Published: April 11, 2008 02:14 am            

No Self for Cowboys

STILLWATER, Okla. — Who will be the next Oklahoma State men’s basketball coach?

At this point, the only clear answer to that question is not Bill Self.

The coach at Kansas who was a player and assistant at OSU along with spending seven years as the head coach at Tulsa and Oral Roberts announced Thursday he is staying in Lawrence.

It was just three days after he guided the Jayhawks to the national championship, which they won by rallying to beat Memphis in overtime.

The Edmond native and husband of a former O-State cheerleader was Oklahoma State's No. 1 choice to succeed Sean Sutton, whose departure was made official on April 1. Sutton went 39-29 in two years guiding the program he helped his father, Eddie Sutton, rebuild.

Self had long been a fan favorite to take over in Stillwater and OSU athletic director Mike Holder tried to give the fans what they wanted.

He said he and Self met Wednesday night for about two hours. Talk of the financial package OSU would offer to Self garnered national attention but Holder said he didn’t put dollar signs in front of Self.

“We started out the conversation by — and I say this all the time so people will know this is me — you don’t make any decisions over money,” Holder said. “You can’t buy anything of value with money. Money provides opportunity and that’s about it. So we talked for the rest of the time about everything but finances and money and that’s as it should be.”

Holder said Self “broke my heart and I’m serious about that ” when he elected to stay in Kansas.

“So I’m going to have to kind of regroup and get over that, the loss first, then figure out where to go from here,” Holder said.

Holder said he wanted to make sure his next target was “one we can get.”

“I don’t want to get up to the plate and have another strike,” he said.

The details have not been announced, but Self will receive a lucrative extension at Kansas.

“There was never serious interest on our part in leaving the University of Kansas,” Self told the Associated Press on Thursday. “But there was serious interest in listening and helping Oklahoma State in a way that would put their basketball program in the position they want it to be in. We visited and slept on it and came to the conclusion that I felt all along that the time is right for my family to be in Lawrence, Kan., and lead this program, hopefully, to bigger and better things in the future.”

Holder praised Self on Thursday.

“I think he’s a lot more than just a basketball coach,” said Holder, himself a former golf coach who guided OSU to eight national titles. “He’s a leader of men and (KU) is very lucky to have him and we’re very proud he’s a Cowboy. He just happens to be coaching at Kansas.”

Now Holder turns his focus to finding the next Cowboy.

“The real challenge is to pick the one that I think is for us,” he said. “That’s my mission. I failed on my first assignment, so I’m going to try someone else. But I think everybody and every Cowboy fan would have been very disappointed, as I would have been with myself, had we not given Bill Self an opportunity to come home.

“I think out of respect for him and the tradition of our basketball program, we should have done that. We have done that and he has spoken and now it is time to move on to someone else.”



Jacob Longan writes for Stillwater (Okla.) NewsPress.