For a coach who, throughout his career, has emphasized toughness the way an auto mechanic emphasizes changing your oil, a man whose signature quote outside of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., is about mules and wagons, the vision of genuine emotion pouring out for all to see was quite a sight.
That was the scene in Omaha, Neb., on Sunday night, moments after the top-seeded Jayhawks knocked off Duke in an epic, 85-81, overtime thriller that delivered Kansas a spot in this year’s Final Four in San Antonio.
And that emotion came directly from the trembling voice of Kansas coach Bill Self, drenched in water after a wild party erupted inside the tiny CenturyLink Center locker room.
“You know I’m not a… I’m not that emotional,” said Self, eyes fixed on the floor, arms raised in the air, voice cracking every fourth or fifth word. “But this is the best I’ve felt about a group and you guys have no idea how much this means to so many people. I said before, you’re going to be loved by this place forever. All you can do is add to it. And you’ve added to it. Now all we can do is add to it.”
It's been an emotional ride but we wouldn't change a thing. This is family. #KUbball pic.twitter.com/LwSn9xFrW3
— Kansas Men’s Basketball (@KUHoops) March 26, 2018
The reasons behind the surge of emotion that overcame the 654-win Kansas coach who has won 14 consecutive Big 12 titles, made two trips to the Final Four already, won a national championship in 2008 and reached at least the Elite Eight during more than half of his seasons in charge of the historic program could not be summed up by a single word or lone concept.
It was bigger than that, bigger than just one win or his latest milestone achievement.
And on Monday, after a night that no doubt included a lot of celebrating and maybe even a little skin-pinching to make sure he was not dreaming, Self spoke about everything that went into that uncharacteristic display in front of his players and a Kansas Athletics camera inside that locker room.
“It was emotional for me,” Self began. “Because, of all the teams we’ve had, this may not be the one that I would expect to do this. For me to be on these guys pretty hard for things that I thought were shortcomings and basically personality traits and to see the reason we won was because they 100 percent flipped those, that gives a coach a lot of pride.”
That was just the first snip at the net.
“And the fact that we’ve been in the (Elite Eight) game two years in a row and came up empty and then for (seniors) Devonte’ (Graham) and Svi (Mykhailiuk). I think those things all added together. It meant a lot to me, not for me, but for the guys, especially Devonte’. To know how much he’s sacrificed and the role that he’s played with our university and with our program, I wanted so bad for him to get there and that probably triggered it as much as anything else.”
Never far from Self’s mind, of course, is the status and prestige of the office he occupies. Although the actual piece of furniture might have been a few decades later, Self is sitting in the chair once occupied by coaching legends James Naismith, Phog Allen, Roy Williams and others.
He referenced that fact last September during his Hall of Fame induction speech. And he mentioned it again on Monday, when diving deeper on the emotional joy that moved him to tears.
“What I was referring to is (how) our basketball history and tradition here is comparable to the greatest histories in any sport on any campus in America,” said Self when asked about that line in the locker room that included the words “you guys have no idea how much this means.” “When you talk about being at a place where the inventor of the game was your first coach and Adolph Rupp played here and Dean Smith played here and so many things that have spawned off from here and, generationally, how much this means to the people in our community and how much respect they have for the game, that’s what I was talking about. All the people that it means so much to that our players would never know about because of all the history and tradition that exists here.”
Asked specifically about those tears, which, at one point, he wiped away with a towel, Self momentarily snapped back into the strong, confident, proud man Kansas fans and so many others have come to know and love during the past decade and a half.
“That was just a lot of water in my eye,” he joked. “They dumped a lot of water on me. I’m not that soft. I’m not going to get emotional over a game.”
Like it or not, however, Self did just that. And, sure, the feelings might have been inspired by his seniors and their grind or this team’s insane improvement late in the season or even the rich and unmatched history that lurks mere feet from his office.
But even Sunday’s game itself — a battle nearly everyone is calling the game of the tournament — played a small part in Self’s emotions getting the best of him.
“I think anybody would’ve been emotional in that game if it was just a regular season game,” Self said. “The quality of play, your opponent, the stakes being high; if that was for a conference championship game, I think I would’ve had the same emotion just because I felt like my team out there performed so well against what is arguably thought of to be as talented a roster as we had in the country.”