Kansas Jayhawks head men’s basketball coach Bill Self has more wins in Big 12 Conference play than any other coach in the history of the league, and he also has two national championships to his name.
On Thursday, Self was asked by Kansas reporter Caroline Soro about the unpredictability of the conference this season, which is by virtually every metric the strongest league in the country by far.
In answering the question, Self pointed to conference newcomer BYU as an example of how deep the league is.
“It’s a wild, wild league,” Self said. “I can’t get over how competitive it is. When Cincinnati and BYU came into the league ... I don’t know that we really banked on getting what BYU and Cincinnati bring to the table this early in the process.”
The Jayhawks, who were ranked No. 1 in the country the first three weeks of the season before losing and are ranked No. 3 this week after losing to conference newcomer UCF on Jan. 10 (all 14 Big 12 teams have at least one conference loss already), will host BYU on Feb. 27.
“It’s going to be crazy the whole year,” Self said, “and what we perceived going into the year as, ‘OK, we can catch our breath now,’ has been taken away.
“There’s no breath catching weeks. It’s going to be like this for, what is it, all nine weeks? ... It’s going to be like that the entire year.”