Kansas coach Bill Self said at Big 12 Conference media day last week that every year upon receiving the NCAA Tournament bracket, one of the first things he would do was look for Illinois.
Self always had complex feelings bound up with the prospect of having to play against the Illini, the team he had coached for three successful seasons immediately prior to departing for KU. His Jayhawks beat Illinois once in the NCAA Tournament, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2011, but he has thus far never had to return to the site of his former school.
The teams never talked about playing each other, and he said that it was an “emotional deal,” just as it was for his predecessor Roy Williams to return to KU after leaving for North Carolina. Williams, for his part, didn’t take in a game at Allen Fieldhouse until January 2022, nearly two decades after his departure.
On a similar timeline, Self will confront his past head-on this Sunday, when the Jayhawks travel to Champaign, Illinois, for a charity exhibition matchup with the Illini at State Farm Center. The game was originally planned as a closed scrimmage before he and Illinois coach Brad Underwood agreed to open it up and raise money for the Maui Strong Fund.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for me personally to go back to a place that, to be quite honest, I’ve avoided going to for many years,” Self said.
Beyond that, it’ll be an uncommonly challenging test for his preseason No. 1 squad before October has even concluded. The Illini are ranked No. 25, were picked fourth in the competitive Big Ten Conference and are led by a familiar face in fifth-year senior guard Terrence Shannon Jr., who started his career at Texas Tech, and was a teammate of KU’s Kevin McCullar Jr. there.
Texas Tech’s Terrence Shannon Jr. (1) high-fives Kevin McCullar (15) after scoring a three-point shot during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Kansas State, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021, in Lubbock, Texas.
“It could be a situation that totally helps us (whether) if it goes good or poorly,” Self said, adding that the State Farm Center, the former Assembly Hall, will provide “as good a road atmosphere (as) we play in all year.”
The Jayhawks happen to have a player who has made a mark in a fair number of Big Ten road games over the years. Center Hunter Dickinson, a newly minted preseason All-American, joins KU this year after three memorable seasons at Michigan, during which he called Wisconsin “scumbags,” said “you only go to Michigan State if you don’t get into Michigan,” said he felt “disrespected” that Maryland didn’t recruit him harder and, most pertinently, called Illinois fans “annoying.”
He says now that “it made the games way more fun for me when I would say something to the fans or something like that and they would get more mad at me.”
“I just enjoy kind of leaning into it because the opposing team is going to hate you regardless,” Dickinson said. “You might as well give them a reason to hate you a little bit more.”
Michigan’s Hunter Dickinson celebrates with Jett Howard during an NCAA college basketball game against Illinois Thursday, March 2, 2023, in Champaign, Ill.
Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson talks to the media during the NCAA college Big 12 men’s basketball media day Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo.
Self alluded to Dickinson’s villainous role in a video announcing the Illinois exhibition back in August, when he told Underwood (whom he also previously coached against in the Big 12 when Underwood as at Oklahoma State), “I will make sure that Hunter Dickinson knows that if there’s a chorus of an unpopular negative chant whenever Kansas enters the court, I’ll make sure I walk in with Hunter and tell him they’re all for him, and he won’t know any different.”
Self said he doesn’t want to suppress Dickinson’s personality, but “if you put a microphone in front of him and ask him a question, unfortunately, he answers it.”
“Instead of being a soundbite,” Self said, “it’s time to be a guy that everybody looks at and says ‘That’s a bad boy right there.'”
Dickinson has managed to avoid antagonizing the Big 12 so far, though he did recently tell ESPN he likes being preseason No. 1 because “I want them to know we’re better than them.”
He said he’s looking forward to returning to some familiar Big Ten venues this season, beginning Sunday and continuing when KU goes to Indiana on Dec. 16.
The Illinois exhibition will be televised on the Big Ten Network at 5 p.m. Underwood recently told reporters in Champaign that it will be structured like a traditional game.
Kansas head coach Bill Self laughs with Oklahoma State head coach Brad Underwood during Big 12 Media Day on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016 at Sprint Center.
AP Photo/Tom Roberts
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AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
