K-State Q&A: Looking ahead to football season, transfers, Shane Southwell and more
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
You supplied some excellent questions about the Wildcats and other fun topics this week. So let’s get right to them. Thanks, as always, for your participation.
Let’s start with football questions this week.
You, sir, are a confident person.
I’m not ready to go that far with any K-State football projection, but I commend you for calling your shot in April. Let it be known that if the Wildcats reach the Big 12 championship game with a healthy Skylar Thompson you will get a big shout out in this space next December.
Now, please forgive me as I pour some cold water on your enthusiasm.
While I think K-State could have a strong 2021 season, a top two finish in the Big 12 standings seems like a bridge too far.
Oklahoma and Iowa State are both in run-it-back mode right now. It’s going to be hard for any team to knock them out of the conference championship game.
Also: Texas will win 10 games as long as Steve Sarkisian gives the ball to Bijan Robinson.
Furthermore: Oklahoma State and TCU both return a lot of talent.
One more thing: West Virginia has won five straight against the Wildcats.
Now doesn’t seem like the easiest time for a team like K-State to surge up the Big 12 standings, though another win over Oklahoma could change my mind.
ESPN recently released its Football Power Index rankings ahead of the 2021 season and it has K-State ranked 44th nationally. Not bad, right? Only problem is seven other Big 12 teams are ranked in the preseason top 25.
That certainly doesn’t mean anything concrete. I don’t agree that Texas Tech, which ESPN has ranked 21st nationally, is going to be amazing next season.
But it does show the Big 12 will be a strong conference.
We will find out quickly if K-State has any shot at challenging Oklahoma and Iowa State at the top of the conference. The Wildcats start Big 12 play at Oklahoma State and then host the Sooners and Cyclones in their next two home games.
I think seven or eight wins seems like an attainable ceiling for K-State next season. Beating Stanford in the opener could possibly bring nine wins into the mix.
Thompson will be one of the most experienced passers in the nation, Deuce Vaughn will be back as a sophomore and the defense added some impact transfers. But there are plenty of question marks on this roster and K-State finished last season with five straight losses. I could argue the Wildcats don’t have a safe floor.
However, if the Wildcats can emerge from their first three conference games with a winning league record then maybe they do have a shot at a special season.
Every college football coach in America is going to have to adjust their yearly recruiting plan now that the NCAA has approved the one-time transfer rule, which allows all student-athletes to transfer once without any consequences, such as sitting out a season before playing at a new school.
Like it or not, transfers are on the rise. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.
That means recruiting 25 high school players in every class is no longer a viable strategy.
Aiming for 15 high school recruits and 10 transfers seems like a fine replacement.
K-State lost a dozen transfers last cycle. Chris Klieman replaced them with six new transfers and is currently on the hunt for more. So 15 and 10 might end up being pretty close to what the Wildcats bring in this year.
But there needs to be some flexibility in those numbers.
What if K-State only loses five transfers next year? What if K-State loses 20 transfers the year after that?
Klieman won’t want to be stuck with too many high school recruits when he needs to land extra transfers, or vice versa.
Trying to land 15 high school recruits during the early signing period is a good plan. From there, a coach can assess his team’s transfer needs and proceed accordingly. Ideally, I would say 18 high school recruits and seven transfers would be perfect.
Landing transfers in the appropriate classes will also be important.
A coach won’t want all graduate transfers, otherwise he will be hunting for transfers at the same position every year.
And think about this: a redshirt freshman transfer might be worth his weight in gold under the new system, because he offers four years of eligibility for his new school and NCAA rules prevent him from transferring again and being immediately eligible elsewhere.
Ultimately, I think the NCAA will change its rules so high school recruits and transfers are counted differently in their yearly recruiting classes.
Until then, coaches are going to have to start making room for both.
It’s not my place to tell any fan how to be a fan, so if you want to be “super fired up” about the 2021-22 men’s basketball season then, by all means, you should be “super fired up” about it.
But I might recommend that you pump the brakes a tad before we see what Bruce Weber’s new transfer-heavy roster looks like on the court.
Maybe regular old “fired up” would suffice?
There are plenty of reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the Wildcats next season.
They return four starters that looked terrific at the Big 12 Tournament. They are bringing in three impact transfers who combined to average 32.3 points, 10.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists last season at their previous schools. And K-State’s roster is getting older while most other rosters in the Big 12 are getting younger.
Weber has all the ingredients necessary to guide K-State to a winning record next season and contend for a NCAA Tournament. The only question is if he can mix them all together and bake them into a delicious pie. That cooking analogy works, right?
It’s safe to say Weber has raised K-State’s floor considerably ahead of next season. This has been the strongest spring recruiting period he’s ever had. I will be very surprised if the Wildcats remain near the bottom of the conference standings.
As I mentioned in a previous mailbag, Weber will have more top 150 Rivals recruits on next season’s roster (six) than he has ever had during his previous nine years with the Wildcats. Talent won’t be the problem.
Weber and assistant coach Shane Southwell have both told me that the team’s goal will be to wrap up a NCAA Tournament bid before the Wildcats return to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament next season.
Is that possible? Sure, even after back-to-back season of 20 losses.
Still, it’s hard to know where this team’s ceiling will be come next March until we actually see this group play a few games together.
Former K-State basketball player Shane Southwell has done a very nice job as a recruiter lately. There is no doubt about that.
Perhaps a raise is in order?
Still, I would say it’s a little early to name him “head coach in waiting.”
Maybe that changes if Maximus Edwards, Markquis Nowell and Ismael Massoud (the three recruits he landed this spring) turn out to be the second coming of Rodney McGruder, Jacob Pullen and Michael Beasley.
Or maybe he loses some buzz if they’re all busts.
Southwell has made Weber look smart for hiring him as a young assistant last offseason, but let’s not get carried away.
For years, my answer to this question was always “Fish Out of Water,” a.k.a. the underwater episode from Season 3.
It’s different from every other episode in the entire series. There’s very little talking, none of the normal secondary characters are around and nothing that happens during his underwater trip to the Pacific Ocean Film Festival has anything to do with what happens in future episodes ... and yet it is both fun and hillarious to watch the entire time.
One of the things I love about BoJack Horseman as a series is that it took some wild chances with some of its episodes. An entire episode of BoJack giving the eulogy at his mother’s funeral comes to mind, as does the episode where BoJack flirts with death in his mind.
But that episode was always my favorite. What other series has dared to get rid of dialogue and go underwater?
Alas, another episode has passed that beautiful episode in my BoJack Horseman Power Rankings.
My new favorite: “Underground,” a.k.a the episode from Season 4 when Mr. Peanutbutter’s mansion sinks below the surface because of a fracking incident as he throws a posh campaign fundraiser with lots of celebrities on hand.
My favorite BoJack episodes are the silly ones, and those tend to involve Mr. Peanutbutter. Him running for governor of California against Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz is probably my favorite story arc in the entire series.
When they all get trapped underground for weeks together, pure hilarity ensues. Zach Braff and Jessica Biel add so much. All the while, BoJack and Diane are there, too, getting drunk in the background.
For my money, that is the funniest episode in the entire series.
I’m not sure I have one.
Never been a big fan of reality TV.
But I did watch every episode of “The American Barbecue Showdown” on Netflix last year. So I guess that makes it the winner.
If your wife is suggesting that you need to mow your lawn more than once a week you have my permission to disagree.
In my experience, cutting the grass every other week is usually fine.
There are certainly times during the summer when your grass grows so quickly that you have to bust out the mower every weekend. But twice in the same week seems like overkill. I honestly can’t imagine mowing my lawn on Saturday and doing it again on Wednesday.
I have a riding mower and somewhat enjoy cutting my grass like Hank Hill. But I would rather go zeroscape than mow twice a week.
My advice is to pick a day of the week that works for you (for me, it’s usually Sunday) and mow your lawn every week or two on that day.
Well, summer break is coming up and my two oldest boys will be spending a lot of time at home.
Perhaps it’s time for Professor Kellis to start teaching summer school.
I think it has a lot to do with just how different junior-college basketball can be from both high school and Division I.
It’s like one gigantic AAU Tournament where every player is more concerned about playing well as individuals than they are about winning games as a team.
In high school, players are still motivated by the dream of a state championship. At the Division I level, everyone wants to play in the NCAA Tournament. But there’s really not any glamorous carrot out there for a junior-college player. More often than not, his only goal is to convince a Division I coach he is worthy of a scholarship.
Adjusting from that environment to Division I basketball can’t be easy.
So even when a player looks great in junior college, that’s no guarantee he will continue to look great when he starts going against stronger competition and individual glory no longer reigns supreme.
There’s also no great reason for a player ending up in junior college. It’s a signal that at one point he lacked talent, had bad grades or got in trouble.
That doesn’t mean all junior-college players are bad. Heck, Mitch Richmond and Michael Bishop (two of the most famous names in K-State sports history) got their starts in junior colleges.
Some of them turn out to be total studs.
I love watching “Last Chance U” on Netflix and think a lot of those guys deserve a shot at the Division I level.
But how many of them have gone on to do anything memorable at the Division I level? It is harder to identify juco players.
Like every other school in the country, K-State is currently “planning” on full capacity of 50,000 fans at football games next season.
But it’s not up to K-State athletic officials to ultimately decide on how many fans can safely attend a football game in Riley County.
Local health officials will make that call at some point over the summer, presumably in July or August.
This story was originally published April 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: Looking ahead to football season, transfers, Shane Southwell and more."