It’s too soon to judge K-State’s success
By JASON WHITLOCK
This is going to feel like rain. So I ask that Kansas State basketball fans remember there is no life without rain. No rain, no gain.
When it was over — the game, the losing streak, the frustration, the feeling of inferiority — the enraged mob stormed the Bramlage Coliseum court and celebrated the brilliance of the Michael Beasley/Bill Walker/Frank Martin experiment.
Beasley, Walker and Martin were something to behold Wednesday night, slaying the mighty Kansas Jayhawks, justifying a decision born out of desperation.
In the aftermath of the madness, the architect of K-State’s basketball resurgence, the school’s enthusiastic president Jon Wefald, a man I respect greatly, pulled me to the side and once again defended his experiment.
“You have to admit, Jason, Frank Martin has a chance to be a very good coach,” Wefald said. “And take a look at our ’09 recruiting class. We may not get another Walker and Beasley, but we can get very good players.”
Yeah, the Wildcats have a couple of potential McDonald’s All-Americans orally committed for ’09. The winning doesn’t have to stop when Beasley hops in the family Hummer and drags his mother and siblings to his NBA payday, leaving behind the modest Manhattan life they’ve cobbled together thanks partly to the generosity of an aunt back east.
But here comes the rain, the word of caution I offer to all K-State fans and my friend President Wefald: It takes at least five years to evaluate a basketball coach and a basketball program.
At one time, when Larry Eustachy had Marcus Fizer and Jamaal Tinsley at Iowa State, I thought for sure Eustachy was the second coming of Bobby Knight. When Mike Davis led the Indiana Hoosiers to the national title game, I thought he just might survive at Indiana. Years ago, Michigan basketball fans were convinced Steve Fisher was the Lute Olson of the Midwest.
Yep, I’ve seen this all before. I’m not going to overreact to anything. Not even the drunken-driving arrest picked up by the college basketball assistant with the fattest recruiting budget, I mean salary, in the Big 12, Dalonte Hill or Dalonte 300k, as he’s referred to on the recruiting trail.
Frank and Dalonte just might be Quin (Snyder) and Tony (Harvey), the Missouri pair who went to the Elite Eight, needed a designated driver and flamed out shortly after takeoff.
You may read this and wrongly conclude I have a problem with Hill’s salary, Martin’s ascension, Beasley tooling around campus in a Hummer and Beasley’s mother posturing broke in a newspaper article. You don’t know me or how annoyed I am that the NCAA is allowed to continue its charade of pretending to want what’s best for student-athletes.
Nope, what bothers me is when educators and adults pretend there is a level of integrity in their actions when they know they’re participating in the same hustle as everyone else. It is what it is, and it’s better to remain silent.
So let’s not debate Frank Martin. We’re a long way from learning whether he can build and sustain a basketball program. Steve Fisher won a national championship, recruited the Fab Five, coached in back-to-back NCAA title games and at no time was he a competent coach. I covered his Fab Five teams for the Ann Arbor newspaper.
By the time history and NCAA investigators judged the Fab Five, their legacy, along with Fisher’s, was erased from the record book. All that they left behind were baggy shorts and a myth-laden book written by then-in-the-closet-novelist Myth Albom, who had the audacity to write that Chris Webber couldn’t afford McDonald’s despite a lavishly furnished apartment and pulling up to each Michigan home game in a new SUV.
To reach Jason Whitlock, call 816-234-4869 or send e-mail to jwhitlock@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.
