Salt Lake City — Nine hours before his team was slated to open the NCAA Tournament, Kansas coach Bill Self took to social media to issue a written statement criticizing what he described as a “false narrative” surrounding guard Kevin McCullar Jr.’s bone bruise, which will sideline McCullar for the rest of the season.
Previously, upon arriving in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Self told reporters at the team hotel, in part, “Kevin says his knee pain has not subsided any and it’s too bad for him to be able to contribute,” and “He hadn’t practiced in six weeks, basically. He hasn’t done more damage to his knee but he tried to do it and said that he just couldn’t go.”
In his statement Thursday he reiterated these points but added that “what I didn’t say has caused a false narrative to question Kevin inappropriately.”
“He worked tirelessly in rehab to try to play and everyone within the program knows it,” Self continued. “We’ve known the only way the bone bruise would heal is time off. Kevin elected not to do that and try to play. For 6 weeks, it’s been one step forward two steps back.”
The coach referred to the various setbacks McCullar has encountered — most recently reaggravating his bone bruise in the Kansas State game on March 5 and then trying to play the following Saturday at Houston before exiting midway through — and wrote, “Since then, all involved felt 9 days off would position him to play in the tournament. That did not happen.”
He concluded by stating that “our team doctors collectively” decided that McCullar would not play in the tournament, and that McCullar would serve as an assistant coach during the postseason.
It was just Self’s sixth post on X since the start of 2023.
The publication of Self’s initial comments Tuesday about shutting McCullar down had indeed precipitated a swift, wide-ranging and occasionally vitriolic social media response, with some fans faulting the graduate senior guard for not returning to play. McCullar posted his own statement soon after on Tuesday night in which he asserted that he had “done everything that I possibly could have done to get back playing at a high level to help my team.”
Self and several of the Jayhawks supported McCullar further at Wednesday’s press conferences.
“We’ve seen the amount of work that he’s put in to try to get back, especially me personally because I was rehabbing my shoulders, knees, hips,” center Hunter Dickinson said. “I’ve been in the training room with him. He’s been doing two to three sessions every day for the past two months. It’s not his fault by any means. It just wasn’t feeling right.”
Self, for his part, spoke at the podium about the unpredictable nature of McCullar’s injury — “He’s good enough to go get 19 (points) in the game against good competition, then not be able to go for two games later” — and repeated multiple times that “he tried.”
