Iowa State Cyclones honor Bill Self’s Hall of Fame induction

photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas head coach Bill Self takes some ribbing from the Iowa State student section as he takes the court before tipoff on Monday, Jan. 13, 2014 at Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa.

Throughout the past week, and, really, the past few months, we’ve heard from a lot of people who love Bill Self and appreciate his honor of being selected as a member of the 2017 class at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

That honor will become official a little after 6:30 tonight (on NBA TV) when Self is inducted into the Hall in front of more than 120 friends, family members, former players and former assistant coaches.

And in the past several weeks, many of those people have spoken up to let their thoughts be known about Self’s achievement and what he has meant to their lives.

Many of them made sense. Here at KUsports.com we got in touch with his daughter, his father, former KU coach Larry Brown, several former players, a few former assistants, all people who know Self best.

And it made perfect sense for them to share their favorite memories or emotions about the KU coach’s big honor.

But earlier this week, a video made its way to Twitter that kind of came out of nowhere.

It makes sense for the Larry Browns and Danny Mannings of the world to honor Self. But for a few dudes who competed against him and suffered some tough, tough losses to come out and do the same is a whole different deal.

That’s exactly what the Iowa State men’s basketball program did this week, with former ISU player and coach Fred Hoiberg — whose daughter, Paige, works in the Kansas basketball offices — leading the charge and current ISU coach Steve Prohm closing the show.

The video is short and sweet, but shows an incredible amount of class, both on an individual level and at the program level, and, no doubt, will be one of the sweeter surprises for Self whenever he sees it.

In many ways, it’s things like this that make college basketball, college athletics and competition at that level so great.

Here’s a look at the video, featuring Hoiberg, Monte Morris, Georges Niang, Naz Long and Prohm. Great stuff.