LAWRENCE — Following the announcement earlier this month that the Big 12 Conference will have player availability reports for men’s basketball, football and women’s basketball conference games, multiple Kansas Athletics coaches reacted to the news.
Bill Self, KU’s men’s basketball coach, detailed he thought it’s a great idea and one that’s important because of the presence of sports gambling. It’s just not one that he anticipates taking away from the potential of some athletes still being classified as game-time decisions.
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Lance Leipold, KU’s football coach, outlined these reports seemed to be where the game was heading — also citing the prominence of sports gambling. He just wants to make sure things are balanced for everyone and highlighted an interest in how something will be handled if it’s deemed the system wasn’t used correctly.
Fast forward to Wednesday, and KU women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider issued a statement expressing his support for player availability reports. For basketball, there will be an update the night before each game and 90 minutes before tip-off. Designations for the status of basketball players will be listed as available, game-time decision or out.
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“In today’s culture of sports betting,” Schneider explained, “I think it decreases the amount of situations that our players, staff members and others around the department are put in with outside entities trying to search for information.”
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The Jayhawks women’s basketball team’s finalized Big 12 schedule has yet to be released, but the program does know which league opponents it will face and where. The regular season begins Nov. 5 at home against Kansas City and later includes a pair of Fort Myers Tip-Off games in late November against Georgia and Dayton in Fort Myers, Florida.
Schneider’s squad is led by a pair of returning guards in junior S’Mya Nichols and senior Elle Evans. Nichols has the potential to be one of the Big 12’s best players this upcoming season. But a lot of the enthusiasm around the program also comes from the arrival of a high-profile freshman class, that includes guard Keeley Parks, guard Libby Fandel, forward Tatyonna Brown and forward Jaliya Davis — with Parks, Fandel and Davis all rated as 247Sports Composite five-star prospects in the 2025 recruiting class.
Kansas women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider guides his team as they prepare for the 2025-26 season.
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football, basketball coaches approve Big 12 availability report
