Hershiser recalls former KU aide

Ex-FSHS coach served with Self as Kansas graduate assistant

Maybe Bill Self will be bigger than the Beatles.

Few coaches have risen so high as quickly as the new Kansas University men’s basketball coach.

After assistant coaching stints at KU and Oklahoma State, then moving onto places like Oral Roberts, Tulsa and finally Illinois, Self has been a winner everywhere he has been.

“It’s like he’s No. 5, with a bullet on the charts, you know?” said Free State High teacher Craig Hershiser. “He’s been out of ORU, what, six, seven years? Now he’s here. That’s phenomenal.”

Hershiser would know. He was a graduate assistant and academic supervisor for the Jayhawks during the 1985-86 season when Self also was a graduate assistant.

Hershiser, who later was an assistant coach at Lawrence High before becoming the head girls coach at Overland Park Aquinas and Free State High, praised KU’s move Monday when it announced Self as the eighth coach in Kansas history.

Hershiser said Self was everything the press has reported: friendly, smart and great at what he does.

“Doesn’t that point out that it’s genuine?” Hershiser said of all the positive coverage. “I can echo what other people have said. The one year I was there, I liked him a lot. He’s such a likable guy. He was just a guy you wanted to be around.”

Hershiser, 43, had spent two years of teaching at Effingham High before approaching then-KU coach Larry Brown in 1983 about a graduate-assistant position. After two years of tutoring KU players, Brown made Hershiser the team’s full-time academic advisor when the Jayhawks finished 35-4 and reached the Final Four.

Hershiser, who is three years older than Self, remembers Self playing in the Big Eight tournament when Self was a Cowboy. Hershiser has followed Self’s career with interest ever since, but he won’t nag the new coach about tickets or any other perks.

He’s just elated Self is in Lawrence.

“Sometime this summer I might poke my head and say ‘Remember me?'” Hershiser said. “But I don’t think I’ll be doing any of that. He’s got enough people doing that.”