Kansas guard Melvin Council Jr. (14) celebrates the Jayhawks’ 84-63 win over Iowa State on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

The history of Kansas basketball under head coach Bill Self is littered with players-only meetings — key junctures at which athletes took matters into their own hands and met as a group to try to set their seasons back on track.

One happened in February 2013, another just 10 months later, still another in January 2016, but perhaps most famously, the 2008 national title team gathered at the now-closed Henry T’s in late February of that year and then didn’t lose another game for the rest of the season.

It may not take on the same legendary quality — time will tell — but the Jayhawks rallied for another players-only meeting in the wake of their disappointing 1-2 start to Big 12 play, and reaped the rewards right away on Tuesday night when they dominated No. 2 Iowa State, 84-63.

“Yeah, just kind of reiterating the key things that we want to identify ourselves as this year,” senior forward Tre White said postgame of the content of the meeting. “I feel like just the internal conversation, I feel like it made us more focused on everything that we do. You know, I don’t want to give everything that we said, it’s still players only, but it definitely made us more connected.”

White had said on pregame radio that he and guard Melvin Council Jr., as some of the older players on the team, had taken on the responsibility of calling the meeting.

“Everybody was on board about it, definitely a team effort, but me and Melvin kind of pointed it out,” he added. “We felt like we needed to talk about it after that game (at West Virginia). We spoke about it in the locker room. And when we had that practice the next day and we spoke about it after, I feel like that was needed this season.”

He said it provided an opportunity for the players to say what they need to say and get aligned with their “same goal in mind.”

They certainly looked connected on Tuesday, both with their 17 assists, matching their highest total against a power-conference foe all season, and on defense, when their integrity as a unit generated some uncharacteristic mistakes from the Cyclones.

White didn’t speak at length about the subject matter of the meeting, but he did say that one key topic was encouraging the team as a whole to be more aggressive and in turn make things easier for star freshman guard Darryn Peterson.

“I feel like tonight we did a good job of that,” he added.

With Peterson playing off the ball a bit more, he had the opportunity to find open space in creative ways as Council was running the offense. Peterson finished with 16 points in 28 minutes. The teamwide aggressiveness was also borne out in evenly distributed production, as all seven of the primary participants in KU’s tight rotation on Tuesday posted at least eight points, which for the likes of Elmarko Jackson and Jamari McDowell took them well above their averages.

Self said that his own message to the team after the loss to West Virginia had been essentially, “We screwed it up — how are we going to unscrew it?”

“Maybe I didn’t use those words exactly,” he added.

He said he had no knowledge that the players had taken the onus of holding such an extracurricular meeting — and added that the coaches shouldn’t know about such things.

“But I had no idea,” he said after the win. “They should meet more often.”