MANHATTAN, Kan. | &ldquo;Big Monday&rdquo; erased the remaining doubts.</p><p>Anyone still suspicious of the Kansas State Wildcats&rsquo; top-10 ranking, their bid to unseat Kansas as Big 12 champ and their threat to make a run all the way to the Final Four probably didn&rsquo;t watch ESPN on Monday night.</p><p>It was quite a show of brute force, a coming-out party for Jamar Samuels, Curtis Kelly and the supporting cast heretofore overshadowed by guards Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen.</p><p>The Wildcats mauled No. 1 Texas, feeding off an electric crowd inside Bramlage Coliseum, beating the previously unbeaten Longhorns 71-62.</p><p>You had to see it to appreciate the statement it made.</p><p>On a night when Pullen and Clemente &mdash; K-State&rsquo;s top scorers and perimeter shooters &mdash; combined to shoot four of 24 from the field, the Wildcats never trailed by more than a point in the second half and pretty much controlled the game from start to finish.</p><p>Frank Martin has assembled a team. This K-State squad is nothing like the 2007-08 team that knocked off No. 2 Kansas at Bramlage, won an NCAA Tournament game and climbed into the polls thanks almost exclusively to the raw talent of Michael Beasley and Bill Walker.</p><p>Pullen and Clemente were terrible Monday night. Clemente scored just five points. He sank two of nine shots. Worse, he missed six of seven free throws. Pullen was just as bad, missing 13 of 15 shots, including all six three-pointers he launched. Pullen turned the ball over five times.</p><p>No way anyone envisioned the Wildcats&rsquo; winning this game with Pullen and Clemente playing so poorly. Last year, when K-State beat Texas, Clemente scored 44 points.</p><p>This squad &mdash; this program &mdash; has made amazing strides. The Wildcats beat the best team in the country while making one three-pointer.</p><p>Their post players were that good on both ends of the court.</p><p>The Longhorns had no answer for Samuels and Kelly in the paint. Samuels dominated the first half, scoring 15 points before the break. Kelly took over the second half, notching 10 of his 17 points in the final 20 minutes.</p><p>They simply showed more heart, muscle and athletic ability than Texas&rsquo; more acclaimed frontcourt players, Damion James and Dexter Pittman (a combined 15 points on six-of-19 shooting).</p><p>Samuels, Kelly and Luis Colon made the Texas post players look soft. As good as Samuels and Kelly were on the offensive end, Colon was their equal at the defensive end.</p><p>Colon, K-State&rsquo;s starting center, is short on athletic ability but he&rsquo;s quite adept at getting to the right spot at the right time. Colon repeatedly thwarted Texas drives into the lane with good positioning and elevated arms. His stat sheet was unimpressive (two points, five rebounds and 18 minutes). His contribution was immense.</p><p>&ldquo;Luis Colon played his tail off,&rdquo; Martin said in his postgame radio interview.</p><p>Colon, to some degree, perfectly epitomizes what Frank Martin has accomplished at K-State. Colon and Martin don&rsquo;t look the part. Colon has no business being a starter on a top-10 basketball team.</p><p>Martin has no business building a top-10 team in Manhattan, Kan. That&rsquo;s not a knock on Martin. He&rsquo;s proved he can coach the game. He&rsquo;s proved he can motivate players. It&rsquo;s just that it was impossible to see this coming.</p><p>The K-State administration spent nearly two decades looking for its Frank Martin, a coach capable of returning the school to its basketball glory days. And Frank Martin falls into the lap of the school when Bob Huggins bails on the program?</p><p>Wow. Martin now has three victories over top-10 teams in only three years as head coach. In the infancy of his Division I coaching career, Martin looks the equal of Huggins, who left for his alma mater with a belief that what Martin is doing at K-State was an impossibility.</p><p>This is looking like another Miracle in Manhattan, and Martin is looking like the national coach of the year.