K-State Q&A: Two years removed from Big 12 title, is Bruce Weber on the hot seat?
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
I had a bunch of celebrities lined up to introduce the mailbag this week, but they all got tied up at the presidential inauguration. So we might as well dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
If the K-State men’s basketball team keeps getting beat like the Krusty Burglar and finishes the season on a 16-game losing streak (or something close to it), which sadly seems within the realm of possibility right now, then it will be time for a coaching change.
But I will caution fans against expecting that type of historic collapse.
There are still 12 scheduled games left this season. The end of the Big 12 Tournament on March 13 is nearly two months away. There is plenty of time for things to change. Remember: the Wildcats won four of their next five after losing to Fort Hays State earlier this season.
As bad as the Wildcats have looked over the course of this month, it’s also worth remembering that they have been at a significant disadvantage in their past three games because of COVID-19 and injuries.
They have had enough healthy players to take the court but not enough healthy players to compete. Now, you can certainly argue that they should have performed better than they did. Losing four straight by double-figures is not good. I’m just providing some context.
The next two games against West Virginia and Baylor could also be ugly, but K-State should finally have its full roster (minus Montavious Murphy) for its final nine games.
Weber has mentioned several times that he thinks this team is capable of “coming together” and “doing something special” during the late stages of the season. That will be the best opportunity to truly judge Weber and the future of K-State’s young roster.
If the Wildcats can win three or four of those games and show real improvement that appears to be leading toward something bigger, then Weber will probably be back. The bar is low. No one was expecting 20 victories this season. And no one at K-State wants to pay his $2 million buyout during a pandemic. Gene Taylor is looking for reasons to keep him.
But if the losses keep coming and there is legitimately not much hope for another turnaround, then it will be hard for K-State to retain him for a 10th season.
Two years ago, when the Wildcats were celebrating a shared Big 12 championship at Bramlage Coliseum, it seemed unthinkable that Weber would be flirting with the hot seat this quickly. But an extraordinary list of things have gone wrong since Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade left Manhattan.
It’s time for at least a few things to start going right.
It’s happening more and more in college basketball as we see transfers continue to rise.
If that’s the route you are going to take as a coach, you have to bring in talented recruits if you want to win right away. Otherwise, you build something from the ground up and try to win later.
To be fair: Weber never wanted this many new players. But David Sloan and Levi Stockard transferred late. If you were expecting Cartier Diarra back, then that’s three surprise departures, which made this team much younger than originally planned.
K-State now ranks 281st nationally in roster continuity, per Ken Pomeroy.
I will also say timing couldn’t have worked out any worse for Weber. This is a horrible season to begin a rebuilding project. The Wildcats hoped to get a head start with a summer trip of exhibition games in Europe. They also had a scrimmage lined up with Wichita State. They were hoping to get lots of experience playing together before the season began. And all those plans got canceled.
Then players started getting sick or injured. Here’s a breakdown of all the K-State players that have missed games.
- Nijel Pack: 3
- Antonio Gordon: 4
- Seryee Lewis: 4
- Carlton Linguard: 4
- Kaosi Ezeagu: 10
- Montavious Murphy: 11
- Luke Kasubke: 13
- Total: 49
Weber mentioned on his radio show last week that K-State has had 10 scholarship players available for only a handful of practices all season. That’s hard.
I wrote some words on this topic earlier in the week, so I would suggest you read them before I elaborate further.
Yes, Weber’s quote about lacking a go-to scorer is more of an indictment on him as both a coach and a recruiter than it is on any of K-State’s players.
For the record: I don’t think he was trying to blame his guys with that comment. He thinks Selton Miguel, Nijel Pack and DaJuan Gordon can all become “bucket getters,” they just aren’t there yet. Mike McGuirl, try as he might, can only be that type of player when he’s in the zone.
But Weber could have recruited around that by bringing in someone with “bucket getting” skills. There’s no rule that says he can’t. I found it puzzling that he left one scholarship open this season when he could have looked at graduate transfers and signed someone that could create his own shot.
It also shows that he needs to create better scoring opportunities for this group. It’s true they lack a player like Barry Brown and Marcus Foster, so that puts even more importance on Weber to have a system in place that helps his players get baskets from set plays.
Much has been made about this team’s defensive failures, which makes sense because it is by far the worst defensive team Weber has coached in Manhattan. But it isn’t much better on offense. Fifty points against Oklahoma was just sad.
I don’t get the Bernie Sanders meme.
Does that make me a total square?
What’s so funny about an older gentleman bundling up on a chilly day in Washington D.C.? The mittens are a little unusual, I guess. But I don’t understand why he has taken over the internet.
I did laugh at the Fresh Prince/Bernie Sanders, though.
My eyes were more fixated on Joe (awesome middle name) Biden and that enormous bible he had next to him the whole time.
What was that thing? It was the size of a suitcase.
A new law that ends all Zoom press conferences and allows sportswriters to sit in the same room as the players and coaches that they cover would be even better.
Zoom interviews are better than nothing. But I miss the good ol’ days.
I like this question. Nice creativity on your part!
But the answer is KU football and it’s not even close.
K-State basketball is two years removed from a Big 12 championship and three years removed from an Elite Eight. It has finished last in the Big 12 once over the past 20 years.
KU football has avoided finishing last in the Big 12 just once over the past 10 years.
One team is having a couple down seasons. The other is trapped at the bottom of a dark pit with no clear way out.
The nature of basketball recruiting also makes things much easier for the Wildcats. Signing the right recruit (just one) could make a huge difference on the hardwood. In football, a coach needs to string together several quality classes before results start to show.
It would probably be better to compare KU football to where K-State football was before the arrival of Bill Snyder.
The next two projects on K-State’s to-do list are a new indoor practice facility for the football team and a new volleyball arena.
It’s impossible to say when construction will begin on either building, because the coronavirus pandemic brought fundraising efforts to a screeching halt. I can tell you they are still in the works, but they have been significantly delayed.