Bruce Weber hoping for one more year from K-State guard Mike McGuirl after senior day
Kansas State will honor Mike McGuirl as the lone senior on its men’s basketball team before the Wildcats play Oklahoma on Tuesday at Bramlage Coliseum, but don’t expect him to say goodbye by kissing the court at the final buzzer.
There’s a good chance it won’t be his final home game.
“I was talking to him the other day,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said, “and I told him, ‘We’re honoring you, not because we want you to leave but because you deserve it. We hope that you come back and we’ll find another jersey to give you next year.”
It is unclear if McGuirl plans to take advantage of temporary NCAA eligibility rules and return to K-State as a “super senior” next season, but he seems open to the possibility.
Weber is doing everything he can to sell McGuirl on the idea of returning to Manhattan for another season and another senior day. He has been doing so ever since the NCAA announced it was temporarily freezing eligibility for all players at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Shortly after Weber heard the news, he called McGuirl’s family and told them it was fate. McGuirl originally planned to redshirt as a freshman, but he ended up playing in 12 games following a midseason injury to former guard Kamau Stokes. Perhaps now he can make up for the early games he missed.
“I’ve always felt awful that we pulled him out of his redshirt and that whole circumstance,” Weber said. “Cartier (Diarra) just all of a sudden really played well and Mike didn’t get a lot of minutes, although he was really important in our run through the NCAA Tournament. I felt like he missed a lot of his freshman year and I told them, ‘God has a path for you and now you have this opportunity to get this freshman year back. So I hope you you come back.’”
Returning for another season would allow McGuirl to fulfill his original plan of spending five seasons with the Wildcats.
And it would give him an opportunity to go out on a higher note. After helping K-State reach the Elite Eight as a freshman and then share a Big 12 championship with Texas Tech as a sophomore, the Wildcats only won 11 games last season and are once again struggling now that he is a senior.
But he is currently averaging a career high 11.5 points.
Through it all, McGuirl has kept a positive attitude. He appeared happy as ever on Saturday when K-State defeated TCU to end a 13-game losing streak at Schollmaier Arena.
“We’re blessed,” he said afterward. “We’re blessed to be able to play this game that we love and to go to college, just to do that. I mean, it’s almost like that and being a student is our job. It’s a great life. It’s been tough losing, but coach kept saying the greatest thing about every game is the opportunity to play. We’re lucky enough to have this opportunity.”
Now McGuirl is lucky enough to decide if he wants to return to Kansas State for multiple senior days.