Should Bruce Weber be worried about Mike McGuirl’s disappointing start for K-State?
Mike McGuirl had big expectations for himself and his team when he decided to return for an extra season of college basketball with the Kansas State Wildcats, so it’s fair to wonder how he is holding up mentally right now.
The “super senior” guard from Ellington, Connecticut is off to a nightmarish start.
There is no sugar-coating the way he played during K-State’s first two games of the season. McGuirl has not looked like himself. He has scored a grand total of three points for the Wildcats, and he was relegated to the bench for the first time in 45 games during a 79-64 victory over Omaha on Wednesday at Bramlage Coliseum.
McGuirl seemed in good spirits throughout, but he had to be hurting on the inside when he realized the Mavericks outscored the Wildcats by 20 while he was on the court for 17 scoreless minutes.
Should fans be concerned? For now, K-State men’s basketball coach Bruce Weber says no.
“Mike has played a lot of basketball here and he’s been in a lot of big games,” Weber said. “I didn’t start him tonight ... I thought if I brought him off the bench maybe it would relax him a little bit. There is just a lot of pressure. He had such high visions of what this was going to be. I still think he’s going to have a great year. Now he’s got to get through.”
Weber tried to manufacture some confidence for McGuirl by inserting him into the game late and calling a few plays for him. But he only took one shot and didn’t make it. He also turned the ball over three times. But he did have three rebounds and two assists.
“He just needs a couple things to go his way,” Weber said. “If that happens, obviously he’s going to help us. There’s no doubt about that.”
McGuirl’s ceiling remains high with the Wildcats, even if he has already proven his floor is also quite low.
Regardless of his personal stats, McGuirl is the leader of the unquestioned leader of the K-State locker room. He has been around Manhattan long enough to play in the NCAA Tournament and earn a Big 12 championship ring. He’s the guy who scored 19 points to beat Oklahoma last season. He’s the guy who scored 18 points to fuel a huge come back against West Virginia when he was a sophomore. He’s the guy who dropped 17 points on Creighton as a freshman.
His teammates still look up to him.
Even if he reverts back to the role he had as an underclassman and only helps K-State with a few big games here and there, he is a valuable member of the roster. But that’s not what many expected for him when he announced he was returning to Manhattan.
McGuirl ranked second on the team in scoring last season while averaging 11.8 points per game. But he led the team in minutes, averaging 34.3 per game.
Seeing his usage cut in half and his scoring drop to zero against Omaha came as a major surprise.
And that came a game after he was limited to just three points against Florida A&M.
Is he the team’s new sixth man? It’s a fair question.
Nijel Pack, Mark Smith, Selton Miguel and Markquis Nowell have all looked better in K-State’s first two games. They all made major contributions against Omaha. Pack scored 15 points, while Nowell and Smith both had 11. Miguel finished with eight points and six assists.
Weber built this roster with hopes of being more versatile and the dream of rotating between 15-point scorers based on matchups and hot hands. He values efficiency. He doesn’t want to rely on one or two guards to handle the scoring load like McGuirl and Pack did last season.
In that sense, K-State winning its first two games by double-digits without much production from McGuirl could be considered encouraging.
Maybe his breakout game is coming, even though he is off to a discouraging start.
“We all know how great of a player Mike McGuirl is,” Pack said. “Playing with him last year, he’s had those moments where he’s done some outstanding things. Everybody has those slumps. I even had a slump before. I just always tell him, ‘I feel like you’re over thinking yourself sometimes.’ We can see it out there. We have got to continue to encourage him. He just needs a couple buckets to go in, just to get himself flowing, and he will be right back to that great player we know he is.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Should Bruce Weber be worried about Mike McGuirl’s disappointing start for K-State?."