Kansas coach ‘proud’ of pal

By Gary Bedore     Jan 6, 2005

Coaching against a best buddy didn’t prove too bizarre for Bill Self on Wednesday night.

“Not really,” Self said, asked if it was strange to see his former assistant, Billy Gillispie, on Texas A&M’s bench during the Jayhawks’ 65-60 victory over the Aggies at Allen Fieldhouse.

“I’ve been in Billy’s shoes. I’m happy for him, proud for him. My wife was supposed to come see him today, and my kids. They didn’t get to, so they had to wave to him at the game.”

Self’s wife and daughter greeted Gillispie before the national anthem.

“After that, it wouldn’t have mattered who was on the other bench,” Self said. “I know he had his kids ready. We’ll probably talk later on tonight. I’d rather not play friends, but in our situation we have to. I guess we’ll get used to it.”

Gillispie, who worked for Self at Tulsa and Illinois, said this about the bond between the two:

“When I first went to Tulsa and we started practicing, the drills that we were doing were the same drills as when I was at Killeen High School as an assistant coach under Bo (Burgess),” Gillispie said. “He (Burgess) asked me to do a junior high notebook for our junior high coaches and the drills we were doing at Tulsa at the college level, playing for very high stakes, were a lot of the same drills that we put in a junior high notebook.

“So our philosophies about the game were very, very similar.”

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