Kansas assistant coach Jacque Vaughn leads the players through warmups prior to tipoff of exhibition game against Fort Hays State on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Updated 8:56 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026:

BOULDER, Colo. — Assistant coach Jacque Vaughn will serve as Kansas’ acting head coach for Tuesday night’s road matchup at Colorado, head coach Bill Self announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Vaughn, a former All-American point guard for the Jayhawks in the 1990s, is in his first year on Self’s coaching staff. He has extensive head coaching experience in the NBA, with stints at the helm of the Orlando Magic and twice leading the Brooklyn Nets (including once as an interim coach in 2020).

Self did not travel with the team to Boulder, Colorado, after he “felt under the weather,” according to KU Athletics, and had to go to LMH Health on Monday. On Tuesday night, a KU athletics official said Self was back at his home in Lawrence and that he expected to return to practice this week. KU’s next game — and the next chance for Self to coach — is on Saturday night at Kansas State.

“I’m feeling much better and I want to thank the well-wishers and the great team at LMH Health,” Self said in a statement on Tuesday. “I’ll be sitting out tonight’s game, and as I’ve said before, we have an elite coaching staff at KU, and I know our players are in good hands in Boulder.”

“Jacque Vaughn will serve as the acting head coach tonight. He will rely on our great group of coaches, Jeremy Case, Kurtis Townsend, Joe Dooley and Tony Bland, throughout the game to lead the team.”

Self had previously been hospitalized and had stents inserted on a pair of occasions in recent years, once in July when he was dealing with “concerning symptoms” and once in March 2023 when he was dealing with chest tightness and balance issues.

The 2023 hospitalization led to then-assistant coach Norm Roberts leading the Jayhawks through the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments, as he had early in the 2022-23 season when Self was enduring a KU-imposed suspension related to the NCAA infractions case. Roberts, who had been a head coach at St. John’s earlier in his career, went 4-0 during the suspension and 3-2 during the hospitalization. He retired in May and was replaced on the KU staff by Vaughn, who had been fired by the Nets in February 2024.

Vaughn received the nod for Tuesday night’s game from among a group of five primary assistant coaches on Self’s staff — the ones listed in Self’s statement. Case is the only one of those assistants with the title of associate head coach, which he received as part of a promotion in October. In an interview in July on the ​​”Inside College Basketball Now” podcast, Self — with the caveat that he planned on “doing this a while,” continuing to serve as KU’s head coach — mentioned Case as a possible in-house successor when he eventually retires, and agreed with the host that Vaughn could be an option as well.

Vaughn said in a pregame interview with KU radio commentator Greg Gurley that Self had initially spoken to the team on Monday, and then to the Jayhawks’ coaching staff: “(He) asked me to do my part,” Vaughn said, “and tonight, my part is to fill in for him, and that’s the role I’ll have.” He also said he spoke to Self multiple times over the course of Tuesday.

Tipoff against Colorado at the CU Events Center is set for 10 p.m. Central time.