Kansas head coach Bill Self grins as he waves to the fans following the Jayhawks' 89-76 win over Iowa State on Monday, Feb. 2, 2015 at Allen Fieldhouse.

Before the 2008 national championship, the Big 12 title streak, the 210 wins at Allen Fieldhouse and the 599 career coaching victories at four different stops, there was James Kruse, Earl McClellan and a whole bunch of Oral Roberts Golden Eagles just like them.

Those were the names on the roster of Bill Self’s first college basketball team back in 1993-94. And those are the men who, all these years later, will tell you how amazed they are that a victory Tuesday night over UMKC — 7 p.m. at Allen Fieldhouse — will give their former coach his 600th of all-time.

It’s not that they didn’t think Self could coach. More that, for a 28-year-old, unproven leader handling the reins of a college program for the first time in his life, Self was not exactly the same coach Kansas fans have come to know and love today.

Kansas head coach Bill Self comes in to slap hands and hug Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield (24) following the Jayhawks' 109-106 triple overtime win over the Sooners.

“He was so green at that time and he didn’t know what he was doing in a lot of ways,” said former ORU guard James Kruse in an interview with the Journal-World on Monday. “But the thing that we always knew, even from the first day I met him, was that he had a passion to win. He would try anything and everything, and he was the master, even back then, of finding where guys fit to give us the best chance to win.”

It did not always work out so well. After going 6-21 during his first season, which included 15 consecutive losses to end the year, Self’s second ORU team dropped the first three games of the 1994-95 season, causing people to wonder more whether Self would make it through the year let alone ever reach a milestone as impressive as 600 career victories.

“We lost 18 games in a row,” Kruse recalled. “It was hell on Earth.”

But slowly, things began to turn, and after finishing Year 2 with a 10-17 record, Self’s next two teams combined to go 39-16, pulling Self’s career record before moving up to Tulsa to 55-54.

“I would’ve thought 600 losses would be the deal instead of wins,” Self joked Tuesday. “I thought if we could just get back to .500 it would be a remarkable trait. And those kids did. I mean, they played great. To leave Oral Roberts after four years with a winning record I think was the most remarkable thing we’ve done in coaching, considering we started out so poorly both years.”

From there, Self won 74 games at Tulsa (.733 winning percentage), 78 more in three years at Illinois (.765) and sits at 392-83 at Kansas, putting him on the doorstep of becoming just the 32nd Div. I coach all-time to eclipse the 600-win mark and just the eighth coach in that club who is still piling wins onto his total.

Coach Bill Self congratulates Kansas guard Frank Mason III after the Jayhawks overtime win over the West Virginia Mountaineers Tuesday, March 4.

Kruse remembers win No. 1 like it was yesterday because, for the bulk of that Oral Roberts team, it was their first collegiate victory, as well. But the thing that stood out most to Kruse, when thinking back about that victory, was not who scored what or even the opponent or final score — 78-66 over Sam Houston State on Nov. 26, 1993 — but the fact that it came in much the same fashion that so many of the 598 wins that have followed it.

“I remember going into the locker room thinking we just got our first W in college basketball as a group,” Kruse recalled. “I just remember thinking, ‘We did it. We got win No. 1. That’s what it looked like, that’s what it felt like, let’s go on to No. 2.’ And he’s at 600 now.

“But it really was never about him. Even from Game 1, he just wanted to win. And I think one thing that helped was that, early on, he had a group of guys that that’s all we wanted, too. In a lot of ways it was the perfect combination to launch a coaching career and a successful four years with us. It was a bunch of guys who had nothing to lose and it just played into creating this pure essence of basketball.”

Self’s teams have delivered plenty of pure basketball moments in the years since that initial victory. And while the national title victory in 2008 or Final Four wins in 2008 and 2012 were easy answers to the question about which victories stood out most, Self pointed to four good nights at Kansas as, what he called, his team’s most gutsy regular season wins.

The first was last year’s triple-overtime victory over Oklahoma at Allen Fieldhouse. Another win over Oklahoma, this time a 17-point comeback in Norman, also made the list. And KU’s come-from-behind home win over West Virginia without Perry Ellis to clinch the Big 12 title in 2015 also landed in that category.

“But the win, at least at Kansas, that trumps everything,” Self said, “is the Missouri win (in 2012), when you’re down 19 in the second half to a Top 5 team in the country and have the wherewithall and the fan support to come back and win that one.”

Whether it takes that kind of effort to pick up win No. 600 or something else entirely remains to be seen. And there are, of course, no guarantees that the win will come Tuesday night. KU senior Frank Mason III knows that. But he did say that being a part of the milestone victory will mean a lot to him whenever it comes.

Kansas head coach Bill Self raises up the fieldhouse following the Jayhawks' 87-86 overtime win over Missouri on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012.

As for whether he had anything planned for a celebration in the locker room, Mason delivered an honest answer.

“Well, you just gave me an idea,” he joked before Tuesday’s practice. “I’ll get with the guys and hopefully we’ll figure a way out to celebrate, if we play the way we’re supposed to and come out with the victory. We’ll come up with something.”

For Self, the celebration has been ongoing and a career that is now in its 24th year only appears to be picking up steam. He may never get to the mark set by Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (1,051 wins and counting), but, as has been true throughout his career, the only thing that seems to matter to Self is winning the next one.

“I’m not gonna get the least bit nostalgic on you,” Self said. “But it has been a fun run with a lot of great kids and a ton of great players and great staffs. But when you’re at a place like this, you should win. So I don’t think we should get too carried away about that. But it has been an awfully fun ride.”

And it’s a ride that continues, both for Self and just about anybody else who has been a part of it along the way.

“I can’t wait,” Kruse said of tonight’s UMKC game. “Me and my family watch all of the KU games and I think we’re gonna get like an ice cream sundae and celebrate with him from far away.”