Kansas coach Bill Self seeks second title, place in history
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self finds himself in the same situation that longtime North Carolina coach Dean Smith once did.
Both had won national championships at their respective schools, two of the proudest in the history of basketball, and both had piled more Final Four appearances on top of them. Along the way, each slipped into a coveted gold jacket from the Hall of Fame, something meant to represent the crowning achievement for a college coach.
Yet it took Smith, who grew up in southeast Kansas and played for the Jayhawks, more than a decade to win a validating second national championship with the Tar Heels. And it has likewise been 14 years and counting since Self captured his first with the Jayhawks.
Perhaps fittingly, Self will get another crack at his second against the Tar Heels on Monday night at the Superdome.
“Coach doesn't need to do anything to be one of the greats,” said the Jayhawks' Mitch Lightfoot, "but I think we would all like to win another, as any coach in America would like to win another.
“We want to go out there and fight for him,” Lightfoot said. “He means the world to us and we want to go fight for him.”
Unlike so many coaches who seek the spotlight, Self would rather do just about anything than talk about himself. He has an uncanny ability to take any question about him, or his legacy, and deflect it entirely or spin the answer in the context of his program, for which he routinely calls himself nothing more than “a caretaker.”
But he's also the first to admit that hanging one national title banner since 1988 in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse is not enough. Nor are three NCAA titles in the history of the program. And the long period since Self's own in 2008 doesn't cut it for the school that produced Wilt Chamberlain whose...
