Breaking down Kansas State’s rising men’s basketball potential with three new transfers
To say this has been a productive spring for Bruce Weber might be an understatement.
The Kansas State men’s basketball coach has never delivered a better haul of late roster additions than he has this offseason. In all honesty, he has probably never come close to recruiting this well during any of his previous nine springs in Manhattan.
Weber quickly made fans forget about losing four transfers in early March by adding a trio of potential impact transfers and retaining Mike McGuirl as a “super senior” by mid April. All those transactions almost feel like Weber was a NBA general manager during free agency, but he was simply adapting to a new normal in college basketball where transfers are more common than ever.
In any case, K-State emerged from transfer season with significantly more experience and better three-point shooters than it did when the Wildcats bowed out of the Big 12 Tournament last month.
They also now have an unprecedented 14 scholarship players.
On paper, K-State should have all the pieces necessary to make significant improvement next season and return the Wildcats to an upward trajectory after cratering with records of 9-20 and 11-21 over the past two years.
The best young players (Davion Bradford, Selton Miguel and Nijel Pack) from last year’s team are all returning. Three promising transfers (Ismael Massoud, Markquis Nowell and Mark Smith) are on the way. And a fifth-year senior (McGuirl) seems poised to lead them after pandemic restrictions begin to fade.
But there is no guarantee the Wildcats will climb up the Big 12 standings and make a run at the NCAA Tournament.
Here is a look at some important questions that will ultimately determine how much progress K-State basketball can make next season.
Can Weber get all this talent to co-exist?
Sorry if that question makes it sound like K-State suddenly has a Dream Team. That is most certainly not the case. But the Wildcats will have more touted recruits on next year’s roster than they have at any other point under Weber.
Following the additions of Massoud and Smith, K-State now has six players who were once ranked in the top 150 of their respective recruiting classes, per Rivals.
- Mark Smith: No. 55 in 2017
- Selton Miguel: No. 86 in 2020
- Nijel Pack: No. 128 in 2020
- Ismael Massoud: No. 129 in 2019
- Davion Bradford: No. 141 in 2020
- Montavious Murphy: No. 141 in 2019
With Murphy injured most of last season, there was little competition for playing time at most positions. And two players (McGuirl and Pack) carried most of the scoring load on their shoulders. There will be more mouths to feed next season with Murphy on the mend and three new transfers expecting to make immediate impacts.
It’s better to have too many scorers than not enough, but Weber has also said he was hesitant to fill K-State’s final scholarship this cycle because he wasn’t sure if he could keep 14 players happy.
That will be his challenge next season.
Smith averaged 9.7 points and 3.2 rebounds last season at Missouri. Nowell averaged 14.3 points and six assists last season at Arkansas-Little Rock. Massoud averaged 8.3 points and 3.4 rebounds at Wake Forest last season.
Adding those numbers onto K-State’s returning production would make the Wildcats a 20-win team, but it’s never that simple. If Weber can convince his newest players to buy in and accept team-oriented roles quickly, the Wildcats could make major progress. If not, they may encounter some growing pains.
Will K-State stick with small ball or return to a bigger lineup?
The Wildcats played their best basketball of the season with a small lineup last year that featured four guards and Bradford in the starting lineup.
K-State beat TCU by 21 and then pushed national champion Baylor to the brink with small ball at the Big 12 Tournament.
So will Weber stick with that lineup next season? Or will he return to a bigger lineup with incoming freshman Logan Landers, Massoud and Murphy splitting time at the four?
That will be one of Weber’s biggest questions next year. He recently told The Eagle that he will probably rotate between big and small lineups, depending on game-specific matchups. But he has traditionally leaned on bigger lineups.
K-State is probably best served going small. That will allow the Wildcats to get the most talent on the floor at the same time. A lineup that features Pack, McGuirl, Miguel, Smith and Bradford packs some serious scoring punch and helps them retain the strong defense they flashed late last season. That also creates more opportunities for Luke Kasubke and Nowell coming off the bench.
But a bigger lineup is also intriguing, because all three of K-State’s power forwards aren’t traditional back-to-the-basket big men. Landers and Murphy both have range, and Massoud made eight three-pointers in a game last season for Wake Forest.
Perhaps K-State can play something that resembles small ball with a stretch four.
Weber probably won’t make any decisions until the season approaches and he gets to spend time with K-State’s new players in a practice setting.
How much can three-point shooting improve?
K-State made a Big 12 low 29.6% of its shots from three-point range last season. The next worse shooting team from distance was Iowa State at 32.1%. The national average was 33%.
Pack and McGuirl both made 60 three-pointers. Miguel was third on the team with 20.
You get the picture. K-State was a bad shooting team last season.
That should change. Nowell (33), Massoud (36) and Smith (40) combined to make 109 three-pointers last season. And Nowell only played in 15 games. He made a whopping 77 while playing in 28 games as a sophomore at Little Rock.
Kasubke was also originally recruited primarily for his shooting abilities.
K-State has never made better than 36.2% of its three-pointers under Weber. Can that change next season? If so, the team’s propensity for long scoring droughts should drastically decrease.
Will the defense fall off?
The Wildcats closed out the season by winning four of their final six games for one reason: They played excellent defense.
K-State allowed an average of 59.3 points over that stretch and legitimately defended at an elite level.
Can it continue that trend next season with three new players who won’t have much time to adapt to Weber’s defensive system? Nowell and Smith both said they committed to K-State in part because they liked the way it played defense. So maybe that won’t be a problem. But it certainly seems like Weber has sacrificed some defense for offense over the past month.
Recreating the defensive principles that helped K-State win games late last season will still be important moving forward.
This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Breaking down Kansas State’s rising men’s basketball potential with three new transfers."