Bill Self got the message
Before I get going, I am going to write about Roy, who announced earlier today that he is retiring. But I need some time to collect my thoughts, and maybe I’ll even watch the 2003 title game for the first time since that Monday night. If I’m going to torture myself, why not go all in?
However, with the last week’s flurry of roster moves, I wanted to post something short on that. The recruitment of teenage basketball players feels increasingly perverse to follow, which is only heightened by the ongoing NIL stuff (more on that in a future newsletter), but there’s some sweeping stuff happening at KU that’s worth knowing about, imo.
After KU’s crushing at the hands of USC, Bill Self got the message. He needed to completely overhaul KU’s talent profile, and he has done so, quickly. Tristan Enaruna, Gethro Muscadin and Tyon Grant-Foster are out (via transfer portal). Prep PG Bobby Pettiford and D-II scoring machine F Cam Martin are in, with more coming. (Self told Pettiford that multiple guard spots are open, and there is much to read into there).
KU currently has zero roster spots available for next season, which has never been a meaningful logistical impediment for Self. Rarely have we seen him reshape the roster with such fury. Next year’s team—with a recruiting class coming in that now ranks in the top 5, take that Independent Accountability Resolution Panel!—is suddenly more athletic, longer and deeper.
In a season where KU ground down its starters, Self zeroed in on bench depth and bucket-getters. There’s still plenty of uncertainty: Self’s comment to Pettiford suggests that Ochai Agbaji may be testing the waters, and there are whispers online about Jalen Wilson spinning the tires on the draft process as well. A sea of Texas Tech and UT commits just got loosed by the coaching change—my head is still spinning!—and Self is still on the trail, apparently. But I have to ask—is Bill Self the greatest Zoom recruiter in history? He’s definitely up there.
In my last newsletter, I proposed some (possibly impractical) fixes for the program, many of which involved recruiting strategies and ideas for where to find players. So that’s why I find something like the signing of Cam Martin particularly inspired; spinning the tires on top-tier D-II guys feels like a worthy enterprise at this point in time. The margins for talent in basketball are thinner than ever, which is a byproduct of the talent pool being so deep. Cam Martin is big, athletic, hit nine threes in a game and had 54 in another. For KU to restore their advantages in the Big 12, they need a deep, potent bench that can flip games, not just a smattering of “break-in-case-of-emergency” reserves.
Could Martin—or Sydney Curry, or Pettiford, or KJ Adams—be that spark for KU? Who knows. But it feels like the right idea.