K-State Q&A: Will Bruce Weber’s Wildcats win another basketball game this season?
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
We have lots of questions to get to this week, so let’s dive right in. Thanks, as always, for your participation.
A few weeks ago, I started off this mailbag with a question about K-State’s chances of reaching the NIT. Now I’m staring at the schedule and wondering if the Wildcats might end the season on a 12-game losing streak.
Life comes at you fast.
Losing out, while possible for this team, would leave K-State at 9-22 with just two conference victories. That’s hard to do. I doubt it happens, especially with Texas, Oklahoma State, Iowa State still on the schedule before the Big 12 Tournament.
If (yes, I realize that’s a big word for the K-State basketball team right now) the Wildcats duplicate the effort they put forth during a 69-62 loss at Texas Tech on Wednesday, I predict they will beat the Texas Longhorns on Saturday and probably also defeat the Iowa State Cyclones on senior day.
There’s no such thing as a moral victory in the Big 12, but I was borderline impressed with most of what I saw from K-State in Lubbock.
Xavier Sneed had 15 points and four steals, Antonio Gordon had 14 points and eight rebounds, Montavious Murphy attacked the basket and finished with nine points.
If Cartier Diarra makes a layup instead of missing a windmill dunk, which then bounced into the hands of Texas Tech players for a transition three, midway through the second half the Wildcats might have won on the road against a NCAA Tournament team.
Texas has been without key players lately, including star forward Jericho Sims, and it was recently shelled 81-52 at Iowa State without them. Yes, the Longhorns bounced back with a victory over TCU on Wednesday, but that was at home.
Things could be more challenging for them at Bramlage Coliseum. The Wildcats will probably be a slight favorite. Their six-game losing streak could end soon.
But if they can’t beat Texas, then there’s a chance they will have to wait all the way until next season for another win.
Bruce Weber may have inadvertently answered that question at his weekly news conference on Tuesday.
The K-State basketball coach somehow spoke for 25 minutes, and he spent the majority of that time talking about players who rarely see the court or aren’t yet full members of the roster.
For example: He praised UTEP transfer Kaosi Ezeagu for playing tenacious defense in practice and pushing K-State’s active players as hard as possible behind the scenes. He actually plays so hard, Weber said, that he has made multiple other big men quit in the middle of a scrimmage.
That’s a nice compliment for Ezeagu, who probably will help the Wildcats as a rim protector when he becomes eligible next season. But this isn’t Dikembe Mutombo we’re talking about here. Ezeagu is a 6-foot-10 sophomore who averaged 3.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game while blocking 24 shots as a freshman in El Paso. It’s not a good sign if he’s making K-State’s experienced forwards quit shortly after arriving on campus.
That seems like a problem.
Weber also spent a few minutes talking about former walk-on Pierson McAtee, who Weber thinks might be the team’s best overall leader despite only averaging 2.7 minutes per game.
“We really appreciate him,” Weber said. “He has taken that pride in being a leader and helping everybody out. He’s been great for us, there’s no doubt.”
I made sure to watch McAtee on the bench this week, and he does do a nice job of giving teammates pointers and calling out plays before anyone else. It reminded me of what Victor Ojeleye used to do on some of Frank Martin’s teams and what Mason Schoen used to do on Weber’s Elite Eight squad. That’s a nice thing to have, and McAtee is valuable member of the team.
But the team’s best overall leader?
That also seems like a problem.
None of that would probably matter if the Wildcats still had Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade. Or, at least, less of that would matter. Talent trumps everything in my book. This roster doesn’t have enough of it.
Perhaps that is why Weber rambled on and on about K-State’s incoming recruits when given the opportunity to do so.
Weber didn’t recruit well enough to support a quality senior like Xavier Sneed this season. That’s the main reason why the Wildcats are having a bad season.
1. I’m not expecting Cartier Diarra to be a member of the K-State basketball team beyond this season.
Any loyal mailbag reader knows what I think the future holds for Diarra, but I will say it again. At this point, I will be shocked if he returns to the Wildcats as a fifth-year senior.
To be clear: My opinion has little to do with the timeout incident that occurred between Diarra and Weber at Texas Tech, which seems overblown now that we have heard from all sides.
It has more to do with the fact that he’s been at K-State for four years and is going to have his degree. He is also clearly trying to play and score like a professional right now. Returning to college in Manhattan or elsewhere as a graduate transfer doesn’t seem high on his to-do list.
My guess is he will sign with an agent and try to earn some money playing overseas next season. Weber is recruiting like he expects an extra roster spot.
1a. DaJuan Gordon and Montavious Murphy will be the leaders of next year’s team. Mike McGuirl might also be able to step in and help in that area, but it seems like players gravitate toward Gordon and Murphy right now.
2. You could make an argument for all four of K-State’s incoming freshmen, but I’m going to go with Selton Miguel. He has been a scoring machine as a high school senior and he might have what it takes to replace Sneed on the wing immediately.
It’s a little bit of both. The answer to a question like that is never one thing.
But it’s mostly talent.
The Wildcats badly miss Brown, Stokes and Wade on offense. Not only were the team’s top three-scorers a year ago, they were the team’s most consistent scorers. You never really had to worry about any of them going scoreless. It was a surprise when they didn’t reach double digits, and that’s because they combined to average 38.5 points per game.
Wade could make shots from anywhere, which spread the floor and made him dangers in pick-and-pop situations. Brown and Stokes could both play point guard. They could both also drive, distribute and shoot.
When one of them had an off game, the other two usually stepped up. Or the got the ball to Xavier Sneed for open threes or lob dunks. When was the last time you saw him make one of those? That allowed the team to treat Mike McGuirl’s occassional big games as a bonus more than a necessity.
Diarra is the only player on the current roster capable of replacing what Brown and Stokes brought to the floor, and he’s become a walking distraction.
Simply put: This team lacks offense.
K-State shoots 31.9 percent from three, 47.8 percent from two and 65 percent from the free-throw line. Mediocre all around.
That’s a big reason why Weber has emphasized scoring during the 2020 recruiting cycle and is hoping to add four-star guard Donovan Williams to a group of incoming freshmen that already features three shooters.
There are two things I can’t ever seem to stop eating/drinking, and they both come from Chick-fil-a.
Give me all the chicken nuggets and Dr Pepper at the restaurant and I will do my best to consume them all. My kids are the same way. When we get a 30-piece meal to share, it’s more or less a race to the final nugget and a competition to see how many times we can ask for refills.
So I guess I will go with that. Who dares challenge me?
My editors are pretty good at removing words from my story that don’t appear in the dictionary. And I thank them for that!
But it would be awesome to come up with a new word that hilariously describes a blowout victory. Some sports writers like to say one team boat-raced the other, curb-stomped an opponent and seal-clubbed a rival. Those are all pretty good, but they don’t make me laugh.
Perhaps I could combine the words pulverize and gouge? Then maybe I could add in an animal for effect?
Kansas State scorpion-”pulvergouged” Texas on CBS. I like it.
True story: My father used to be a big Kansas City Royals fan and he wanted to name me after George Brett. My mother, who likes baseball about as much as I like quilting, said no.
So they compromised on a family name. My great grandfather was named Kellis, and so am I. Why did my great great grandparents choose that name? I couldn’t tell you.
K’ellis for sure. Not sure exactly how you would prononuce that, but it looks a hell of a lot cooler than Kelli’s. That one looks like I’m trying to write about something that belongs to a woman named Kelli.
Funny story: I have three different e-mail accounts and one of them auto-corrects my name to Kelli’s every time I use it to send a message on my phone. Sam Mellinger thinks it’s funny and only sends me stuff on that account because my name shows up as Kelli’s. Darn him.
No. I have never even heard of it.
In the words of Springfield Elementary School Principal Seymour Skinner: “Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong!”
After visiting the restaurant’s website and discovering there is a new Manhattan location, I might have to change that. What’s the best thing to order? Please tweet me your suggestions.
And the award for Weirdest Question of the Week goes to ...
It’s been a long time since I’ve watched Silence of the Lambs, so the answer is no. But nice work!
1. Dean Wade. His personality would fit perfectly alongside host Mr. Peanutbutter.
2. Bill Snyder. Maybe he would genuinely try and answer questions if he was doing it for charity.
3. Brian Rohleder. One of the smartest K-State athletes I’ve covered, but does he know things?
4. Wally Judge or Bryce Brown. We never got to hear much from the five-star recruits while they were on campus.
5. Taylor Braet. Hillarity would ensue.
I’m in favor of the proposed transfer rule that will allow any student-athlete in any sport to transfer to a new school once during their college career without sitting out a year. That’s already the rule used in most sports. I have always found it silly that basketball, football and a few other sports think they should have their own transfer rules.
Right now, there’s no consistency with transfer waivers. Some players seem to get them for being homesick. Other players get rejected despite moving across country to care for a sick relative while they attend a new school. A one-time transfer for everyone would simplify the process.
Some questions still need to be answered. Will there be special rules for transferring within a conference? Will coaches have a say on which players receive transfer releases and which ones don’t? Might there be harder rules against tampering?
But those seem easy enough to solve.
The new system will probably make transfers more common, but they are already happening at a high rate. All the other sports survive with a different transfer system. Why not adopt it?
Well, if he’s going to keep scoring 14 points and grabbing eight rebounds like he did against Texas Tech, then he deserves more playing time, even if it comes at the expense of Makol Mawien.
But he had a grant total of 10 points and nine rebounds in his past five games. I’m not quite ready to badger Weber about why he’s not in the starting lineup.
Besides, at the rate Mawien commits early fouls there will seemingly always be playing time available for Gordon.
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.