Boot camp begins for KU men’s basketball

Men’s Basketball

Journal-World file photo

Kansas head coach Bill Self watches as the players rapidly shuffle across the court during Boot Camp in the practice gym on Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 just after 6 a.m.

One of the telltale signs that basketball season is on the horizon revealed itself on Monday, as the Kansas men’s basketball team began its annual boot camp, kicking off a period of intense conditioning that helps prepare the Jayhawks for the upcoming season.

The boot camp’s duration varies — last year it spanned about a week and a half — but it has been a longstanding tradition under head coach Bill Self, one he has imposed since his tenure at Oral Roberts. The goal each year has always been to get his team in playing shape ahead of the fall season, as he says, but also to establish a fundamental, challenging group experience for his players, to “set a tone that the guys thought whatever was in front of them moving forward wasn’t going to be near as difficult, because they had already been through the hardest thing.”

The vast majority of Jayhawks on this year’s roster will experience boot camp for the first time. As has been well established by this point in the offseason, sophomore center Flory Bidunga is KU’s only returning scholarship player who played last season; however, Elmarko Jackson and Jamari McDowell are both back as redshirt sophomores this year and have undergone previous boot camps (although Jackson had a torn patellar tendon last year), as have walk-ons Justin Cross, Wilder Evers and Will Thengvall.

New to boot camp are freshmen Corbin Allen, Samis Calderon, Paul Mbiya, Darryn Peterson, Kohl Rosario and Bryson Tiller (Tiller technically returns from last year but joined at midseason), as well as transfers Melvin Council Jr., Jayden Dawson, Nginyu Ngala and Tre White.

The arrival of boot camp precedes KU’s traditional basketball kickoff event, Late Night in the Phog, which is just over five weeks away, as it is set for Oct. 17 (a featured artist has not been announced). The Jayhawks begin their exhibition slate a week later at Louisville, and tip off for real at Green Bay on Nov. 3.

Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off “California vibes,” whatever that means.

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