Will KU basketball and Wichita State play more games? Here’s coach Bill Self’s take

The men’s basketball teams at Sunflower State schools Kansas and Wichita State pretty much have gone their own, separate ways throughout the years.

The Jayhawks and Shockers, as a matter of fact — teams that will tangle at 3 p.m. Saturday at T-Mobile Center — last scheduled and played a regular-season game against each other three decades ago. The Jayhawks, who lead the all-time series 12-3, clobbered the Shockers 103-54 on Jan. 6, 1993, at Allen Fieldhouse.

KU coach Bill Self, who stressed Thursday that “it’s not going to be a home-and-home” (with Wichita State) in the future, was asked if he thought KU-WSU could again become a rivalry.

The teams played nine times from 1984 to 1993.

“I don’t think we’ll play enough for it to be. … Now we are not going to go home-and-home. It’s not going to be anything like that,” Self said. “I hope our players (Saturday) look at it as an in-state rivalry game and certainly we’ll educate them to that point. This isn’t going to be a Missouri-type setup.”

KU and Missouri have completed the third year of a six-game series covering six seasons.

Self explained the reasoning behind KU and WSU getting together during the 2023 holiday season for what currently is considered a one-time happening set up by the Kansas City Sports Commission.

“I think I reached out to Wichita State last winter and said, ‘Would you want to play a neutral site game, and of course the neutral site would be Kansas City?’ And they jumped on it or they thought it was a good idea,” Self said, indicating he spoke with former WSU coach Isaac Brown about possibly playing the game.

Self said he believed it was “a way to create some interest and the Kansas City Sports Commission I think is the one actually putting the game on. It’s not a KU home game. I thought if we were going to do that and if the Kansas City Sports Commission was going to be the one to put the game on, I really felt like having an opponent like Wichita State would actually help draw (fans). I thought that was important.”

KU has played Wichita State once during Self’s first 20 years at KU. The Shockers prevailed 78-65 in a second-round NCAA Tournament game in 2015 in Omaha.

Until helping set up this game, Self had expressed no interest in playing WSU.

In 2013, Self told The Star: “This isn’t knocking Wichita State, but if it was best for our program, I would reach out to them about scheduling them. But it’s not. The one thing about being in coaching a long time and coaching at different schools and different levels is the fact that you understand that coaches schedule what’s in the best interest of their program. Nowhere does it say that they are obligated to schedule in the best interest of somebody else’s program that wants to play them.”

He stated to ESPN’s Andy Katz in 2014: “You schedule to benefit your own school, not to benefit others. You have to benefit your own school. I want to play games that benefit us, and from a financial standpoint, it’s hard to play games away from Allen Fieldhouse since that’s our main source of budget every year.”

Some have said a high-major program has “little to gain and everything to lose,” so to speak, scheduling a mid-major from the same state. A reporter asked Self Thursday about expressing that exact sentiment in the past, though a search of the archives has not yet successfully located such a Self quote.

“I don’t remember a quote that I said (about KU scheduling WSU), but in general just from a strategic standpoint when a game is circled — regardless if this one is or not — when a game Is circled obviously there’s motivation maybe for one team that isn’t there for the other team. I don’t remember exactly what I said to that point at all in going back when I said it, I don’t even know what year that would be,” Self said.

“I think it’s a big game for us because it’s the next game. Obviously we want momentum going into the league and you don’t want to have another school in your state have bragging rights over you until you actually do play again, and we don’t know when that would be.”

Self is on good terms with first-year WSU coach Paul Mills, who like Self has been the head coach at Oral Roberts.

“I like their head coach,” Self said. “The thing is, I don’t have anything against Wichita State. I’m not sure Roy (Williams, former KU coach) had anything against Wichita State. I’m not sure any of the coaches had anything against Wichita State. But I know when I was at Tulsa I made a lot of calls to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and they weren’t returned, so. …”

Of high majors OSU and OU not wanting to play his Tulsa teams, Self told The Star in 2015: “They wouldn’t play. But I didn’t blame them. And I didn’t make a big deal of it.”

Former KU player and assistant coach Mark Turgeon, who also was head coach at KU, said this of the series to The Star in 2015; “I’ll speak for Bill and say it’s probably not in Kansas’ best interest to play Wichita State. But when I was (at Wichita State), I certainly wanted to (play KU). I think it was great for Wichita State. I don’t think it was that good for Kansas. They played nine times (1984 to ’93). In Wichita they just remember the one.”

KU is 6-1 vs. WSU in Wichita with the loss a 54-49 decision in 1987. KU is 4-0 in Lawrence, 2-0 in KC and 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament.