It was a tossed-off portion of a press-conference answer in response to a question about playing his first official home game as a Jayhawk against Green Bay, but it proved as revelatory as just about anything anyone said in the Allen Fieldhouse media room all season.
“I’m the leader of this team,” Melvin Council Jr. said, “so I got to embrace that every day, every minute, every second.”
Council’s declaration of leadership at first came off almost a bit silly for a first-year transfer on a team with a handful of returning veterans from previous years, as well as a star guard in Darryn Peterson who Council had already said would be the Batman to Council’s Robin. Head coach Bill Self shook his head and said, “Oh my God,” when asked minutes later about Council’s proclamation.
But even at that early stage of the year he acknowledged that it held at least a kernel of truth.
“He’s right on this front: He’s the emotional leader,” Self said. “He’s the energy leader. What he said is accurate. Nobody gives us more than him and it’s contagious more with him probably than anybody else. But there’s different areas in which you can lead. I actually agree with Mel in that one area, but we’ve all got a long ways to go to be a quarterback on a final drive under two minutes.”
Four months later, there’s nothing the slightest bit silly anymore about suggesting that Council has been the leader of the 2025-26 Jayhawks, and at quite a few times throughout the season, in terms of late game-winning drives, he’s fashioned himself into John Elway.
All the while, his on-court effort and demeanor, combined with his persistent gratitude that he gets to be a Jayhawk at all, has fashioned him into one of the most beloved players of the Self era. That’s all before even getting a chance at an iconic March moment.
“To me, he’s put his handprint on this place as much as anybody possibly could in the short amount of time he’s been here,” Self said on Feb. 9. “He owns this place. He’s as popular as any kid that we’ve ever had play here.”
Kansas forward Flory Bidunga (40) pulls in Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr. (14) during the first half, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug
ELEVATING HIS TEAMMATES
When Council, a transfer from St. Bonaventure, announced his commitment to Kansas on April 16, he made sure to include his self-described “favorite line”: “If you want to be a dog, you got to be a dog, because if you’re not a dog, you’re dog food.”
The line, as he said over the summer, expresses his belief that you have to have heart to play basketball and can’t be scared of anyone on the court. In the months ahead, he went on to model those traits against a variety of opponents, and the “dog” label took on a life of its own: As early as that first Green Bay game, the KU student section started barking for his starting-lineup introduction and whenever he did just about anything during a game. And Council barked in Kansas Lottery ads, adopted a dog, Ace, and then Ace appeared in ads of his own.
But the way the catchphrase itself had really gained traction when he was at St. Bonaventure was when his teammates started calling him out one-on-one, he said. And he deployed it against his fellow Jayhawks after winning an early five-on-five run when he got to campus in June.
“It’s nothing but love at the end of the day, trying to make sure I get the best out of everybody,” Council said.
That aligned with another early quote of Council’s that endeared him to KU fans, in which he told reporters that he and his teammates were going to challenge Peterson as much as possible: “That five-star stuff, that goes out the window when you come.”
“I want to see everybody around me win,” Council said. “And I want to see him get to the highest level. And I believe that he should go first pick (in the NBA Draft), because I see the work. I see everything in him. I just want to push him, and I know he got it.”
As quickly became apparent over the course of the season, this desire wasn’t limited to his backcourt running mate.
When the Jayhawks looked dead in the water against TCU in January but somehow rallied from a 16-point deficit, after trailing by 13 points with four minutes to go, “it really happened in the huddle,” Council said.
“Me and Flory (Bidunga), we got into it,” he said. “And ever since that, we just took off. This team can do a lot of things, when we all focus up and stuff like that and communicate. And it shows that we got fight and grit.”
Later in the year, he took a measure of credit — something he isn’t shy about doing — for freshman forward Bryson Tiller’s career-high 21 points in KU’s 90-82 victory over BYU.
“I just called him soft, but in a different way,” Council said.
The single most significant display of leadership all season, however, was the Jayhawks’ much-discussed players-only meeting. One game after that unfathomable TCU comeback, KU was down in the dumps again after a grim road loss at West Virginia in which it conceded 16 straight points. Council and Tre White, both seniors, were at the forefront of the effort to call the meeting that immediately followed that game.
The players never got too specific in describing to the media what went on during that meeting — other than a general reiteration of the team’s core values and the importance of being aggressive to make things easier for Peterson — but the results spoke for themselves: KU rattled off eight straight wins, including four against top-15 teams, immediately afterward.
In an interview with The Field of 68 in February, Council was asked if the Jayhawks’ win over top-ranked Arizona was the highlight of the season to that point. He responded by saying the highlight was in fact the players-only meeting.
“We just had to talk about, when you win here, people (are) going to love you,” he added. “When you lose, people not going to love you no more. It’s going to be sad around Lawrence, and stuff like that, campus, the kids not going to be up under you and stuff like that when you go out to places. So we couldn’t do that.”
Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr. (14) pops his jersey as he celebrates the Jayhawks’ 80-60 win over Missouri on Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. Photo by Nick Krug
ANTAGONIZING HIS RIVALS
Council is from Rochester, New York, started his career at Monroe and Wagner colleges ahead of his move to St. Bonaventure and really didn’t have much of a connection to Kansas at all before his offseason visit to Lawrence made it clear that KU was the place for him.
That’s increasingly common in this era as four-year collegiate players who stay at the same school are becoming incredibly rare. It can make it difficult for them to connect with history and rivalries. Self said of the Kansas State game in Manhattan this season, “I told our players, I said, ‘Hell, you’re going to be here one year. You leave here and nobody talks about it, at least in your world. I got to live here.'”
You wouldn’t know from watching Council this year that he was facing Missouri for the first and last time, nor that he only had two chances to play Kansas State.
The Border War wouldn’t have been one of his most memorable performances of the year from a statistical standpoint — though he did end up with nine points, eight rebounds and five assists — except for the fact that he weaved down the court through Tiger defenders to throw down a last-second dunk with the shot clock turned off in an 80-60 win. Self gave that play his seal of approval postgame, noting that both teams were still playing and that Missouri was trying to impede Council as he went down the court. Predictably, the fans loved it.
Council said later that in the lead-up to that game, he had seen video of the previous year’s matchup at Mizzou Arena in which Missouri fans had rushed the court, “and I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t like that. It just stuck with me.”
That turned out to be quite an effective motivational tactic for Council over the course of the year (and one that has resulted in far fewer court storms by KU opponents this season). Before the Jayhawks went to Bramlage Coliseum for the Sunflower Showdown, the KU coaches quite wisely sent the players a video of the infamous Jan. 17, 2023, court storming after which then-KSU coach Jerome Tang declared, “From here on out, expect to win.”
The Wildcats did fulfill that expectation, at least in Manhattan, each of the next two seasons, but Council and his teammates — the vast majority of whom had never played at Bramlage before, to be clear — quashed it on Jan. 24.
“This game is personal for us,” Tiller said.
Council said he tried to keep the image of the court-storming in his head throughout the game. The result was one of just a couple double-doubles all season — 17 points, 12 rebounds — spurred by a late-game stretch in which, as part of a 27-7 run to seal the 86-62 blowout, he tossed lobs to Bidunga over and over. And he added insult to injury in a way that delighted KU fans, mocking the Wildcats’ Wabash Cannonball dance on the court on a couple of occasions in the final moments, and setting up White for a last-second dunk that mirrored what he had done against Missouri six weeks earlier.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that as much as Council was motivated throughout the year by what could be summarized as the failures of KU teams past, he also took his own failures quite personally.
KU’s loss to UCF to open conference play featured what was by any measure one of his worst moments of the season, when after a dominant 20-point half on offense, he fouled the Knights’ Riley Kugel as Kugel was heading to the rim, resulting in a three-point play that sealed the result.
The very next game against TCU, he only scored three points in the first 35 minutes but finished with 18, including 12 in the final minute of regulation and overtime.
“I cost us the UCF game,” he said afterward. “Should have took over that game, but we can’t get that game back, but I got to just move forward one game at a time. But I had to just take over and win it.”
The UConn game, even though Council was the leading scorer with just a dozen points in Peterson’s absence, haunted him for far longer than UCF. In a similar fashion, he felt like he didn’t do enough to push his team across the line even after his 3 brought the Jayhawks within one point. His teammates missed a series of go-ahead or potential game-tying shots late and KU only scored once following that late 3 in a 61-56 loss.
He made a direct reference to that game after the Jayhawks managed to emerge victorious in another hard-fought battle with Arizona, one in which Council stayed assertive throughout despite going 6-for-25 from the field (something he was shocked to discover postgame, leading Bidunga to joke that he needed to pass the ball more) and made a couple of key shots, including a coast-to-coast layup that put the Jayhawks ahead 67-64 and a tough floater to make it 77-71 before Arizona nearly came back in the final minute.
Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr. rushes the ball down the floor with teammates Darryn Peterson and Elmarko Jackson during the game against North Carolina State on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Raleigh, N.C.
THRIVING IN BIG MOMENTS
If it wasn’t clear already, delivering late in games has been Council’s calling card throughout the season. Peterson has of course shown himself to be a clutch performer in the fashion many expected, with his defining moments three last-second free-throws against TCU and then the back-to-back 3s to claim for KU a road matchup with Texas Tech that it really had no business winning.
But given how many entire games and second halves Peterson missed early in the season, it was so often Council with the ball in his hands in the biggest moments. (He had wanted to be Robin, but he ended up more like Nightwing.) The man who played 40 or more minutes 14 times in his lone year at St. Bonaventure seemed to only gain energy as games went on and his opponents flagged.
The late-game heroics didn’t manifest themselves right away, or at least always convert to actual victories. When the Jayhawks faced Duke at Madison Square Garden, Council played well and brought KU within three points late with his first 3 of the season but then the Jayhawks didn’t make a field goal the rest of the game. Self said he was “close to being a real good guard.”
Council said entering the Players Era tournament that KU would need to be tough and play in transition without Peterson. He displayed those qualities throughout (and throughout the season, really), especially against Tennessee when, as much as Elmarko Jackson did in that game, Council also had back-to-back three-point plays to tie it up and a key block on a corner 3 by the Volunteers.
After the UConn loss was when the Council hype machine really kicked into overdrive. The Missouri dunk helped, as did the fact that Self declared him the team’s early-season MVP.
“Now does he know what he’s doing all the time? Maybe not,” Self said. “Has he shot the ball well? Not like he’s capable of shooting the basketball. But folks, he plays 38 minutes a game, he guards the other team’s point guard and best player, he hawks them all over the place and he gets his feet in the paint. And when you get your feet in the paint, you can play behind that.”
Little did he know what Council would accomplish on the perimeter five days later at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. In what Self would call the best performance by a player on the road in his 23 years at Kansas, Council displayed firsthand the risks of daring a confident scorer to shoot the ball.
He had opened the year 5-for-27 (18.5%) from deep. He had been a passable, if unspectacular, shooter throughout his college career. But he had voices in his ear like KU great Mario Chalmers and fellow Rochester native and Denver Nuggets guard Jalen Pickett telling him to keep shooting.
So when N.C. State essentially abandoned him on the perimeter, Council took advantage, surpassing his career high for 3-point attempts in less than a half as the Wolfpack belatedly adjusted to his sudden hot streak, and finishing 9-for-15 from beyond the arc in a 36-point performance as the Jayhawks won 77-76 in overtime. (It was such a memorable showing as to overshadow the fact that he missed two front ends of one-and-ones in overtime.)
“First half, it was like early, he had 13, I was like ‘Damn, he kind of hooping,'” Jamari McDowell said. “I look back up in OT, he has 30, and I’m like, ‘What the…?’ But yeah, people shouldn’t do what they did. Don’t go under (screens).”
And so the legend of Melvin Council Jr. was born.
That day in Raleigh, by the way, was another day on which Peterson couldn’t finish a game due to cramping, and Self said in December he felt Council might not have broken out to such an extent if he had Peterson around all the time.
They did not always jell to the extent they might have envisioned prior to the season. In that UCF game, when Peterson returned for the start of league play, Council went scoreless in the first half, albeit hampered by foul trouble, as Peterson had 23, then had 20 in the second half with Peterson largely out of the game. It was much the same story at TCU.
After the players-only meeting, when KU beat then-No. 2 Iowa State, was the first time the Jayhawks really maintained their team ethos with Peterson on the floor: “We were aggressive with Darryn in the game and that’s the first time that’s happened this year,” Self said.
They may not have displayed that aggression all year, to the point that Self was still talking about it in March during the Jayhawks’ ill-fated trip to Arizona, but Council continued apace and built his KU legend even further. The Colorado game was a big one for him, as he helped the Jayhawks earn the sort of road win that had eluded them in years past, thanks to a late-game sequence that “kind of won the game for us, kind of set the energy, and yeah, that’s Melvin,” as White said: a transition layup after CU missed a chance to take the lead late in the second half, a steal off an inbounds pass (that probably shouldn’t have been allowed) and then another bucket as the Buffaloes were in disarray. Colorado only scored one more point the rest of the game after that.
As well as he maintained a lead against Colorado, and helped seal wins over BYU and Arizona with his late buckets in those games, one thing he did particularly well was kick-start rallies, as he did with late 3-pointers as KU’s hopes were fading in games against Texas Tech and Arizona. After the Tech game, he said White had been urging him to take over: “It’s your time.”
“He’s been doing it all year,” Peterson said. “He’s Mr. Consistent right now.”
Even Mr. Consistent had a bit of a quieter stretch, a couple weeks after the Arizona triumph, in which he scored just seven points in back-to-back games after he had previously reached double digits in every league game. But then he returned to form by tormenting Houston in a predictable fashion: pushing the pace when everyone else seemed to be tired in the second half. The Cougars never got close.
That quality of Council’s will be as valuable as any listed above, as tired legs take hold in the biggest moments of KU’s biggest games of the year. Unlike almost every Jayhawk on the roster, he has tournament experience, having led Wagner to a victory in the First Four back in 2024.
He’s had no issue stepping up from one level to the next over the course of his career. But for all the goodwill he has built up in Lawrence over the last four months, the extent to which he is remembered fondly will depend largely on what unfolds in the weeks ahead.
2026 NCAA Tournament Preview
A deeper look at No. 13 Cal Baptist
KU’s region includes plenty of intrigue
Reasons KU could win it all — or not
How KU’s highest-ranked one-and-dones have fared in March
Melvin Council Jr.: The making of an all-time fan favorite
Extras
KU women’s basketball accepts WBIT invite
KU’s history as No. 4 seed, in San Diego and Washington
Forgotten moments from the 2025-26 season
Nathan Friedman/Special to the Journal-World