K-State Q&A: New year, new reasons to be excited about the Wildcats in 2021
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
No need for any kind of elaborate introduction this week. Let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
I remember just about everything from that game.
How strange is it that a random opening-round game at the Big 12 Tournament between K-State and TCU will live on in my brain the same as the Wildcats beating Baylor and Robert Griffin III with an Arthur Brown interception or Barry Brown guiding K-State past Kentucky in the Sweet 16?
There was a lot of talk about whether fans would be allowed inside the arena for that game, so I made sure to show up early and get video of fans entering what was then called Sprint Center. I got a text from a source a few hours later that the Big 12 was going to announce no fans for the remainder of the tournament, which seemed like a huge deal at the time.
I remember trying my best to keep my distance from fellow reporters as we processed the changing landscape before tipoff, but no one was wearing a mask.
Hand sanitizer was the big thing everyone was pushing back then.
They had a media buffet set up in the back, and I most definitely ate my dinner off it. Doh!
The pandemic was so new that I actually complained about the Big 12 closing off locker rooms to media. Back then, I guess I was hopeful that the coronavirus would somehow miss the entire region. No way did I see sports shutting down for months, football season being shortened or kids staying home from public school by the end of the year.
That game happened nearly nine months ago, and it seems like nine years ago. I was still sitting on press row, right at midcourt. I was still interviewing players and coaches in a press-conference room. All away from my home in Manhattan.
Now, I have to sit several rows away from the court, every press conference is handled on Zoom and I haven’t traveled for a K-State sporting event since September. Shoot, I haven’t been on a plane since February.
I also remember the roar of the crowd, the sounds of fans berating officials and the intensity of both teams. Those have all seemed to dissipate in recent months.
Thinking back to the game itself, it felt like a normal game until about the midway point of the second half. That’s when NBA games started to get canceled because of Covid, and that set off an incredible chain reaction of cancellations across all sports.
That news superseded everything that happened on the court. K-State won an important game thanks to some late heroics from Mike McGuirl, and I was actually looking forward to what the Wildcats could do in the quarterfinals ... if they took place.
But then the NBA suspended its season, the Big 12 canceled the remainder of its tournament and the NCAA Tournament was also called off.
My initial reaction then was to wonder about the status of spring football, and I was told it would likely still happen as originally scheduled. Man, were we naive back then. Here we are, in the final days of 2020, and I can’t tell you for sure if there will be a normal spring football season in 2021.
I hope we get one, though. It’s been way too long since sports felt normal.
1. If things keep trending in the right direction and this horrible pandemic ends before September, there’s a good chance fans will be able to return to Bill Snyder Family Stadium and Bramlage Coliseum in their usual numbers next year.
Sports without many fans was better than no sports ... but I think we can all agree that there’s something lost without thousands of passionate people cheering from the stands.
2. Skylar Thompson, Bronson Massie, Jahron McPherson and possibly a few more seniors will be back with the K-State football team next season.
That means the Wildcats will have a plethora of talent at quarterback, including one of the nation’s most experienced passers (Thompson), a freshman that started seven games last season (Will Howard) and the highest-rated incoming recruit since Josh Freeman (Jake Rubley). They will also have extra help on defense.
Deuce Vaughn will be a year older and wiser, too.
It’s too early to know what to expect out of the football team in 2021, but it seems like there are enough ingredients returning for a winning season.
3. Davion Bradford, Nijel Pack and Selton Miguel will all be sophomores. Or will they still be freshmen? Frozen eligibility is so confusing. Whatever you want to call them, they will have a year of experience under their belts and four more years to play.
Based on what we’ve seen from them so far, K-State should have a solid nucleus to work with moving forward.
Well, I know the answer isn’t Baylor.
The Bears just wiped the floor with the Wildcats 100-69 ... coming off a Covid pause ... at Bramlage Coliseum ... while one of K-State’s players scored 23 points on a perfect shooting night.
Here’s guessing Baylor’s victory odds in the rematch in Waco are 99.9%. And even that might be a tad low.
The other three opponents will also be heavily favored against K-State, but not quite to that degree.
Ken Pomeroy gives K-State the best odds to beat West Virginia (17%) at home, followed by Texas (14%) at home and then Kansas (13%) at home.
The home/road split doesn’t mean as much as usual this season, so that hurts K-State’s chances at Bramlage but maybe helps them in road venues.
I agree with Pomeroy, though. K-State’s best shot at pulling off a top 10 upset this season will come at home against West Virginia, because the Mountaineers can go into weird offensive slumps. If that happens against the Wildcats, then K-State could absolutely have a chance against Bob Huggins’ team.
K-State also seems to historically play better against West Virginia than it does against Texas and Kansas.
There’s never a definitive line in the sand for this kind of question.
But I can tell you that Bruce Weber’s job security most definitely doesn’t depend on whether or not the K-State basketball team plays in the NIT this season.
For one: will there even be a NIT?
For two: can you imagine an athletic director calling a basketball coach into his office and demanding he guide his team to the NIT if he wants to save his job? That’s a sad vision.
This season has always been more about the process than the results. K-State finished in the Big 12 cellar last season and was picked to finish there again this season. So no one was expecting a NCAA Tournament appearance (or even a NIT invite) when the games began in November. It would be silly to start demanding different results now.
Weber will always be on the hot seat with some fans. But K-State athletics director Gene Taylor takes a more measured approach when it comes time to evaluate the basketball team.
In 2021, that process will begin by looking at the foundation that Weber has built for the next few years when Bradford, Miguel and Pack mature. Does it look like they can follow the same path as Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade?
If they appear to have a bright future under Weber, then it would be foolish to consider replacing him, regardless of what happens this season.
But if the future looks dark and the foundation of Weber’s rebuilding effort is deemed faulty, then his seat will certainly start to feel warm.
The Wildcats got off to a horrendous 1-4 start this season that included a home loss to Fort Hays State. But they have bounced back well since then and even won their Big 12 opener at Iowa State.
At this very moment, Weber’s seat appears cool.
How the Wildcats play (not how many games they win) the rest of the season will dictate if that changes.
Luke Kasubke has actually been out with a toe injury, not a foot injury.
It’s an easy mistake to make given K-State’s history of basketball players suffering foot injuries. But, believe it or not, none of the team’s injured players have been out with foot ailments this season.
Kasubke, a freshman guard, tore a ligament in one of his toes during summer practice, and he’s almost ready to make his college debut.
I don’t believe Dean Wade has experienced any foot issues since joining the Cleveland Cavaliers organization, which is great for him but perhaps not great for K-State basketball and its training staff.
I’m hammering the over on this one.
K-State found a way to play a full 10-game schedule this season during a global pandemic, and the Wildcats came really close to making it 11 before they called off plans for a bowl game.
Now that a vaccine is rolling out, you’ve got to think things will improve enough by next fall for the Wildcats to get in a normal 12-game season.
High: The football team’s win at Oklahoma. A week after opening the season with a stunning home loss to Arkansas State, the Wildcats followed that up by going on the road and pulling off a 21-point comeback against the Sooners.
Low: I can’t think of anything worse than the men’s basketball team losing to Fort Hays State. It was the first time the Wildcats lost to an in-state school other than KU or Wichita State since 1945.
Surprise for 2021: Beer sales at K-State football games will be a big hit with a full stadium.
New Beer: Because I can’t narrow it down to just one, let me use this as an opportunity to brag about the advent calendar my wife and I made for each other earlier this month. Instead of candy or chocolates, we wrapped up 25 different alcoholic beverages for each other and opened one a day. Hers was filled mostly with wine and seltzers. Mine was pretty much all craft beer. It was amazing. Let’s say a new tradition was born this year.
Best new movie: Palm Springs. I thought it was funny, and it added a new twist to the live-the-same-day-over-and-over-again movie genre.
Best new TV show: The Queen’s Gambit. They made playing chess look cool.
Favorite story: I very much enjoyed putting together a year’s worth of research on how beer/wine/liquor sales went at K-State, KU and Missouri. Comparing the favorite drinks of all three fan bases was very entertaining.
Favorite Twitter moment: I can’t think of anything that topped our president tweeting “STOP THE COUNT.” Just about everything that came out of this year’s election was gold.
For Chris Klieman: Stop chasing points in the first half with two-point conversions, help the Wildcats score a few touchdowns in the third quarter of games, slow down K-State’s transfer rate and replace the players that do leave with some stud transfers from the portal.
For Bruce Weber: Keep wearing casual attire on the sideline and ditch the suits, land promising recruits every year instead of every few years, keep using a four-guard lineup after Montavious Murphy and Kaosi Ezeagu return to the rotation and give shorter answers in press conferences.
My family gifted me enough workout equipment to turn my basement into a home gym, so I guess my resolution is to get jacked in 2021.
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.