K-State's mental task changes after UMBC Retrievers bust through invisible fence

Not that he was looking past Creighton or anything, but when Kansas State coach Bruce Weber broke down the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament bracket for his team last week, he struck up a psychological ploy that proved prophetic.

The top seed in their bracket, Virginia, he said, is “really not that good.”

His assistants looked at him like he was crazy, he said in one telling of the story on Saturday, a day after K-State advanced by beating Creighton. And his assistants threw stuff at him in another version.

So when he called the team together late Friday after the seismic upset of the top-seeded Cavaliers by UMBC, now the only 16th seed to beat a No. 1 in 136 tries, Weber was compelled to circle back.

“I actually told them, ‘I’m pretty smart: I told you Virginia is not very good,” he said, laughing, on Saturday at the Spectrum Center as the Wildcats prepared to take on America’s Sweethearts.

Now that psychological dynamic is flipped, as the ninth-seeded Wildcats cede the would-be underdog role to the Retrievers, who lend new meaning to the term Sweet 16 and appreciate all those Golden Retriever memes and tributes being circulated on their behalves, but would like to clear the record.

“We are the Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, not Golden Retrievers,” junior guard Joe Sherburne said. “I saw that on Sports Center. They had that. That's the state dog of Maryland. That's what you should know.”

Asked what distinguishes the two, he deadpanned, “They are a dark brown. They have a thick waterproof coat of fur. And I’m not sure about what else.”

Now they’ll also be known for busting through the psychological invisible fence, perhaps a sort of 4-minute-mile barrier of the NCAA Tournament (RIP Sir Roger Bannister) and serve as a pioneering test of what’s possible in the immediate aftermath.

If Weber’s task is to convince his team that UMBC is a really good team because it beat a team he said was really not that good — which is an oversimplification but true — UMBC coach Ryan Odom’s chore is to persuade his team that the history it achieved was the commencement of something big instead of the culmination.

“The biggest thing is, ‘Do you want to be done now, or do you want to try to put your best foot forward and continue on?’ ” said Odom, the son of longtime coach Dave Odom. “We're playing an excellent team, all right, that easily could dismantle us.”

That said, Odom has allowed his team to bask in the moment and show its personality.

And that’s part of some heartening charm in the middle of all this.

That includes the free-spirited voice of @UMBCAthletics on Twitter that went from just over 6,000 followers to more than 80,000 and counting overnight.

Among the highlights Friday: a photo of a Maryland fan holding a placard mocking UMBC’s name by calling it University of Maryland Backup College during the Retrievers’ 66-45 loss the Terrapins — who failed to make the NCAA Tournament.

“Ahh we remember this game at Maryland in December. ... hopefully you enjoyed our game from your couch dude!”

The moment includes a stapled-together, low-tech throwback postseason media guide, which touts some other things to know about the school whose full name is University of Maryland, Baltimore County but prefers to be called UMBC.

For instance, its Mock Trial team competed in last year’s national championships, and its Cyber Defense team (the Cyber Dawgs) won the national title last year “in a contest to protect their networks from cyber attacks and threats efficiently and effectively.”

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is a UMBC graduate.

Then there’s the chess program, for years a perennial national powerhouse and a topic that somehow came up in the locker room after the game.

“Don't forget about them, either. They're still big," UMBC center Nolan Gerrity said, playing along straight-faced as others around him laughed. "They paved the way. We looked up to them."

There was more such silliness on Saturday, when guards K.J. Maura and Jairus Lyles joined Sherburne on a podium and reveled in their exchange with the media — with which they had had little practice before the last few days.

They claimed to be the “funniest team in the country,” as Maura put it, “top 10 for sure,” and then proceeded to make a case in the rare news conference where you could see eagerness to engage questions.

“After I hit my first three of the second half, I did a big championship belt for Aaron Rodgers because I'm his biggest fan and I wanted him to see it on TV,” said Sherburne, a Wisconsin native. “But they didn't get the shot. I was just out of frame. If anybody knows him, I've been trying to tag him” on social media.

As it happens, their looseness apparently even includes their approach to Odom.

According to Maura, the team rejected Odom’s play call at the end of the America East Tournament championship game against Vermont.

“We said, ‘We got this. We know what to do,’ ” Maura said.

Lyles swished a three-pointer with .6 seconds left for a 65-62, suddenly making for an NCAA berth for a team that had lost by 44 points at Albany in January … and enabling history to be made.

The next chapter awaits now for both UMBC and K-State, which seeks to win a second NCAA tourney game for the first time since 2010 and, well, to become the first team to beat a 16 seed in the second round.

“The coaches talked to the players about that last night, about how (UMBC) wrote history,” Weber said. “And we actually had a little saying this week (about) the person who wins the war gets to write their own history.”

Weber wasn’t comparing this to war, just using some imagination for inspiration in a game in which star Dean Wade is again expected to be out with a foot injury.

It’s what coaches do, after all, thus Weber’s seemingly preposterous propaganda that came true in the form of Virginia’s vulnerability.

Now the work changes to making sure his team doesn’t somehow underestimate UMBC, which may or may not be forward-focused, in a fascinating matchup that will be less about abilities than states of mind.

This story was originally published March 17, 2018 at 7:15 PM with the headline "K-State's mental task changes after UMBC Retrievers bust through invisible fence."