K-State Q&A: Donovan Williams fallout, basketball newcomers, and the NFL Draft streak
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
There is no need for an elaborate introduction this week. Let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
Kansas State picking up a silent commitment from four-star guard Donovan Williams and then losing him to Oklahoma State a few days later will go down as a significant recruiting loss for the Wildcats, but “catastrophic” seems like too strong of a word.
Bruce Weber has other talent coming back and coming in on the wing, so Williams might not have made a major impact next season.
He might have, but it’s far from a given.
I think DaJuan Gordon and Mike McGuirl will start at shooting guard/small forward next season, while Luke Kasubke and Selton Miguel provide valuable minutes off the bench. Williams would have added versatility, scoring and depth to the mix. But he would have needed to come in and kick some serious butt to beat out all those guys and play 30 minutes a game like he wanted to.
Williams has the same playing style as Miguel, and Miguel is the higher-rated recruit. So Weber will now lean more on him to provide a scoring punch next season.
The most tantalizing part about adding Williams would have been in the future. He could have formed a dynamic duo with Miguel on the wing as they both matured. Now they will play against each other.
Perhaps the most painful part of losing Williams is that there is no obvious recruiting option for the Wildcats to explore with their final open scholarship. Instead of adding one of the best unsigned players remaining in the 2020 recruiting class, they will now likely have to reach for a prospect that wasn’t previously on their radar.
1. We will have to wait and see what he does at Oklahoma State, but for now I say missed opportunity. Yes, it would have been difficult for Weber to keep Williams, Miguel and Kasubke all happy with playing time next season and Williams probably would have brought an ego to the roster, but that’s sometimes the price you have to pay for a talented player.
2. Weber has rarely chosen to redshirt healthy scholarship players. McGuirl is one of the few he has tried to redshirt at K-State, but McGuirl was thrust into action as a freshman after Kamau Stokes suffered an injury. I don’t see that strategy changing. Seryee Lewis is the only player that would be a redshirt possibility. K-State is going to need all hands on deck next basketball season.
Short answer: No. This is the year K-State’s long (and best in the Big 12) NFL Draft finally comes to an end. I trust Mel Kiper’s opinion on this one.
Long answer: There’s always a chance. The Wildcats have several late-round hopefuls, and it only takes one team to like one of them. I can definitely envision Scott Frantz, Nick Kaltmayer, James Gilbert or even Devin Anctil getting picked in the seventh round.
I see two or three former K-State players making NFL rosters as undrafted free agents in this class. I just don’t have confidence any of them will get picked.
Stranger things have happened, though.
Two examples:
1. The New Orleans Saints shocked everyone by selecting Tavon Rooks in the sixth round of the 2014 draft to keep the streak alive.
2. Bryce Brown kept things going in 2012 as a seventh-round selection.
There could be a third.
The coronavirus pandemic probably hurt with K-State’s NFL Draft hopefuls. It seems like most of the Wildcats’ recent late-round selections benefited from in-person workouts with teams and interviews.
None of them were invited to the NFL Draft Scouting Combine. None of them played in the Senior Bowl. They really only got to show off their skills at K-State’s pro day.
They would have received more exposure under normal circumstances.
And you probably got it right with Russell or Coffman.
K-State is bringing in its most talented recruiting class of the Bruce Weber era. I agree with the recruiting services on that one.
But I’m not sure how many of those newcomers will be able to start next season.
Nijel Pack or Rudi Williams will have to start at point guard. But the others might all have to come off the bench with Mike McGuirl, DaJuan Gordon, Montavious Murphy and Levi Stockard all returning.
It’s fun to think about lineups that feature Selton Miguel (a gifted scorer) and Luke Kasubke (a talented shooter) and Davion Bradford (a true center). They all probably have more long-term potential than K-State’s returning players. But I’m not sure that’s true in the short term.
Losing a summer trip to Europe with that group must be a real bummer for Weber.
In any case, I predict next year’s team to resemble the 2015-16 squad that won 17 games with Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade as freshmen. They will be building for the future with young talent more than winning right now.
I see K-State winning 16 games next season. The Wildcats will have a better team than they did in 2019-20, but they won’t be good enough to return to the NCAA Tournament.
Yuengling is an interesting beer to judge. Most people who rarely make it East of Missouri probably view it as a specialty beer they can’t get at home. But anyone who lives on the East Coast probably looks at it the same way they do Bud Light.
I personally think it’s better than your run-of-the-mill domestic beers. I would much rather drink it than Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, etc. But I would much rather drink a craft beer with more flavor.
It would be pretty close to the Resist Temptation Burger.
Simply typing those words makes me hungry. Man, do I miss eating out!
Give me cheddar cheese, bacon, a fried egg, guacamole, lettuce, fried onions, pickles, ketchup and mustard. That’s probably a little overboard, but it sounds delicious.
Add on some french fries, raspberry bean dip and a Pirate Nancy.
I was actually pondering this question earlier in the week.
Not so much because I was craving a bacon-and-cheese Whataburger or a chicken-strip basket. If I’m being honest, there’s probably no price that makes shipping actual food across state lines seem worthwhile. The closest Whataburger is four hours away in Stillwater, and by the time it got to Manhattan you would be better off eating locally at Five Guys.
But Whataburger does offer a wide variety of non-perishables like its famous fancy ketchup, spicy ketchup, mustard, salsa and pancake mix that you can store in your home pantry. My mom gifted me a big box of all that stuff for Christmas, and I am close to exhausting my supply.
I will definitely pay a little bit to get more.
This will probably sound corny, but I’m happy living in Manhattan and writing about Kansas State. I work with a great team at The Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle, and my readers ask terrific questions for this mailbag that other fan bases probably can’t match.
My family also moved into a new house in December, and we’re not looking to go re-live that process again anytime soon.
That being said, if someone offers me a job writing about Hawaii sports I might consider it.
The only way I could see that happening is if all nonconference games are scrubbed. If college football becomes a conference-only season, it’s possible each league could start their schedules at different times.
But that would make it hard to crown a national champion or even select four teams for the playoff at a certain time.
It’s much more likely that every conference starts and ends the season together.
Here’s the breakdown of revenue that K-State was projected to make on ticket sales next season:
Football - $12.4 million
Men’s basketball - $2.9 million
Women’s basketball - $250,000
All other sports: $160,000
So football ticket sales equal nearly 15% of the athletic department’s revenue. Of course, K-State’s biggest source of revenue comes from the cash distributions of about $40 million it receives from the Big 12 and NCAA.
The lack of winter and spring NCAA tournaments cost all schools a chunk of the revenue stream. No football would have an even larger impact.
It’s hard to say.
If there is no football in the fall of 2020 or the spring of 2021, there probably won’t be basketball or any other sports, either. That scenario would greatly reduce athletic revenue, but it would also drop expenses like recruiting close to zero.
The Wildcats were projected to make about $15.5 million on basketball and football tickets next season. They were also projected to spend around $11 million on things like recruiting, travel, officials and game guarantees.
No games being played would help offset some of lost football revenue.
Still, things would get ugly.
How much money would the Big 12 lose without TV revenue coming in? How much less are donors giving to K-State while their own businesses deal with the coronavirus pandemic?
I don’t think any K-State sports would be in danger of getting eliminated, but some of the perks the athletic department used to enjoy might get the ax. Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to keep flying charter for every basketball game? Maybe some sports would have to play fewer games or schedule more regionally? Maybe K-State reduces salaries for its employees?
None of those things are fun to think about, which is why I think football will be played next season in some form, even if it is delayed.
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM.