Has Bill Self lost control of the Jayhawks?

The Kansas men's basketball players cannot keep their names out of the news.

This time, it was Brady Morningstar, who was arrested for a DWI early Saturday morning. Morningstar, a former walk-on who started last season and was expected to provide depth in the Jayhawk's back court this year, was suspended for the rest of the first semester. He will be allowed to practice, but he won't be eligible to play in games or travel until mid-December.

Brady Morningstar was arrested for DWI.
(photo credit: Kansan)

This underlines a bigger issue for Bill Self. Namely, his player's cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Over the last two seasons, the transgressions of his players have turned this team into a public relations disaster.

• In the summer of 2008, Sherron Collins missed a court date stemming from a 2007 incident where a woman accused him of exposing himself and rubbing up against her in an elevator. The charges were eventually dropped when Collins threatened a counterclaim (full disclosure: by all accounts, Collins appeared innocent, the issue was missing a court date).
• Last September, Markieff Morris was arrested for shooting a woman with a BB gun from his dorm room window when he was drunk.
• Chase Buford, a junior preferred walk-on for the Jayhawks, was arrested in July for DWI.
• Darrell Arthur and Mario Chalmers were thrown out of the NBA's Rookie Camp after they were caught in their hotel room with weed and women.
• Speaking of Arthur, reports came out last summer that his grades were changed while he attended high school in Texas. After initially being cleared of any wrongdoing, the investigation was eventually reopened.
  

But, clearly, the biggest issue here is the fighting last week (where police have opened up a disorderly conduct investigation) between Self's players and the KU football team. By now, everyone has heard about the two skirmishes (Facebook updates and all), but late Friday night the Lawrence Journal linked two more incidents (and one more basketball player) to the fighting.

Now, this is where is gets a bit confusing. Try to stay with me here.

Apparently, after the second of the three incidents last week, a 19 year old man named Guy Lipscomb (who a KU student) threatened two women, a current and a former track team member, with a gun and was subsequently arrested. The victims of that threat were also involved in an incident back in July.

This is where the story becomes interesting. On the night of July 25th, Andrea Johnson, 25, was cited for misdemeanor battery after assaulting one of the women that was threatened by Lipscomb. Of the witnesses listed, one was the other woman that was threatened (who RTC speculates is this woman) and another was Chalmers, who was back in town for a golf event.

Oh, and Chalmers and Johnson just so happen to have a kid together.

Was one of the track athletes dating a football player? Is that where this most recent incident of antimosity between the two teams came from? Is there a link between the incident involving Johnson, the incident involving Lipscomb, and the basketball teams? The police think there is.

What I do know is that Chalmers is now the fourth player - along with Tyshawn Taylor, Sherron Collins, and one of the Morris twins - to be explicitely linked to the fighting, while the Kansan identified "the Morris twins, Mario Little, Sherron Collins, Tyshawn Taylor, Brady Morningstar, Travis Releford, Tyrel Reed, Thomas Robinson, Elijah Johnson and many other players" as being involved in the brawls. While no basketball players have been cited in any of these incidents, the company you keep reflects quite a bit on your own character.

Now, that is a lot of issues for one program in such a short period of time (is anyone else looking forward to see what kind of creative signs the fans at K-State and Oklahoma can come up with?), and, undoubtedly, Bill Self is going to receive criticism for losing control of his basketball team.

I don't think that is the case.

In fact, I think this latest incident shows that Self is regaining control over his team.

Self has laid down the law for his team. He has instituted a much stricter set of rules for his team, including a curfew which Morningstar broke, with a strict set of punishments for violating team rules.

So not only did Morningstar drive drunk and get caught (which is enough in and of itself to warrant a suspension), he was did it while knowingly breaking a new, week-old set of team rules and was punished accordingly. And if you don't think that this punishment was serious, think about this: during the season's early games, college coaches determine their rotation. By the time the new year comes around and conference season starts, most teams have reduced their rotation to about eight or nine. Morningstar will not only be starting his season a month and a half late, he will be missing the games in which players prove themselves worthy of minutes.

Should I mention that Kansas might be the deepest team in the country this year?

To say all of that in fewer words, this punishment will more than likely wipe out the 2009-2010 season for Morningstar.

You don't think that punishment sends a message?