K-State suspends all sports, limits recruiting after basketball season ends abruptly
The next few weeks will be quiet for Kansas State athletics.
The Wildcats announced Thursday that all upcoming sporting events, including home-and-away baseball games and spring football practice, have been suspended until at least March 30 in response to the spreading coronavirus. K-State coaches in all sports will also be restricted from traveling for recruiting purposes or hosting recruits on campus visits until that date.
K-State made those decisions in concert with the Big 12, which instituted similar rules for all 10 of its schools after canceling the Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. The NCAA also announced Thursday that it was canceling all of its spring and winter championships, including the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s tournaments.
“We must put the safety and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches, staff and university community first in this situation,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with appropriate medical professionals, the Big 12 Conference and our University administration to monitor the situation and make changes as we see fit. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through this very serious and delicate situation.”
Those changes will impact several events on campus. K-State baseball was set to host seven straight home games and K-State football was scheduled to begin spring football practice on March 17.
The K-State basketball teams will also be unable to finish their seasons after both were scheduled to play games in Kansas City this week. The women’s team was to play Iowa State on Friday.
The Wildcats men learned their season had come to an abrupt and unexpected end while they relaxed at a hotel on the Country Club Plaza on Thursday.
In the same season that K-State (11-21, 3-15 Big 12) set a school record for overall losses and conference losses, the Wildcats also ended the year with a victory for the first time since 1971.
That was so long ago that the Big Eight hosted a holiday tournament in December instead of a postseason tournament in March.
A college basketball team usually needs to win a postseason tournament in order to end its year on a winning streak, making it one of the rarest feats in the entire sport. But K-State closed out this season with back-to-back victories thanks to conferences across the nation deciding to cancel games in response to the spreading coronavirus.
K-State clobbered Iowa State 79-63 on its senior day and then followed that up with a 53-49 victory over TCU in the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday.
“I think we’re building up to what we know we could have been or should be,” K-State junior guard Mike McGuirl said afterward.
We will never know if it was the start of something special or simply a pair of victories over middling opponents.
No. 10 seed K-State was supposed to play No. 2 seed Baylor in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Thursday night in front of a small amount of family and staff. Another upset would have moved the Wildcats within two victories of an unlikely NCAA Tournament berth. No team has ever won the Big 12 Tournament after playing on its opening night, but they wanted to be the first.
Instead, they packed their bags for the drive back to Manhattan.
Senior leaders like Xavier Sneed, Makol Mawien and Pierson McAtee, who previously helped K-State reach the Elite Eight and share a Big 12 championship, have no choice but to focus on future endeavors.
A K-State spokesperson said neither coaches nor players were going to speak with media on Thursday afternoon, but Weber knew this was a possibility heading into the day.
The 63-year old coach said he would have bittersweet feelings about things if his team was unable to play another game at the Big 12 Tournament.
“It would be sad,” Weber said on Wednesday. “But if they make that decision, obviously it would be an educated decision. We’re trying to protect everybody’s health and we don’t want our country locked down like Italy is right now where everyone is quarantined. It’s scary. I’m old. I’m in that group where people die. I don’t want to die. I want people healthy.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 3:08 PM.