Kansas head coach Bill Self gets his players’ attention during the second half on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026 at Allen Fieldhouse. Photo by Nick Krug

Two days after he went to the hospital, causing him to miss KU’s road game at Colorado, head coach Bill Self said on his “Hawk Talk” radio show that he will be back in action coaching the team without limitations.

“I could have coached today,” he said on the show on Wednesday night. “I could have coached last night, they just didn’t want me flying and being in altitude there. But certainly will be back on the practice court tomorrow, without question.”

The Jayhawks’ 23rd-year head coach elaborated on the circumstances that led to his absence in Boulder, Colorado, where his team, led by acting coach Jacque Vaughn, gritted out a 75-69 victory over the host Buffaloes.

Self said that shortly before the team had been slated to take off on Monday, he had started feeling “some very abnormal chest issues,” which concerned him greatly based on his past experiences. (He was hospitalized and had stents inserted in March 2023 and again in July 2025.) That was what led him to LMH Health that evening.

“Come to find out I was not severely but very dehydrated, and I’ve got AFib (atrial fibrillation),” he said. “And I just had a bout with that that was pretty significant in a very small snippet of time. But it was enough that I couldn’t get on a plane.”

The result was the 10th game Self has missed in recent years, nine of which came during the 2022-23 season (four due to a suspension and five due to his aforementioned health issues).

THOUGHTS ON THE GAME

The unexpected absence left Self in the unusual position of watching his team from afar.

“When you watch it, I am yelling at the TV, ‘Do this,’ or ‘Do that,'” he said. “And then I start thinking (about) it realistically: Even if I was there and I said ‘Do this,’ or ‘Do that,’ there’s still a great chance it wouldn’t work. So now I understand what it actually means to be an armchair quarterback, because last night I had all the answers on exactly what we needed to be doing.”

He also joked that it was the latest he’s had to stay up watching a game — the Jayhawks and Buffaloes tipped off around 10:10 p.m. Central time and played past midnight.

As for the overall quality of that play, Self said his team deserved a grade of “A” for pulling off the win, but only a “C or whatever” from a technical standpoint.

“If you’re not used to it, that altitude (more than a mile high at CU Events Center) can throw you off just a little bit, where you can still play OK, but usually it doesn’t have the same flow,” Self said, also mentioning the more than seven minutes prior to the game’s first stoppage. “I thought last night was one of those deals … Our energy level wasn’t close to being comparable to what it was before.”

He did have plenty of praise for individual players over the course of his radio show: Melvin Council Jr. for his key plays late, Tre White for his shooting and rebounding and Darryn Peterson for powering through to finish the game on a hurt ankle, among others.

“We did fine, but we got to play better,” Self said. “We got to play better, we got to execute better, we got to be tougher. There’s a lot of things we got to do, but we did have some guys step up when it counted.”

Peterson’s ankle, which he rolled while defending away from the ball in the second half, could hamper him for some time. Self said it was “a pretty severe turn, as evidenced by how he’s walking today, or lack thereof.”

“He’s not going to be 100% for a while, so he’s going to have to learn to deal with that,” Self added.

He did say that Peterson likely earned some points from his teammates for the toughness he displayed in fighting through that injury.

The Jayhawks, with Self back at the helm, will return to action against Kansas State in Manhattan on Saturday at 7 p.m.