Bob Lutz: Kansas State’s anonymity creates small expectations

If I bumped into Justin Edwards or Stephen Hurt on the street, I wouldn’t recognize them.

I’d probably deduce that the 6-foot-11 Hurt was a basketball player because, well, I don’t know anyone 6-11 who isn’t. Or wasn’t.

Edwards and Hurt, along with walk-on Brian Rohleder, are the three Kansas State seniors this season. I wish them luck because this is going to be a long season for the Wildcats. They’re coming off a tough-to-get-through 15-17 season that ended the college careers of Nino Williams and Thomas Gipson and sent three others – Marcus Foster (Creighton), Malek Harris (Indian Hills Community College) and Tre Harris (SIU-Edwardsville) – off to other schools to pursue theirs. Guards Nigel Johnson (Rutgers) and Jevon Thomas (Seton Hall) also departed under less-than-hospitable arrangements.

It seemed like everybody who coached or played basketball at K-State last season was mad and it spilled over into the fan base.

Bruce Weber, you are on the clock. K-State’s busload full of newcomers had better show promise and they better be around longer than the busload of newcomers you brought in over the past couple of seasons. Better yet, they need to show results, because what you and your team put K-Staters through last season was cruel and unusual.

Remember when Foster burst onto the scene, oh, less than two years ago? He was the future until he became a part of the past. There was an obvious disconnect between Weber and the Wildcats’ best player and disconnects like that usually bode poorly for the coach.

Weber let no moss grow under his feet, though. He and his assistants went out and re-stocked the cupboard. We just don’t know with what yet.

Besides Edwards, Hurt and junior forward Wesley Iwundu, the experience on this team is zilch. The rest of the Wildcats might need to show some ID at the scorer’s table just to get into a game.

Another junior, D.J. Johnson, is returning from an injury. If things go as hoped, he’ll be a suitable replacement for the departed Gipson as a big-bodied force in the lane.

What the Wildcats are about this season, though, is inexperience. The freshmen include: guards Barry Brown and Kamau Stokes; forwards Ron Freeman and Pierson McAtee and big guys Isaiah Maurice, Dean Wade and Dante Williams.

Nobody knows what to expect from this regimen of young players. Including, I’m sure, Weber, whose future might just rely on how much they can contribute and excite patrons about the future of K-State basketball.

For now, the Wildcats are expected to duke it out with TCU and Texas Tech in a battle to stay out of the Big 12 cellar. It should be a bloodbath.

And the only way Weber gets out alive is if the kids create buzz. Brown, Stokes, Freeman and Wade are thought to be the closest to contributing, although on a team with such a lack of veteran presence it might not take long for the freshmen to take over.

It seems like a million years ago that Bob Huggins and Frank Martin showed up with Michael Beasley and Jacob Pullen in tow. They transformed K-State, but now the cycle is down and everyone who was skeptical about Weber when he was hired in 2012 is now more sure that he’s not the right coach.

The team Weber inherited from previous Martin went 27-8 in 2012-13. A year later, there was a dropoff to 20-13. Then K-State went over the cliff, losing to the likes of Texas Southern and finishing with its first losing record since 2003 and its first time missing the postseason since 2007.

Weber should have K-State on more stable ground by now. Last season, though, has created doubt, tension and pessimism.

Weber believes this freshman class, along with junior-college transfer Carlbe Ervin II from Connors (Okla.) State College, is the perfect antidote to what ails the Wildcats.

But improvement won’t be immediate, if it ever comes. Weber not only has to prove he can coach this new group, but that he won’t get crossways with them the way he did with Foster, Johnson, Thomas, Harris and Williams.

K-State needs stability and Weber is back to square one when it comes to earning trust.

That doesn’t mean his job is impossible. Remember, Kansas State beat Kansas last season inside Bramlage Coliseum and Wildcat faithful love it when that happens. It hasn’t happened nearly enough over the years, though, even when K-State is good.

Kansas, though, is the least of the Wildcats’ worries for now. It’s looking like a dead heat to last place between K-State, TCU and Texas Tech in the Big 12. The Cats better hope somebody else wins that race and that the newcomers are good enough to get them out of this mess.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 2:28 AM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Kansas State’s anonymity creates small expectations."