Bill Self ready to coach in Champaign again

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Sep. 7—CHAMPAIGN — Bill Self probably wouldn’t have agreed to a return to State Farm Center (or Assembly Hall as he knew it) a decade-plus ago to pit his Kansas team against Illinois.

Even making it a charity exhibition might not have been enough. Self leaving Illinois for the Jayhawks after the 2002-03 season wasn’t necessarily a stunner. It was Kansas, after all, and where he started his coaching career, but he did leave behind an inordinately talented Illini team he had built into a national title contender in just three short seasons.

“That was not something we would have ever choreographed to do it the way it went down,” Self said during an appearance on a recent ‘Saturday SportsTalk’ with current Illini coach Brad Underwood. “I would not have wanted to do this 18 years ago. That was a situation. I’m a big boy and people make decisions and all those sorts of things, but I was very sensitive to that.

“We did love it there the time we were there. That was hard to leave. Timing is never perfect, and it wasn’t at all. We made a decision and it’s turned out nice.”

That last part got Underwood almost sputtering.

“Nice?” he exclaimed. “Nice? Let’s be real here. What Bill has done at Kansas will probably never ever be done again in college basketball. The number of championships he’s won in arguably one of the … one or two best leagues in the country — Hall of Fame, two national championships — I hope people in this state come celebrate not that he’s at Kansas, but celebrate Bill because he was one of us. He’s a guy we all try to emulate in this business. Here’s a guy that’s figured out winning at a high level, and he did it here.”

Self is set to return to Champaign for an Oct. 29 charity exhibition between Illinois and Kansas. The money raised will all be donated in support of wildfire relief in Maui.

The two programs had already agreed to a repeat of last year’s “secret” scrimmage they played on the Lindenwood campus in St. Charles, Mo. When wildfires ravaged Maui —…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/bill-self-ready-coach-champaign-144800987.html?src=rss

Author : The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Publish date : 2023-09-07 14:48:00

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