KU coach Bill Self, Arkansas’ John Calipari taking vastly different roster approaches

Lamenting the lack of depth on an injury-plagued Kansas men’s basketball team this past season, coach Bill Self said earlier this week he wants to field a squad with “eight starters” during the 2024-25 campaign.

At the same time Self was explaining his idea of ideal roster construction in the transfer portal era on Andy Katz’s NCAA March Madness podcast, fellow Hall of Fame coach John Calipari of Arkansas was singing a different tune on the Ways to Win podcast hosted by former Oregon State coach/current NABC executive director Craig Robinson.

“You may think I’m crazy, but I told my staff I only want to have eight or nine guys (total on scholarship),” Calipari said on the podcast. “They’re leaving anyway, and why would I develop a kid for someone else? Why would I do that?”

Calipari in an article written by ESPN.com’s Myron Medcalf said he is leaning toward signing well under the NCAA mandated limit of 13 scholarship players per season. So far the former Kentucky coach has seven scholarship players on his first Razorbacks roster.

KU coach Self had 10 scholarship players on his 2023-24 Jayhawk team with one, Zach Clemence, unavailable on the redshirt list. So Self went through the marathon college basketball season with nine available scholarship players following the dismissal of scholarship guard Arterio Morris.

It was cut to seven scholarship players for a time late in the season when Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson missed time with injuries.

With eight or nine on scholarship, Calipari would have fewer players requiring NIL money. He said he could bring in walk-ons and grad assistants to scrimmage the scholarship players at practice.

“I want those (graduate assistants) to have played in Europe or just got done playing and can still play,” Calipari said. “We can use them in practice. The women’s programs have five guys that they call ‘managers,’ but that’s who they scrimmage against.

“Maybe I do it that way. We have some walk-ons, we have some (graduate assistants). We have eight or nine guys and that’s it. And if there is a 10th guy, he knows he’s the 10th guy.”

The only downside to having, say, eight scholarship players? That would be the injury bug experienced by KU late last season.

“But my staff says, ‘What if there’s an injury? Now we’ve got seven or six.’ I coached six when I was at UMass,” Calipari countered.

KU coach Self used a seven-man rotation in the Jayhawks’ 72-69 victory over North Carolina in the 2022 NCAA title game. Seven Jayhawks played 21 or more minutes (with Cole Aldrich logging four minutes) in KU’s 75-68 overtime victory over Calipari’s Memphis Tigers in the 2008 NCAA title game.

Calipari called on just six Tigers to play 24 or more minutes in that OT loss to KU with Willie Kemp playing four minutes.

KU with the addition of portal transfers Rylan Griffen (Alabama), AJ Storr (Wisconsin) and Zeke Mayo (South Dakota State), as well as incoming freshmen Flory Bidunga and Rakease Passmore, currently has 12 scholarship players on the 2024-25 roster.

Teams are allowed 13 scholarship players in accordance with NCAA rules. KU has to have one under the limit on scholarship either this year or 2025-26 to complete self-imposed NCAA sanctions.

The players who are listed as returnees at this time are: KJ Adams, Clemence, Dickinson, Dajuan Harris, Johnny Furphy, Jamari McDowell and Elmarko Jackson.

Explaining his “eight starters” statement, Self said this week: “Even though you can only start five, obviously, but have eight guys that are good enough to be in the game at any point in time. You look at the teams that have won it for the most part and look at (two-time defending national champion) Connecticut.

“Connecticut had their main guys there’s no doubt. You could bring a guy off the bench and rest somebody for a certain period of time whether it be in the pivot or be a rotational guard or whatever and there’s not a dropoff Those are areas we had to address (in offseason recruiting), and I think for the most part we did a pretty a good job.”

Connecticut coach Dan Hurley, by the way, used six players a total of 13 or more minutes in the Huskies’ 75-60 NCAA title victory over Purdue. Two other Huskies played five and four minutes respectively. Purdue coach Matt Painter awarded eight players 12 or more minutes in that title contest.