K-State Q&A: Dean Wade, Bruce Weber, next season and former coaches

Kansas State’s basketball season is over, but K-State Q&A is still going strong. It’s time for another edition of our weekly back and forth.

No lead in this week. Let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for asking them.

It needs to be Dean Wade, let’s put it that way.

When Wade is at his best, he is one of the best forwards in the Big 12, if not the nation. OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit there, but he scored 20 points in both games against Kansas this season. He also torched TCU for 20 more. He can be really dang good.

Wade is an ideal stretch four, and if you can score 40 points in a season against KU you are a really good player. For whatever reason, though, Wade hasn’t been able to bottle that up and bring it consistently.

With him this season, you were getting good Dean Wade or bad Dean Wade. Not much in between. It often depended on whether he made his first shot. His confidence was that fragile.

If he can take a leap forward he could contribute the way Perry Ellis did as an upperclassman. But he needs to become a basketball assassin, and he needs to play that way every night.

My lasting memory of Wade this season came in the second half of the NCAA Tournament loss to Cincinnati. His confidence was fading after some misses, and he got passive. Kamau Stokes sent him a pass in the corner hoping he would take an open three. Instead, he dribbled into a triple team and turned the ball over. Stokes picked up a foul at midcourt shortly after, and Wade helped him up. But Stokes wasn’t happy to see Wade. He got up and slapped Wade on the chest, yelling “shoot the (expletive) ball.”

Barry Brown showed big improvement this past season, so he could be the face of the team, too. But Wade is the potential difference maker. Next year, he needs to shoot the (expletive) ball with confidence, and do it every night.

Scoring: 61.2 percent.

Rebounding: 53.4 percent.

Minutes Played: 61.8 percent.

K-State returns a good nucleus. No seniors will be a challenge. Replacing Wesley Iwundu and D.J. Johnson won’t be easy. But if players on the current roster improve, Cartier Diarra is as good as advertised and one or two newcomers contribute the team could be a little better.

Nothing will be set in stone until K-State hires a new athletic director and that person makes a decision ...

But anyone holding out hope for a coaching change is setting themselves up for disappointment. Coaches that win 21 games and reach the NCAA Tournament rarely ever get fired, and Weber is unlikely to join that fraternity. The season ended a week ago and Weber has been out recruiting ever since. He will almost certainly get another year to try and win over the masses, even with a new athletic director.

Next season will be (as former Texas Tech coach Pat Knight once put it at Big 12 media days) his time to earn a contract extension or to get fired.

I suppose there’s a chance Weber could look for a landing spot somewhere else (outside the power conferences like Travis Ford and Frank Haith), but most of those schools would struggle to pay him a competitive salary or handle his buyout, even if K-State was willing to negotiate the number down from $2.5 million.

Weber says he wants to come back and thinks he can build a consistent winner at K-State. It will be a surprise if he’s not back.

John Currie interviewed him for the head coaching job when Frank Martin left for South Carolina but ended up trying to convince him to join Bruce Weber’s staff as the No. 2 assistant. That didn’t go over so well.

Underwood had some support back then, but he lacked head coaching experience at the Division I level and K-State wanted someone without connections to the previous staff and Frank Martin.

Last year, Currie thought sticking with Weber was a better option than hiring Underwood -- a decision that still angers (and may always anger) many fans.

This year, I’m not sure Underwood to K-State was a realistic option. Maybe he would have considered the switch, but it would have cost the Wildcats $8.5 million and then they would have had to match the $3 million salary Illinois offered. And if you’re willing to spend that much money on a coach, K-State honestly might have tried to lure away a more established coach. As much as K-State fans love Underwood, his record this season (20-13) was almost identical to Weber’s (21-14). Is that really worth breaking the bank for?

Underwood represents a link to the Huggins/Martin era K-State fans cherish, so maybe that’s worth it to fans.

Oklahoma State reportedly offered Underwood $2.2 million (more than double his salary) before Illinois came calling and requested a meeting to improve the deal after Illinois came calling, yet he didn’t even give the Cowboys a shot to counter. Seems like he was motivated to leave for Illinois.

My question: Say Currie canned Weber a year ago and hired Underwood. Would he have looked to leave K-State after one season? Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about.

He’s a good coach. A good enough coach to guide K-State to the Elite Eight and South Carolina to the Sweet 16. Many power 5 schools would like to have him.

But he’s not a top-tier coach.

You have to win big (think national championship or at least Final Four) over a long period of time to be included in that category. Maybe he will get there, but he’s not there yet.

Nearly the entire offense comes back, led by surgically repaired quarterback Jesse Ertz. Collin Klein has returned to coach him. K-State put up yards and points last year with an extremely limited passing game. The offense should do more next season.

The defense loses Elijah Lee, Jordan Willis and Dante Barnett, so there will be some question marks there.

But Bill Snyder typically has his best years with a good offense and a QB he trusts. The ingredients are there for a special season.

Most athletic directors seem to like hiring their own people, so I would think it’s a challenge most would accept, even though they will be trying to replace an active Hall of Famer.

The politics of the hiring process is what complicates matters. Bill Snyder wants his son, and only his son, to replace him. The vast majority of athletic directors will want to hire someone with experience as a head coach or as a coordinator beyond the special teams level.

This caused major friction between Snyder and John Currie. It’s something the next AD will have to manage, as well.

Appetizer: Raspberry black bean dip from So Long.

Small Plate: Buffalo chicken taco from Taco Lucha.

Big Plate: Barbecue spaghetti from Cox Bros.

Desert: Anything from Varsity Donuts.

Drink: Sangria from Coco Bolo’s.

I don’t know that I can name just one.

Homer Simpson fading into the hedges is pretty good. I also like shut up and take my money from Futurama. The this is fine guy sitting in a burning house gets a lot of good use.

Honestly, I like most memes. Well, other than the crying Jordan. That one gets used to death.

For football, I would steal one of the black and purple alternates TCU busts out every now and then. Those look good.

For basketball, I would push for a more subtle version of the cat-stratch uniforms the teams used to wear when Michael Beasley played in Manhattan. I like the idea of incorporating the claws on the side of the uniforms and promoting the whole Wildcats thing. Those old unis were a bit much and super baggy, which is no longer the style. I bet Nike could make something like that look cool today, though.

Laird Veatch and Chad Weiberg continue to be the names I hear the most. I’ve been hearing Weiberg’s name more of late, for whatever that is worth. Other names are likely involved, too. The search has been going on for a while.

The longer the search goes on is probably not the best sign for Veatch.

I would expect K-State to announce a hire in early April. Speed and AD searches are rarely mentioned together.

There will be some, but it’s become hard for K-State to schedule decent home opponents with the emphasis it places on playing in Wichita and Kansas City.

The best nonconference home game anymore usually comes in the Big 12/SEC challenge. And that’s when K-State gets a home game in the series.

Weber told me he contacted every Big Ten school this year in hopes of setting up a home-and-home starting next year and they all said no. K-State also tried to arrange a home-and-home with teams in Florida to give Barry Brown a trip home and it was hard for them to find any takers there, too.

K-State will announce its 2017-18 schedule this summer, but we already know it will face Tulsa in Wichita, Washington State in Spokane and some combination of Arizona State, George Washington and Xavier in Las Vegas. It should also play a home game against the SEC. I doubt any other good home games are in the cards.

Scheduling across college basketball stinks right now. The blue-bloods all play each other, and everyone else saves their big games for tournaments and neutral-court games. Wish it wasn’t this way.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 10:15 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Dean Wade, Bruce Weber, next season and former coaches."