Hall of Fame to fix mistake on Bill Self tribute bench

The Bill Self bench outside the entrance to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has one small mistake that the Hall says soon will be fixed.

Of all of the great tributes to Bill Self that the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has rolled out, one left Kansas basketball fans frustrated on Thursday.

Outside of the main entrance to the Hall of Fame, just before reaching a statue of James Naismith, visitors encounter a walkway with several stone benches honoring the coaches who are in the Hall of Fame.

Larry Brown has one. Roy Williams has one. And now Bill Self has one, too.

Carved into the top of the benches, where people presumably would sit, are the coaches’ names and signatures, the class they went in with, the honorees they selected to be named — most often family members or mentors — and a section at the bottom that lists all of the schools that are most important to them.

For Self, who starred at Edmond (Okla.) High before going on to play at Oklahoma State, both of those schools are on there, along with the four schools at which Self has been a head coach — Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas.

One problem. Where it lists Kansas, it reads, “Kansas University” instead of the University of Kansas.

With KU fans taking to social media to voice their displeasure, one KU official reached out to the Hall of Fame to inform it of the error.

The KU official told the Journal-World that the Hall of Fame regretted the mistake and promised to correct it as soon as possible.

All’s well that ends well. And, hey, it’s not like they spelled it “Bill Slef” on the KU coach’s official portrait or got the man the wrong jacket size.

Everything about the Hall of Fame and this induction experience has been first class and there’s no doubting that the bench will be fixed soon.