How Will Bill Self Utilize Kansas Basketball's Newfound Depth? | Pay Heed 10/9

Okay, on today's show we're gonna be talking all things Kansas basketball.

If you want my thoughts ahead of the KU/Utah game on the football side, check out the previous episode.

Tons of breakdowns from the previous, uh, couple days talking KU football.

But wanted to talk KU basketball here today because Bill Self said something recently that, that piqued my interest.

And Kansas now has its official roster set with the return of Trey White and Melvin Council, and this team on paper looks like it could be pretty deep.

Now, the problem with that is, is Bill Self known to be a guy that tends to go deep to his bench? Not really.

So how is this gonna work out? Well, let's start by doing a little math.

I, listen, I was a journalism major.

Uh, I only took one math class in college.

Not a math guy.

Certified not a math guy, but I'm gonna try to do some math here, and we'll wade through this together when looking at how potentially this roster could be divided up minutes-wise, and how maybe Bill Self could indeed go a little bit deeper into his bench heading into the, uh, 2026 season.

So you have five positions on the court, five positions on the court.

Each ga- uh, game is 40 minutes.

40 times 5, 200.

So you have in each game that you play, 200 total minutes that you could divvy up however many, between however many different players end up playing in, in the game, right? When you go back to last season, Kansas did not go very deep on their bench.

Uh, Melvin Council averaged 34.9 minutes per game.

Trey White averaged 31.3 minutes per game.

Both those guys are returning.

Then you think about, like, a Cole Rosario, who averaged 11.4 minutes per game.

He's a returner as well.

Paul Embiya averaged five minutes per game, but y- you get the idea.

The point is, is that two weeks ago you had a roster with a bunch of new players that you were going to be trying to figure out how to da- divide up the minutes, and now you've brought back two players in the past two weeks that averaged a combined 65 minutes per game from last year's squad.

Okay, so you got 200 total minutes, and now all of a sudden you're injecting two players that average 60 plus minutes ba- That, that's a v- almost a fourth of the possible minutes you could divide up that has been added to the roster via Trey White and Melvin Council.

Now, to be clear, I don't expect Trey White and Melvin Council to play that same level of minutes this season, which, which we'll talk about.

And, and in fact, Bill Self even said that he doesn't want that either.