After the best season of his tenure at Kansas, the Jayhawk head coach was given a new contract by Kansas Athletic Director Travis Goff.
One of the biggest questions surrounding the Kansas Jayhawks Women’s basketball plan earlier this season had to do with their caput coach: Could Coach Brandon Schneider practice enough in the final season of his contract to warrant a new one for next season?
The answer was a resounding yes, with the team catastrophe the season with a 20-8 overall record, including 11-7 in the Large 12, and Schneider being recognized as the Large 12 Coach of the Year past his peers. They are the #five seed in the Big 12 Tournament that starts Thursday, and are considered a lock to be selected for the NCAA Tournament on Sunday evening.
And now, the Kansas coach inked a new iv-year contract on Midweek that will keep him in Lawrence through the 2025-26 season. Details of that contract include a base of operations bacon of $400,000 per year, with an boosted $140,000 per year for other non-coaching obligations. Bonus opportunities include $50,000 for each twelvemonth that the Jayhawks are selected for the NCAA Tournament.
Both Schneider and Kansas Athletic Director Travis Goff addressed the media on Midweek. Here are some takeaways from their articulation printing conference:
The contract length is perfect
Similar many people on the internet, I came into the year thinking that Schneider was coaching for his task. Coming into the year, his record at Kansas was 61-115, with his best flavour coming in 2019-2020 when the Jayhawks finished 15-14 and was expected to authorize for the WNIT earlier the postseason was canceled. Just Kansas had all the same to win more 4 Large 12 games in a flavour nether Schneider, and the team took a huge footstep backwards last flavor.
But with the huge comeback from the squad and the conference coaches tabbing him equally the Big 12 Omnibus of the Year, there were actually 2 options for Schneider’s contract situation: Extend him for (at least) four years, or let him walk and start a coaching search afterward the tournament.
Information technology’southward articulate from this flavour and the mode this team has coalesced around him that Schneider is edifice something that has a chance to compete at the elevation of the conference. The merely legitimate gripe that people may have is the amount of fourth dimension that it took to build the program to this point. But no one should be okay with throwing away the progress that this program has made simply because y’all call back information technology shouldn’t take taken this long.
If you wait at the record of the Jayhawks under Schneider, information technology’due south easy to see the steady improvement that the program has enjoyed. With the exception of last year, each of his teams has won more games than the prior one.
During Large 12 Media Days, the message was sent that last season was due to opt-outs and players take to play out of position, merely there were legitimate questions almost how much of that was coach-speak and how far players could develop in a unmarried offseason. As mentioned above, the meaning spring this flavour leads me to both believe the explanations given and wish that we could have seen a program build off the potential WNIT season in 1999-2000.
Instead, we have a clear pattern of a program that is improving from season to season. The progress has been slow simply hasn’t reversed.
Support for the program is at an unprecedented level.
When asked most the steps that led to this contract extension, Goff laid out the importance of getting to familiarize himself with the program upon first arriving and seeing the growth offset mitt. When asked about how to evaluate the adjacent steps in building the program, he answered with the post-obit:
“I think the slap-up ascertainment and awareness around taking side by side steps, arguably mayhap the most of import attribute of that is the recognition that it is never a head jitney or a staff’s responsibility lonely or in a vacuum to accept that side by side footstep. It actually does crave an institutional delivery, a comprehensive administrative commitment … and so I remember this gives us a hazard to really add together some other layer to that. What does information technology mean to be fully committed to women’s basketball game at the Academy of Kansas?”
He went on to talk about the importance of supporting the efforts of the coaching staff in roster management, which is a very different environment from fifty-fifty just a couple years agone. He stated that he sees this contract as a way to back up efforts in recruiting peculiarly.
Ultimately, Kansas fans that are wondering what to think almost this program should be encouraged by the news.
In his argument included in the press release announcing the new contract, Schneider acknowledged that “it has been a process getting to the point where we are, just building things the correct mode doesn’t always happen every bit speedily equally you lot would like. We tried to stay the course and stay true to the values and pillars of our program, knowing that i day nosotros would build something that could be very sustainable.”
With this new contract and the additional back up from the athletic department, that procedure can continue. And hopefully information technology won’t be long before fans come across this program reach that next level.
