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Along U.S. Highway 24, fans find it’s possible to root for both Kansas State and Kansas
By KENT BABBThe Kansas City Star
Still, it is the first stop on your Saturday basketball road trip. It is Point A, the site of Kansas State and the deep purple extreme of a polarized state. Point B is 80 miles away in Lawrence, the other side of the extreme and another college town that sits on the opposite end of U.S. Highway 24, which connects these two towns.
It is the Tobacco Road of the heartland, only all you’ll see on the side of the roads are dead leftovers of last year’s corn patch and plenty of reminders that on most days, this is a state split along its allegiances.
But this is the first time in 20 years Kansas and K-State both appear in the tournament’s second round. On this day, the nation’s eyes are here.
“And it’s about time,” says John Wehner, a KU fan who lives almost exactly between the two schools. “I do get pretty annoyed hearing about East Coast basketball. This just shows we have some pretty good basketball out here.”
You have a map and a radio, tuned now to the K-State broadcast. The Wildcats are about to tip off against Wisconsin. At Point A, enthusiasm is high. And was that an omen a moment ago, when former K-State coach Bob Huggins led West Virginia to an upset against Duke?
No matter. You hit the road and head east, preparing to see what you see. You’ll find that one road links these two college towns, but for one day, at least, it also connects the state.
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WAMEGO, Kan. | Two more customers, and Mike Dekat is preparing to lock up. He is a K-State fan and the owner of a small-town auto-parts store, the one with a giant purple Wildcats logo on the roof. He drew the short straw to work on this day because, well, he is his only employee.
Sometimes when business is slow, Dekat flips on the radio he hides behind the battery shelves. The TV on one of the shelves is old and busted. The radio is the only way to know what is going on.
On this Saturday, though, the radio is silent. He has no idea his Wildcats are losing and star forward Michael Beasley is in early foul trouble. Those two customers roaming around in the back near the muffler fittings are the last of the day, and Dekat is going home. It is 3:36 p.m.
Dekat went to K-State for one semester but transferred to Washburn University in Topeka. He didn’t graduate. He kept following the Wildcats but developed his own quiet respect for his team’s rival.
“I just want the Kansas teams to win,” he says, straightening some papers. “I think a lot of people are like that. I hope they are, anyway.”
Sure, Dekat remembers the last time both teams went this deep into the NCAA Tournament. It was 1988, and the rivals met in the Elite Eight. K-State had Mitch Richmond. KU had Danny Manning. KU won that game and the national championship. Dekat hopes the teams meet again in this year’s Elite Eight, but he knows that’s a long shot.
The customers walk to the front, and they pay Dekat.
He has already missed almost half the K-State game. Figures. He says he has errands to run, but he plans to be home, finished or not, in time for KU’s game against UNLV. He follows you outside and locks the door. Time to go, he says. If he’s going to watch any basketball, he’s got to get moving.
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ST. MARYS, Kan. | “Not looking too good,” Jeff Gaynor says as he watches K-State in the first half. You are downstairs in a cavernous bar called Tully’s Irish Pub, talking hoops as Gaynor takes another pull off his Coors longneck.
Sure, he came prepared for anything, even a loss. And he came dressed accordingly. The bartender, Joe Trummer, recognized Gaynor as soon as he walked down the stone steps that look like they’re out of a Boris Karloff soundstage. Trummer was just telling you that most of his clientele, and most of St. Marys, really, is split among KU and K-State.
“Fifty-fifty,” he was saying when Gaynor walked in wearing a gray K-State shirt, heard Trummer and pulled up that K-State shirt to reveal a blue KU shirt.
Like some of his cross-town neighbors, Gaynor says he is a fan of the teams at both Kansas schools. Says this year is important to everyone here. It makes the state look good.
“We’re getting some national recognition because of this,” he says.
Then Trummer interrupts.
“K-State has such a (bad) history they’ve got to outlive,” Trummer says.
Gaynor doesn’t say anything. He watches the TV on the wall opposite the bar and tips the beer again. He shakes his head at the Wildcats’ play. Then he tells you he tends to lean more toward the KU side anyway.
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SILVER LAKE, Kan. | You pull into Silver Lake’s outskirts as Wisconsin is beginning to pull away from K-State. The announcers’ voices are losing some enthusiasm. They are beginning to look toward the other game.
KU is up next, they tell you from 170 miles away in Omaha, Neb. And the Jayhawks’ opponent is UNLV, whose coach is Lon Kruger, born and raised in Silver Lake, the midpoint of your road trip. It was Kruger, of course, who coached K-State the last time the Wildcats appeared in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, in 1988.
You ride past Silver Lake High, where Kruger was a star in the late 1960s. You drive past where some of his family still lives, including Dave Kruger, who told you earlier Saturday most of the family went to Omaha to watch their brother’s team.
Kruger is Silver Lake’s favorite son. And he is coaching against KU.
“That’s a tough one,” says Joe Simecka, who says he knows Kruger. “Lonnie is a good friend and stuff, but I’m a KU fan.”
Simecka and about two dozen others piled into Mac’s Bar on the eastern edge of Silver Lake, a town of about 1,300 residents, to watch and, Simecka says, cheer on K-State. He is covered in KU gear, but he says the appeal of both Kansas teams advancing in the NCAA Tournament is too great, rivalry be damned.
Other states have gotten the attention for too long, Simecka says. He says it is Kansas’ time.
“It always seems like we’re taking a back seat,” he says. “Everybody feels like we’ll just take it and won’t say nothing until it’s over. This year, we’re getting some of the credit that’s due. If that means pulling for K-State, that’s OK.”
But Simecka watched for two hours as K-State unraveled and Wisconsin finished off the Wildcats. Another KU fan in Mac’s, though, sits at the bar and hopes the same fate doesn’t await the Jayhawks. It is Wehner, who says he has been a member at Immaculate Conception Parish in St. Marys for 25 years.
“I’ve been praying for my Hawks, man,” he says.
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LAWRENCE, Kan. | The road narrows, and both geography and team colors remind you where you are. The hills that wrinkle the terrain in Manhattan have flattened, and the Kansas River has turned the grass green instead of light brown. You are close to Point B, and mailboxes and license plates begin to crop up in crimson and blue.
There is no doubt where allegiances lie here, but there still are occasional Wildcats logos. You drive downtown and watch as KU fans pile into sports bars and wing joints. For the most part, everything else is closed.
“Well,” Simecka said during your previous stop, “we were hoping, for Kansas’ sake, they would both win.”
Instead, the road stopped for K-State. Two decades passed since college basketball’s attention focused on Kansas, and for one day, one road connected both towns and thousands of fans. Now, though, KU remains.
And in Lawrence, the road keeps going.