The college basketball season at Kansas University officially doesn’t begin until Late Night With Bill Self Oct. 17 at Allen Fieldhouse.

But basketball, as every major-college player and high-school prospect knows, nowadays is a year-round proposition.

At KU that means the Jayhawks have been playing pick-up games on their own and taking part in individual instructional workouts with coach Self up to two hours a week in accordance with NCAA rules.

“Individual workouts are going well so far,” Self reported after the first week. “Unfortunately, we’ve not had Michael Lee at full speed and not had J.R. (Giddens) yet, but I’ve been real pleased with how they’ve gone.”

Lee, a 6-foot-3 sophomore shooting guard from Portland, Ore., who strained his left knee in July, will start individual workouts at full speed this week, while Giddens, a 6-5 freshman from Oklahoma City who had surgery to repair a stress fracture in his left foot the last week of July, won’t be back full-time for another couple of weeks.

“With a new coaching staff, obviously the way we do things is different from the way it has been done in the past,” Self added of his style of individual workouts that include four players working out at a time for 40 minutes three times a week.

“It will take some guys a short while to catch onto some things we’ve been doing, but I’ve been pleased. The effort is good and attitude is good. They are all picking up things pretty fast, catching on.”

Self divides the Jayhawks into “bigs and wings and guards” for the workouts. In other words, big men work together, guards work together and forwards work together.

He has been stressing one thing over all else at the individual workouts.

“Footwork,” Self said. “With the bigs, obviously, we run a lot of high-low. We’ve been trying to spend some time trying to show them proper footwork and how we do things.”

Self didn’t want to single out any Jayhawk for excelling.

“They’ve all worked hard,” he said, noting nobody was ready for an actual game. KU will begin to hit conditioning hard at the end of September leading up to Late Night.

“I’m happy with everybody’s shape as far as reporting back,” Self said. “We’re not ready to practice, but everybody came back physically fit. A couple of guys may need to drop a few pounds just because they’ve not been as active the last six weeks. For their most part their bodies look good, but nobody is in good shape now.”

Those who like to track Jeff Graves’ weight should note the 6-foot-9 senior from Lee’s Summit, Mo., is in the 250-pound range, Self said.

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Football fan: Self, who has his own scholarship suite at Memorial Stadium, attended Saturday’s season-opening football game between KU and Northwestern.

“I am a big football fan,” Self said. “I don’t think anything starts a school year off better than a football team pumping energy through the campus.”

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One game to go: KU senior associate athletic director Larry Keating has been working to finalize the last game on the 2003-04 men’s hoops schedule. He reports that many teams that were planned to play in exempt tournaments — only to be denied by a judge’s ruling that kept the 2-and-4 rule in place at least until January — now are trying to find the best possible deals.

If the NCAA’s 2-and-4 rule — which allows teams to play in just two exempt tournaments every four years — is not overturned in January, the Jayhawks will not play in an exempt tourney again next year.

If the courts deem teams can play in exempt events every year, look for the Jayhawks to play either in the Guardians Classic, which includes two home games and two in Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., or something like the Coaches Vs. Cancer event in New York.

KU is booked for the Maui Invitational in 2005 and figures to continue playing in the Preseason NIT whenever possible, also.

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Fieldhouse will stay: Kansas AD Lew Perkins told the Journal-World last week Allen Fieldhouse, which is showing some signs of age, could use a “slab of paint” on the outside.

Would Perkins like to replace the fieldhouse with a new facility?

“No. Absolutely, no,” Perkins said, noting he loves the tradition-rich fieldhouse and hopes KU can obtain the funds to spruce it up as much as possible.

Self has said he’s also in favor of keeping Allen forever.