Bill Self vows to re-evaluate how to build Kansas roster in honest reflection after NCAA Tournament exit

The Kansas Jayhawks suffered a brutal end to their 2024-2025 college basketball season. After being named preseason No. 1 in the AP poll, the Jayhawks were bounced in the Round of 64 on Thursday. They became just the second preseason No. 1 to get ousted in the Round of 64 since Kansas did it again in 2005, when they lost to Bucknell, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Following the gut-wrenching loss, KU head coach Bill Self vowed to make some changes.

“Yeah, that’s a fair question. I think it’s a fair question that in some ways is an unrealistic question, though. If I’m not mistaken, no matter what you do in life, there’s going to be some ups and downs and we just haven’t had very many downs, to be honest with you. The last two years, we were such a beat up team at the end, we probably didn’t have much of a chance with our injuries to McCullar and Hunt wasn’t healthy. This year we don’t have that excuse. This year our roster was good enough to be competitive, but it probably wasn’t the roster it needed to be to be talked about in a way that the best teams in America are talked about,” Self explained.

While Self admitted that KU needs to do a better job of evaluating prospects in the portal, he still recognized that much like any area of scouting prospective athletes, there’s going to be a certain amount of luck involved. Perhaps more so now than ever before.

“So, we’ve got to reevaluate on how we do things, and you can’t afford misses, but I will say this: In today’s time, there’s going to be schools that do a great job, but still there’s an element of luck involved, I think more now than there was even before. You can go after the kids that you get a great bargain on. You get a good deal on it and all that stuff but it doesn’t matter unless they fit in and can help you win. We’ve got to do a better job of evaluating the portal but I’m happy with the roster we had. It just didn’t turn out to be the team that we had hoped it was, but still yet going into last year, I would have taken that roster every day and then I don’t think we really, with Elmarko tearing his patellar tendon and Shak not being available to us, I don’t think we had our best team to make a push at it,” Self finished.

Kansas lost 79-72 to Arkansas on Thursday. Senior guard Zeke Mayo had 18 points for the Jayhawks in the loss. Hunter Dickinson ended his college career with 11 points and nine rebounds, going scoreless in the second half on his way to a 4-for-13 shooting effort. The loss snapped a 17-season streak for KU of winning a game in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. It was also the lowest seed of the Bill Self era in the NCAA Tournament.