K-State Q&A: Big 12 transfer numbers, spring football and Bruce Weber’s starting five
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
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The answer here depends on how much Bruce Weber liked the four-guard lineup K-State used at the Big 12 Tournament.
If he sticks with small ball, the starting five will probably be: Nijel Pack, Mike McGuirl, Mark Smith, Selton Miguel and Davion Bradford.
But Weber traditionally likes using bigger lineups when he can. And that will be a possibility with Montavious Murphy getting healthy and Logan Landers on his way to campus.
If he decides to go big, the starting five will probably be: Nijel Pack, Mike McGuirl, Mark Smith, Montavious Murphy and Davion Bradford.
I asked Weber about those lineup possibilities last week and he said the Wildcats will likely switch between small lineups and big lineups depending on the opponent and situation. So we will see plenty of both next season.
Personally, I like the smaller lineup because it puts the most talent on the floor. And it worked very well for the Wildcats late last season. They held a second-half lead over Baylor in the final game, for crying out loud.
That’s not to say I want Murphy and Landers spending entire games on the bench. If Murphy is healthy, he should get 20-plus minutes a game. But I would rather bring him off the bench than Miguel or Smith.
Smith is a gifted shooter and a veteran starter. Miguel could improve leaps and bounds next year if he learns how to dribble with his left hand. Playing four guards also creates more opportunities for Markquis Nowell and Luke Kasubke. Maybe Carlton Linguard or Seryee Lewis will improve enough to make me think K-State would be better off going big. But small seems better right now.
Assuming Skylar Thompson will be ready to start at quarterback against Stanford, his primary backup (or QB2) will be Will Howard. Jaren Lewis will be the No. 3 option, followed by Jake Rubley.
I wasn’t expecting to say that with this much confidence in early April, but it’s pretty clear where things stand right now.
Quarterback seemed like an intriguing position when spring practice began. Thompson wasn’t supposed to do much while he recovered from injury, but he ended up doing everything a quarterback could do outside of scrimmages.
Howard, Lewis and Rubley were supposed to be deadlocked in a competition for the No. 2 job. Instead, Howard ran away with that title.
Why? Because he got bigger during the winter and threw the ball with remarkably more zip than he did as a freshman. K-State coaches gave him the vast majority of practice reps with the starters. Offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham was so impressed by Howard that he openly talked about creating special packages that would get him on the field next season.
Lewis did a nice job, too. He just wasn’t quite as good as Howard. I have heard from several people behind the scenes who say Lewis had a very strong spring. Like you mentioned, he has good arm strength. He made some good passes during K-State’s open practice and was clearly ahead of Rubley in the pecking order. He might have a future within the offense, too. Who knows?
It came as a surprise that Rubley wasn’t able to push any of them. He didn’t look good at all at the open practice. But he has only been on campus for a few months. I’m not concerned about his long-term potential just yet. It’s clear a redshirt season could do him so good, though.
Let’s start with the first part of your question. Regardless of what it seems like, I can tell you that K-State most certainly does not lead the Big 12 in departing transfers.
In men’s basketball, Bruce Weber has bid farewell to four players this offseason as of Thursday. That number is average for the conference.
Here is the breakdown of Big 12 basketball transfers ...
Iowa State and TCU: 6
Texas: 5
K-State, Kansas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma: 4
West Virginia: 3
Oklahoma State: 1
Baylor: 0
Even though they aren’t in the Big 12, I will also point out that area teams Wichita State and Missouri both lost six transfers.
Here is the breakdown of Big 12 football transfers ...
Kansas: 21
TCU: 19
Oklahoma: 17
Texas Tech and West Virginia: 15
K-State: 14
Texas: 13
Baylor and Oklahoma State: 8
Iowa State 7
Once again, the Wildcats are right in the middle. So K-State’s transfer rate isn’t much different from what you will find anywhere else.
The recent rise in transfers simply puts pressure on K-State coaches to do two things: Keep their best players happy and recruit new transfers of their own to maintain an experienced roster after some players leave.
I’m not concerned about K-State’s ability to do that.
Chris Klieman lost more young talent than he would like at linebacker and defensive back last year, but he added some talent out of the portal. Iowa transfer Julius Brents might be the best player on the entire team.
Losing the Gordon brothers (they aren’t actually related, I just wanted to call them that) wasn’t a great look for Bruce Weber when it happened, but the Wildcats are now better off with Missouri transfer Mark Smith and Arkansas-Little Rock transfer Markquis Nowell in the fold.
The only thing I am truly concerned about is the future of high school recruiting. Football coaches are going to become so dependent on the transfer portal that they only recruit 15-20 incoming freshmen instead of a full 25, in order to leave spots open for transfers.
Texas State football literally didn’t recruit a single high-school player in its 2021 class, choosing to leave all its available roster spots open for transfers.
In my opinion, the NCAA needs to count freshmen and transfers separately so that high school players continue to get the same amount of scholarship opportunities.
Bill Self’s “lifetime” contract extension was the type of thing that sparked all kinds of different reactions.
It seems like KU fans love the idea of locking up their men’s basketball coach to a long term deal, regardless of what might be on the horizon in terms of NCAA penalties.
It seems like national media hate the contract because, well, you don’t often see a school put it in writing that it won’t fire a coach for cause if he is slapped with severe sanctions for cheating.
My reaction was somewhat in the middle. There are so many problems going on in Lawrence right now that it makes sense to do whatever it takes to keep the Hall of Fame coach happy. But it is definitely odd that KU gave Self that much protection against an ongoing NCAA investigation. It was also strange that they extended his contract days before hiring a new athletic director. Why not let him do it?
In any case, I think it was mainly just a recruiting ploy. KU is no longer recruiting blue-chippers at the rate it once was and that is part of the reason why the Jayhawks have been blown away in the Round of 32 during their past two trips to the NCAA Tournament. Extending Self now is a message to recruits that KU doesn’t think big penalties are on the way, and even if they are, Self will remain as coach.
Scott Drew just won a national championship at Baylor and has a stellar recruiting class on the way. If Chris Beard awakens the sleeping giant that is Texas basketball on top of that, KU will need elite recruits to keep pace in its own conference, let alone nationally. Maybe a “lifetime” contract will help?
But there’s always a chance it won’t.
Remember, John Currie gave Bill Snyder a similar “lifetime” contract that featured a five-year rollover with no expiration when he was K-State’s athletics director. And it never helped recruiting. The contract was so ambiguous that at the end of the original five-year term, Gene Taylor ripped it up and gave Snyder a new non “lifetime” contract to try and signal to recruits that Snyder was going to coach for years to come.
Maybe trying to send messages with new contracts isn’t the greatest idea.
Spring is the perfect time to take the cover off your grill and/or smoker. I have both and am not afraid to fire either one up as long as it’s above 50 degrees outside and it’s not raining.
I suppose in Kansas you sometimes have to worry about 45 mph wind gusts right now. But you can usually work around that.
My kids actually like helping me fire up my propane grill and getting the fire started on my Kamado Joe, so maybe Professor Kellis will have to come out of retirement and teach a class on the art of cooking meat at some point.
Maybe Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley can sit in on my lessons. It looks like he could use some advice.
I mean, seriously. Did he throw that on his grill at 500 degrees and leave it there while he went golfing all day? I feel bad for his taste buds if he thought that was good enough to share with the world.
Riley is good at a lot of things. But he can’t seem to beat K-State or smoke a good a brisket.
Anyway ... This year, I have already smoked a pork shoulder, a pork tenderloin, ribs, sausage and chicken. I’ve got a brisket sitting in my deep freeze just waiting for the perfect weekend.
Steak, hot dogs and hamburgers are my go-to items for fast-and-hot cooking on the grill.
Brisket is the ultimate piece of meat. If you have the time and resources to smoke it, that’s what you should strive for. But I’ve got to warn you, brisket isn’t cheap. And it can be hard to eat the whole thing, even with a family of six helping you out. Brisket is best saved for when you have friends over.
I have warmed up to pork shoulders lately. They are super easy to cook and the meat tastes great after you’re done pulling it. It’s also not expensive. I bought a 7-pound pork shoulder at the store last month for under $7.
But there’s no going wrong with any of the meat mentioned above. Pick one, head outside with a beer in your hand and start grilling/smoking!
The plan was for K-State to continue mixing and matching uniform combinations last season to create some fresh looks like the all whites we saw at the Liberty Bowl, but there was so much else going on in the world that the Wildcats decided to stick with their traditional home and road looks.
K-State’s record in alternate uniforms was also abysmal in 2019. Maybe superstition had something to do with it.
I can tell you there were plans for K-State to explore new uniform possibilities with Nike before the coronavirus pandemic arrived. Perhaps that can happen now and we will some fresh looks in 2021 or 2022.
I’m personally hoping for an all-purple or all-black uniform combination. I would also be happy to see the “Cats” helmets return.
Yes, the K-State volleyball team probably would have made the NCAA Tournament under normal conditions. The Wildcats had a RPI of 63, which is right on the bubble of the normal 64-team field. But they were pretty clearly the third best team in the Big 12 with a record of 12-8. The next best RPI in the league came from Kansas at 110.
Texas and Baylor both made the 48-team field as national seeds. But no other Big 12 teams received an invitation.
K-State was next in line.
As far as the baseball team goes, the Bat Cats simply need to keep doing what they have done over the past week — win.
The K-State baseball team is listed among the next four teams out on Baseball America’s latest NCAA Tournament projection, which means it needs to leap frog seven teams to earn a spot in the field. Winning a series against Texas Tech was a nice start. Sweeping two games against Arkansas-Pine Bluff kept that momentum going.
Up next is a series at Texas. A few more wins there will probably put K-State into the projected field.
The Bat Cats are currently 17-11 and 2-4 in the Big 12, but its RPI is only at 111. If they can finish with a .500 conference record, or something close to it, they will have a shot at the postseason.
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Big 12 transfer numbers, spring football and Bruce Weber’s starting five."