K-State Q&A: Basketball transfers, Bruce Weber’s new roster, board games and more
The Kansas State basketball roster is basically an ink-blot test right now.
Some see only four returning scholarship players and shake their fists. That much turnover in one offseason is never a good thing, they might say.
Others focus on the incoming players and their status as a consensus top 25 recruiting class. New talent is needed as the Wildcats look to bounce back from one of the worst seasons in school history, they might point out.
I heard just about every opinion possible on the topic of K-State basketball earlier this week after Levi Stockard entered the transfer portal. Some expressed outrage that the Wildcats were losing six players to different college teams and bringing in nine new scholarship recruits, overall. Others seemed to applaud the abundance of player departures, because (let’s see, how do I put this nicely) none of them are future NBA All-Stars.
And, of course, some simply used the words “fire Bruce Weber.”
I asked my Twitter followers how they felt about K-State’s basketball transfers and allowed them to choose one of three answers: “Good” or “Bad” or “Meh.”
The vast majority (64%) selected, “Good.”
It was a tie between, “Bad” and “Meh” with both options receiving 18% of the vote. Nearly 2,000 people voted in the poll.
My take: If there is a good time to blow out up a basketball roster and start over, it’s when the team bottoms out the way K-State (11-21) did last season. Returning talent is welcome from winning teams. It’s not so important on last-place teams. Less is more.
This is different from 2015 when Weber dismissed some of the most talented players on K-State’s roster, including Marcus Foster, because things had simply gotten out of control in the locker room.
K-State is losing 70% of its roster, but is also returning 35% of its scoring. Xavier Sneed will be missed. The other eight? I’m not so sure.
The problem isn’t that K-State lost nine players in one offseason. It’s that Bruce Weber assembled a roster with such a dearth of quality players that the Wildcats could lose nine of them and 64% of fans think it’s a good thing.
Things worked out for Weber the last time he hit the reset button and brought in Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade to highlight a seven-man recruiting class.
Will history repeat itself? That’s probably another ink-blot test for K-State fans.
And with that, it’s time for another K-State Q&A. Thanks, as always, for providing so many great questions.
The last time Weber hit the big, red reset button, he brought in seven players. That seemed crazy at the time. Who had ever heard of such a large recruiting class?
Nine is obviously more than seven, so K-State is experiencing unprecedented roster turnover right now. But it’s also far less shocking.
The transfer culture has changed a lot over the past five years, and switching schools will become even more common if the NCAA eliminates the current sit-out rule.
Iowa State will also bring in nine new players next season. K-State doesn’t even own the outright lead in the Big 12!
Wichita State will bring in seven new players, and it would have been eight if not for Morris Udeze withdrawing his name from the transfer portal to return to the Shockers.
It really isn’t all that rare for a team to lose more than half of its roster from one season to the next, anymore.
As far as what motivated all of K-State’s transfers, most of the departures were mutually agreed upon between the players and the coaching staff.
Weber said all the way back in January that he expected to bring in seven new players next season, so they had a plan in place.
Nigel Shadd (Pacific) and James Love (Eastern Michigan) transferred in search of playing time. Four years in Manhattan was long enough for Cartier Diarra (Virginia Tech). Shaun Williams (Cal State Bakersfield) left for various reasons.
Those were all expected.
I’m not entirely sure why David Sloan (East Tennessee State) and Levi Stockard (To Be Determined) decided to transfer. I get the feeling K-State coaches wanted to keep both of them as seniors. Maybe they would have had they both been on campus instead of at home in quarantine. Either way, the Wildcats found replacements with upside rather quickly.
Sloan wasn’t a perfect fit for Weber’s system. Stockard averaged 3.7 point and 2.8 rebounds.
The four players Weber really wanted to retain were Mike McGuirl, DaJuan Gordon, Montavious Murphy and Antonio Gordon ... And he retained them all.
It will be interesting to see whether Nijel Pack or Rudi Williams takes over at point guard next season.
K-State built its 2020 recruiting class around Pack, a four-star guard from Indianapolis, but Williams is coming off a heck of a season in junior college. That will be a good position battle.
My money, for now, is on Pack. He seems like the most likely freshman to start next season.
Selton Miguel could also crack the starting lineup if K-State goes with a small lineup that features Montavious Murphy at the five. I think that’s a possibility now that Stockard has left the building. He will probably be the team’s best scorer next season, and I like the idea of using him at the same time as McGuirl and DaJaun Gordon.
But if Weber stays with a traditional big lineup, there may not be enough room for Miguel in the starting five.
I also really like the long-term potential of Luke Kasubke. He’s the first pure shooter K-State has recruited in a while.
I’m all-in on the idea of a graduate transfer.
K-State’s basketball roster currently features five freshmen, five sophomores, one junior and one senior.
The Wildcats don’t need another underclassman with their lone open scholarship. They need someone who has played college basketball before and can help Mike McGuirl provide some veteran leadership.
A graduate transfer could play immediately next season and then move on quickly enough for Weber to recruit with his scholarship in 2021. That’s the route I would recommend.
There aren’t many quality unsigned high school players left, the Wildcats are already bringing in two junior-college transfers and a traditional transfer most likely won’t be able to play immediately. A graduate transfer seems like the best possible option.
Problem is: K-State has never had much success recruiting graduate transfers. The only one they’ve ever signed (Mawdo Sallah) didn’t do very much while he was in Manhattan.
It’s not exactly a board game, but my family has been playing a lot of Uno before bed lately. The kids like it, and it’s entertaining enough to keep my wife and I entertained.
How I approach each game depends on the time. If we are 20 minutes away from bed time, I’m in it to win it no matter how much my kids complain, because I know I can grant them a rematch. But if we’re approaching the two-minute warming before bed time I am shaving points like a basketball player with a mob debt. I want the game to be over so my kids will go to bed and I can gain control of the TV.
Most traditional board games take too long for my taste. So even though I like Monopoly, we rarely play it. The one board game we have played lately is Jumanji.
We have never completely figured out the rules to that game, so we tend to let the kids win.
It’s probably a tie.
You have to be a member of one of the Kansas State golf teams to play the Par 3 course at Colbert Hills nowadays. The only way anyone else is playing it is with a hook up from Grant Robbins.
You have to be a member to play Augusta National. And they don’t invite just anybody. But you might have a chance if you make friends with the right person or cover the Masters as a journalist and then win the media lottery to play the course. I’m holding out hope that happens to me one day.
Construction at Bill Snyder Family Stadium was deemed essential when Kansas began its stay-at-home order last month, so last I checked the south endzone project remains on schedule for use at the beginning of the 2021 football season.
Reasonable minds can disagree on whether that should be an essential operation during the coronavirus pandemic, but so far construction hasn’t been delayed.
Every athletic department and conference in the nation has a plethora of contingency plans in place for the unpredictable upcoming year of college athletics.
I can assure you of that.
Without sporting events of any kind to distract them, athletic directors will be prepared for a delayed football season, games in empty stadiums or even a canceled football season.
Like you, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t think it will. At worst, I think college football will be delayed a few months. But the people in charge will be ready for just about anything.
This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Basketball transfers, Bruce Weber’s new roster, board games and more."