some of our top candidates.

We'll get into some of the internal higher possibilities, our kind of dark horse second-tier candidates. We'll get to all that. I'm going to start this off by saying again, obviously you hope that this is not Bill Self's final season and the reason you hope that's not the case is because Bill Self is literally the greatest coach in KU basketball history.

And yes, I say that knowing the history, knowing Roy Williams, knowing Fogg Allen, knowing what some of these coaches accomplished. Bill Self is the best coach in KU basketball history. And so from that standpoint, like, yes, I want Bill Self to be coaching longer. From the health standpoint, if he's coaching longer, that probably means his health is good to go.

And also, you know, you look at the health situation that just happened, like, it obviously is a scary thing anytime you're dealing with a heart, but it also is a, again, I don't want to say routine situation you get stints in, but it's not a, again, I don't want to say routine situation you get stints in, but it's not the same as, you know, I don't want to compare medical procedures, but it's not the same as some other things, right? To where like there are people, I'm sure,

who get stints done in their heart and then they are able to work for another five, 10 years. They're able to have a relatively normal life after that, right? So there is no guarantee that this has some sort of impact, but there was already, you know, talking people saying, okay, would this be Bill Self's last season in Kansas? He just wants to coach Darren Peterson, then it's gonna be done, then the health thing happens.

It's at least important to have the discussion, is this going to be Bill Self's last season? And if it is, are you prepared? Do you have a short list ready in case that does happen? And again, in the situation where he ends up coaching five more seasons, then great. But it's good to at least have that plan in place should something like that happen. And I did a show earlier this off season talking about the top coaching candidates that I would kind of have for a post-Bill Self world.

I think it's a slightly different conversation. Thank you, David Ayers, if you already caught that one. But I do think it's a slightly different conversation. Thank you, David Ayers, if you already caught that one. But I do think it's a slightly different conversation. Should it be the final season of Bill Self versus just having that short list of candidates ready? Because the short list of candidates having them ready for any point in time is different than saying, this would possibly be something that we need for next year. The

coaching candidates are different. There's a certain level of you can project out like, for instance, we're gonna talk about this guy later in the show. But like Ben McCollum, who was just the head coach of Northwest Missouri State, the Drake now he's the head coach at Iowa. That's a little tougher to maybe hire that guy unless he knocks it out of the park and his first and well then that boy be his only year at Iowa, as opposed to if you're doing a, okay, we don't know, Bill self could retire in five years, Ben McCollum could have five years

to, you know, show what he can do at Iowa, versus saying, okay, maybe it's just one year. So it's a little bit of a different situation. With that said, as we go over these coaches, like, probably the oldest I would want from a new coach would be mid 50s. And that might be stressing it. Like, ideally you want somebody in the 40s or something like that. But if it's a really good coach, like early 50s, mid 50s, you can work with that because then you at least figure, OK, that could be 10 to 15 years if you retire when you're 60, when you're 65.

And, you know, some guys are going to do it till they're 70. I do care about style of play. Like, I know Tony Bennett's no longer thing in college basketball, but like, I wouldn't have wanted Tony Bennett because the style of play would have been kind of boring. Like basketball is entertainment at a certain point in time. So like, can you be a fun style of play and winning basketball games?

Obviously people care about winning the most, but like, yeah, it'd be nice for it to be, you know, a fun style of play as well. And so knowing all that, my top tier of realistic hires, right? If we want to say unrealistic games, sure, I'll throw Brad Stevens out there. How much money can you raise for Brad Stevens to come back to the college game? But we're talking realistic hires and realistic hires.

My top tier. I have four guys in this tier. No specific order on these guys, but Nate Oates is one of them. He's 50 years old. He's gotten Alabama to the second weekend four times, including two Elite eights and a final four. So you're talking he has some deep tournament runs, which that's not a requirement for me. I would like my guy to have some deep tournament runs in there.

But like Bill Self, for instance, yeah, he had some deep tournament runs, took Tulsa to the Elite eight, like Illinois had some second weekends in there with Bill self, but he didn't have the final four yet so I guess the final four part is probably not the requirement I'd like him at least to Ken Palm dates back to 1997. They have zero from 1997 until Nate Oats. They have zero Ken Palm top 10 finishes. They have three with Nate Oats. And that's important to look at too. Like have you raised the level of the program? Maybe there's a guy who, I don't know who the example of this would be

off the top of my head, but like somebody who's been in a program who's done well, but like the program's always done well. It's another thing when you've done that and raised the level of the program. And then going back to the style of play, we know Alabama, fun style of play, top 15 in tempo.

They play fast, they're gonna shoot a lot of threes. It's a modern style of basketball. He's an analytics guy. So yeah, Nato's would be a good hire. The one thing kind of going against him would be all the kind of off the court stuff that was happening and really the Brandon Miller days, but feels like we're starting to

move past that and get further away from it. And it feels like that hasn't been something where it's not like with Georgia football where it's like every year there's a new guy getting pulled over for speeding. In fact, it was a one off thing that bad very bad, very bad what happened to like, you know, I think that'll be stomachable, so to speak. That's not a word, but we're gonna make it one for people. Tommy Lloyd, he's also 50 years old.

And this is one that I get a little more pushback than when I bring up, oh, it's like, I still think people think Tommy Lloyd is a good coach, but like, I think there's a little more pushback. He's been a top four seed every year in the NCAA tournament. You know, that was something that Bill Self did until this last year.

He's yet to have that like really deep run that we talked about, like doesn't have the final four, but he does have three sweet 16. So he's consistently making it to the second weekend. He just hasn't cracked through. And I would like to think that the NCAA tournament is kind of odd and random as it can be. Like you keep getting to sweet 16s,

eventually you're gonna break through and make that final four run. And it kind of does remind me a little bit there of Self not having a final four till that 08 season that he finally broke through. But Tommy Lloyd has consistently had good teams at Arizona. He has been top 50 in tempo every year. So they're consistently playing fast and they've been top 11 on offense every

season, all four of his seasons as a head coach. So they're entertaining. They play good offense. They play a lot of like, it's a little bit of Roy Williams basketball, where you're going to have big men really running the floor well. And I think Tommy Lloyd is known as being a really nice guy, really being a really good dude. He's also really good with international recruiting, which I think in this new age that we're seeing in college basketball is going to be very important. So I'm certainly a big Tommy Lloyd guy, Todd golden.

Now, does this one because he just won a national title at Florida? Does this one move to the unrealistic category, you know, where it's like he doesn't want to leave now because he has shown, OK, I can win the title. The way I always view it is like like Chris Beard left Texas Tech for Texas. That was after he went to a national title game and you're sitting there going, well, why would you leave for Texas? You just showed you can go to a national title game at Texas Tech.

The idea to me isn't the ceiling. That's not why you leave the program, right? If you're already at a power school, you don't leave to another power school for the ceiling. You can win a title. I think pretty much any power school, if you have the right mix and stuff. The difference is the floor, right? Year in and year out. It's easier to have an elite team at Kansas or Texas than it is year in and year out at Texas Tech, for instance, right?

But the ceiling season at Texas Tech can be just as good as any of those other schools. So you leave for the floor. So maybe that's what Todd Golden could see, right? But he's only 40 years old. San Francisco only has one NCAA tournament since 1999. It was under Golden. So it's not just this one season. Now, you do want to see another year of like good stuff. Like if Todd Golden, if Florida goes out this year and gets a sixth seed and you'd be sitting there going, okay, listen, he had the unbelievable team that won the title run, but it also took some weird things happening and he hasn't had another team be a top five seed. That might start to make you question, is he on the same tier as Oates and Lloyd in this conversation and the next guy we're going to get to, even though he would have the title, that would be an interesting discussion.

But right now he's definitely in that top tier and the younger guy, also the off the court kind of stuff with kind of some weird stuff going on, but it was dismissed, cleared away. So I don't know. And then Matt Painter, who is 54 years old. This one might get a little bit of pushback because I think people certainly think of Purdue

as underperforming consistently in the NCAA tournament. But think about this now. So Matt Painter, 54 years old, also a little bit older than some of those guys. So that would be a knock against him. And honestly, I was prepared to have Matt Painter in tier two. And then I started going over the resume

when I was doing research for the show. And I bumped him to tier one because here's why. Nine straight NCAA tournaments with a top five seed. I mean, again, we love the consistency with Bill Self doing that. Do we realize Matt Painter has had 9 straight tournaments with a top 5 seed in the NCAA tournament? He's done it 12 times now overall at Purdue and he's had 6 times at the top 3 seed and now the big question of okay, he didn't have those deep runs at

Purdue, think about dating back to 2019. He has the Elite 8 where honestly they probably should have beat Virginia and then you're at least in the final four if not, who knows, maybe you could win it all that year with as hot as Carson Edwards was. So you have the deep run with the Elite Eight there that you lose to the title winner. You have the 2024 National runner-up season where if you don't have an all-time great team like that UConn team was, there's probably a good chance that Zach Eady and Perdue are cutting down the nets and he would have a national title. And then last year even, you make it to the Sweet 16 and you almost upset Purdue in the

Sweet 16, right? And since 2018 too, if we're talking about style of play, and by the way, he's had six other trips to the Sweet 16, but since 2018, six top 15 offenses, and he typically runs one of the smoothest offenses in the country and he's used to being in the Midwest, I think Matt Painter would be a great hire for KU. So those are my tier one guys. We still got to get to tier two and talk about the internal hire stuff. Obviously, Jacque Vaughn would have a possibility, but Bill Self actually gave some comments about this, of if Kansas should hire in the family, so to speak, on a recent podcast. So we're going to discuss that coming up next.

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get your energizing boost you need to power through. Order Transfusion flavored 5hourenergy shots today. you need to power through order transfusion flavored five hour energy shots today. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks. Don't forget you can check out Lockdown College football or Lockdown College basketball for a second listen every day. All right. The next part of this is the possible internal hire right? Jock von is the guy who's on staff like that's obviously

the the interesting one here. But Bill Self was actually asked about this. And this is was actually asked about this. And this is how I feel about it. So I'm glad Bill Self said it because it pretty much sums up how I feel about this. So he was on a recent podcast with John Rothstein. And the question that John Rothstein asked directly, he said, whenever you're done coaching,

is it important for you that your successor has ties to Kansas? Bill Self sat there and thought about it for a little bit. And then he said the quote, I hope we hire the best guy that gives Kansas the best chance to have the best basketball future moving forward. Would I love for that guy to be one of my guys?

Absolutely. Or have ties to Kansas? Absolutely. In a perfect world, yes. At the end of the day, if that guy has ties, fantastic. If that guy doesn't have ties, get the best guy that can hopefully take this program even to another level.

And he also later said in that same, I guess, response answer, the reality of it is you don't do that at the expense of taking a step backwards. So it's pretty much the same thought process I have. Again, if the guy ends up, if the best candidate happens to be a Kansas Jayhawk or some sort of coaching tie with Bill Self, awesome. Then it worked out just great.

But it doesn't have to be. If the best candidate has no Kansas ties, hey, guess what, Bill Self didn't have Kansas ties. Okay, I guess he did GA one season. Bill Self didn't really have Kansas ties, right? That worked out OK. Roy Williams didn't really have Kansas ties. That worked out OK, right?

Now, one of the other interesting parts of that response, he said, right now, I think I've got a guy or two on my staff that would be fantastic. But timing is everything. Couple of reasons of looking at that. The timing is everything. What does that mean? Does that indicate, is that indicative of, this could be Bill Self, you know,

from his perspective, his last season, and he's going, I don't know if the timing's gonna work in Jock's favor, because like, if I was gonna be the head coach for the next three to four years, and Jock would have, you know, multiple years to really get the swing of things, timing would have been great for him.

But he's going, hey, if this is going to be my last year, is Jock Vaughn really going to have enough time to soak everything in in one year to be the maximum candidate possible? I don't know. But also him saying, you know, a guy or two on the staff, that would be fantastic. Now, is that just Bill Self covering his bases

to make the staff happy, happy to be like, yeah, I have one guy on my staff who makes sense. And then everybody's like automatically. Oh, okay. He's talking jock Vaughn and then if you're one of the other coaches, you're like, do you not think highly of me? You know, cuz you're like, that's the obvious candidate. So, maybe you say two guys just to just to make people happy or is it cuz he thinks that a guy like Curtis Townsend or I think the guy that makes

sense here is Chase Buford. Does he think a guy like Chase Buford has the coaching chops a guy like Chase Buford has the coaching chops to do it? Maybe he does. Maybe that would be a real candidate for KU Beyond Jockvon if you're looking internally for the guys right now. And so, if they do all the interviews and part of what makes it hard with Jockvon, like it's easy for me to look at Nate Oates

or Tommy Lloyd or Pat Painter and be like, hey, they just did this this season. They went 28 and seven. You know, they had the number eight offense in the country or they have 10 straight NCAA tournament, whatever, second round of pure whatever. You know, it's easy to look at a resume. You can't really do that with Jacques Vaughn. Like, yes, you can look at his resume from the NBA.

It's not the best resume, but it's like it's the NBA. The fact that you even have a head coaching job in the NBA, it's not the best resume, but it's like, it's the NBA. The fact that you even have a head coaching job in the NBA, there's only 30 of those jobs, which is the best basketball teams in the world. And also in the NBA, your success and failure, like, yes, they're certain. Like the elite of the elite coaches in the NBA, like your Eric Spolstra's, sure, they lift the floor, but they still have like Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler half the time. Greg Popovich, one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time. They didn't have the talent, you know, before Victor Webinama came in

for a couple of years and like they were one of the worst teams in the NBA. So like very much in the NBA, your success and failure is going to ride on. What star players do you have? What is your roster look like? So like it's hard to even look at that. And then beyond that, it's hard to say, okay, I know Nate Oates did this this season, or like, I know he, you know, he brought in this transfer and he helped him to have success

because of his system or whatever. Again, it's hard to be like behind, like we don't get to see behind closed doors. How is Jacques Vaughn impacting practice? How do the players, how do the other coaches feel like he's impacting practice and impacting scouting reports and impacting recruiting? And that's something that Travis Goff and the other coaches feel like he is impacting practice and impacting scouting reports and impacting recruiting? And that's something that Travis Goff and the other coaches

will have a better idea and the players than we do. So it's like, from that standpoint, I would be willing to trust if, you know, if that's how Travis Goff felt, and Travis Goff has done so well hiring coaches, though I do find it interesting, Travis Goff, all of the, like, coaching hires he's made have been sitting coaches at other schools. He likes guys with head coaching experience. But I do find it at least interesting that like if and maybe that would be even more trust.

If Travis Goff hired Jack Vaughn to be the head coach, maybe that's even more trust that like, hey, he bucked the trend to hire this guy and he gets to see behind closed doors better than we do about all those things he's doing well. So from that standpoint, I've always said, like to me, it would be a B higher. Like my A hires would be those guys in tier one. A B higher is still passing grade. A B higher, you still get a 3.0 GPA. Like that's gonna make it work out for you, right?

And it could still work. I just don't think it would be the sexiest hire in the world. So it is something that I acknowledge. There would be a lack of, I guess, like knowledge on our end of things, but that would kind of be the one. Now maybe if Bill Self were to be another seven years, like if Brett Ballard pulled a Ben McCollough

or an Aaron Miles got into college coaching or something. But like, I think right now, the only guy that I'm really looking at as a logical candidate with Kansas ties would be Jacque Fawn to be a head coach. And I'm not ruling it out at all. I definitely think it's possible. I've always heard that the athletic department

really liked Jock Vaughn. I also randomly would hear like Buzz Williams for the future after Bill Self, but I definitely think it's something that would make sense. I just, again, to me, tier one is the guys I want to go to the most. I get the Jock Vaughn thing and I'd be cool with Jock Vaughn being the head coach,

but I definitely think it's something to watch, you know. And the timing is everything part again, kind of make your own decision on what that means from Bill Self. All right, let's finish up here. Dark Horse and next tier of candidates. This is probably where I would have Jockvon in that next tier as well. But who are some other guys outside of the program for KU? that next tier as well, but who are some other guys outside of the program for KU? This episode of the show is brought to you by Game Time. We've all been there logging on early, waiting forever for concert or sports tickets to go on sale, only to lose your spot for a show you've been dying to see.

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And don't forget you make Lockdown College football or Lockdown College basketball your second listen every day. Who's my dark horse next year of candidates, whatever you want to call it. So I have my top guys. I guess it wouldn't be a dark horse, but he would be in the next tier of candidates here with Jock Vaughn. Now that he's the assistant coach of Kansas. But again, you know, the candidacy can either move up or down based on how he performs. It's just not something we're going to see as visually. OK, Dusty May is in this one. And I think you can make an argument, Dusty May should be in tier one.

But here's why I have him in tier two. So he's 48 years old, really strong last three seasons, final four, Sweet 16, three NCAA tournament appearances. But still at the end of the day, he is at zero Ken Palm top 15 finishes in seven seasons as a head coach. And then so like, you know, he's a good coach, he's adjusted to his personnel. That's great. He'll play to a medium to faster pace. So like, those are all good things. I just think it's it's a slight tier below, you know, where those tier one guys are. He'd be a really good hire for KU,

but I still think there's more to be proven, so to speak for May at this point in time. Graham McAsland would be in this tier, and again I thought about actually making McAsland. Honestly, for this year, McAsland might be my favorite, but I thought about him making him tier one. He's 48 years old.

He obviously has done well at Texas Tech so far. Prior to that, he killed it in North Texas, which is not an easy place to win. But he's been a head coach for nine seasons between Texas Tech, North Texas, Arkansas State. He's never had a losing season. He's won 20 or more games for eight of the seasons. His only season where he didn't win 20 or more games.

And again, that's a lot of years at schools that are not easy to win at with North Texas and Arkansas State. His one season, his low season was 18 and 10, you know, and not the fastest style of play. That's one thing, but it is still fun. Like they're one of those teams where they play a little slower, but like in North Texas, he played very slow. Texas Tech, it's like slow, but not slowest. But it's an open style of play. It's a modern style of basketball, just did a little slower pace, and that I can deal with.

What's cool about McHaslin though is, and I guess this applies to again, Dusty Mays, well, he he adjusts to his personnel. He'll play even slower if he needs to. He'll play more of a guards game like when he was at North Texas. It was all about the guards like think like like Tyler Perry. What do you think of Texas Tech? You think of these past couple

of years like really moving the offense to Darian Williams at the four and kind of building around that with him as a match of nightmare. And I think that's super important in today's day and age and again that applies to Dustin Dusty May with the transfer portal that it really does become about okay, let's just get the best like I know we talked about the opposite of this for the cake basketball offseason that it became about okay get the best. Like I know we talked about the opposite of this for the KB basketball offseason that it became about, OK, get the best fits for your system.

But I think that's true because Bilsoff's been the head coach for so long that you want to apply to that. I think the best coaches moving forward outside of your guys who have established that level that Bilsoff has are going to be guys that can just do it the opposite way. They say, hey, we're going to get the best talent possible and we're going to adjust our roster to fit that talent, as opposed to we're going to bring in, you know,

and it's a little bit of give and take here and there. And I think he does a good job of that. The other guy here I have is TJ Otzelberger, who's 47 years old. He has two sweet 16s, two top 11 Ken Palm seasons and four years at Iowa State. He also went to the NCAA tournament twice in three years at South Dakota State.

So that shows it's not just you know, one school specifically. I think compared to those other two guys, style of play probably a little bit of a hit against Otzelberger. He's always had really good defenses. He always has teams who play hard. Those are fun.

He's only had one ever top 30 offense. It was this past season. They were actually trending to be much better until some injuries. They finished 19th. So less of an offensive higher, but it's also a question of what's the ceiling here based on kind of the style of play that he's produced,

but I think deserves to be in that tier of candidates as well. Now I have another tier here, which is a has to have a great season tier. And if they have a great season, they can go in either tier one or tier two, depending just how great of a season they have. First is somebody I talked about earlier, Ben McCollum, right? If he goes to Iowa this year and they make the NIT, it's like, okay, well, you're still on the

radar. But if Bill Self retires after this one season, you're hiring Ben McCollum after a season of Iowa where he goes to the NIT or season where he gets in the play in game of the NCAA tournament. But if Ben McCollum goes to Iowa in year one and they get like a five seed in the NCAA tournament and they make it to the Sweet 16, a year after he was at Drake and did wonders there. And after he was at Northwest Missouri State where he's winning all the titles, he becomes a real candidate at that point in time, right?

Kevin Young, would he even leave? I think BYU is his alma mater, but like made the Sweet 16 year one at BYU. What if he does really well this year, which they're gonna be expected to do with all the talent they have? And would he even want to leave again, though, not just the BYU thing of it being, I believe, his alma mater, but also the standpoint of like BYU might be as loaded as any college

basketball team in the country with the money and funds they have. So I don't even know if he would leave, but if he has another good season, maybe he becomes a candidate and plays a fun style play. And then the last one here in the, if they have a great season, he becomes a candidate and plays a fun style play. And then the last one here in the, okay, if they have a great season, he becomes a candidate if Bill Southwark will retire after this year, is Pat Kelsey at Louisville. Right, so you go from having a lot of success at Charleston and then you go to Louisville last year,

get an eight seed, you lose in the first round, but it was your first year of what was a pretty big rebuilding project in college basketball. He would need an excellent season, but if Louisville, which I think they're gonna have one of the best backcourts in the country this year, Louisville gets like a two or three seed in the NCAA tournament, you make a sweet 16 or an elite age or something. All of a sudden, boom, you become a much more real candidate.

And again, these are all based on the idea. If this were to be Bill Self's last season, kind of how would the coaching candidates look at that point in time? So those are the obvious ones. I do, like I said, I've said this before, too. I kind of heard some things that Bill Self would love Chris Beard to be the the successor, the guy after him at Kansas, you can put Chris Beard where you want to put him. I don't want to put him anywhere

near the Kansas Athletics Department. So I'm not gonna have him on this list. All right, that'll do it for this bonus or this episode. I don't know why I keep saying bonus. That just a normal episode of Locked on Jayhawks, but we had a lot of fun, and thanks for joining us on today's episode of the show. We'll see you next time for another edition of Locked on Jayhawks.

We'll be coming at you, talking a little underrated players to watch on the KU football team coming up in 2025. See you on that episode right here with LOJ.