LAWRENCE, Kan. — Kansas’ basketball players, who were planning on returning from their hometowns to campus July 20 for in-person workouts with KU coaches and trainers per NCAA rules, may be putting their travel plans on hold.
KU coach Bill Self is leaning toward pushing the report date back to Aug. 1 because of the recent spike in numbers of individuals infected by COVID-19 coronavirus not only in Douglas County and the state of Kansas, but at colleges around the country.
“We haven’t finalized it. We are rethinking everything, though,” Self, KU’s 18th-year coach, told The Kansas City Star on Friday night. “Selfishly you want to get them back, but the bottom line is we don’t know if we are going to have a season. We don’t know if football is going to play.
“Everybody who has brought kids back has had problems … everybody,” Self added of schools that have brought back athletes in fall sports only to have to postpone voluntary workouts because of COVID-19 coronavirus exposures. “Right now I don’t see a reason to bring them back.”
Two players, Marcus Garrett and Silvio De Sousa, are already on KU’s campus. All other players are back in their hometowns or hometowns of friends working out. First-semester classes begin at KU on Aug. 24.
“They are working hard based on what we’ve been told,” Self said of his players taking part in workouts back home.
Sophomore Tristan Enaruna is unable to come to the United States at this time because of travel restrictions between U.S. and the Netherlands.
“All our (international) kids have visas,” Self said of Enaruna, De Sousa and Gethro Muscadin. “They’ll open it up,” he added of travel between U.S. and Netherlands. “Right now we don’t want him back yet,” he added, noting there’s plenty of time.
Self is not at this time worried about this week’s federal government announcement that international students would have to return to their home countries if the colleges they attend go to all online coursework for the coming school year.
“We have great representation here at KU with international students. A significant percentage of our students (are international students),” Self said. “I know we’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure these students have an opportunity to stay if that’s what they want to do.
“I know KU would like to have it as close to normal as we can (as far as in-person classes versus online for the 2020-21 school year). We think it’s doable (to have in-person classes). It’s not ever been our intent to go all online. Now we had to do it in the spring and summer (because of the virus). I do think at this point in time it’s doable and am confident it will be the case,” Self added.
As far as the upcoming 2020-21 hoops season … “I think we’ll have a season,” Self said. “I just don’t know it’ll start on time. I still think we’ll play basketball this year. I do.”
The Ivy League recently announced that the football season would be delayed until the spring and in fact all fall sports would have their seasons put on hold with the earliest starting date for games expected to be Jan. 1. That affects the KU-Harvard basketball game on Dec. 29.
“We’ll get a replacement. That won’t be hard,” Self said of finding a foe to fill that date.
Some conferences such as the Big Ten have announced plans for conference-only games in football. The Big 12 has not made such a decision at this time with nonconference games still on the slate.
