K-State Q&A: How hot is Nijel Pack? How cold is Bruce Weber? Which QB is the future?
I think I have come up with a good analogy for the Kansas State men’s basketball team.
The Wildcats remind me of a deck of cards. Well, not exactly the entire deck. More like a hand in poker, if you could hold 13 cards at any given time.
Nijel Pack, who currently ranks third in the Big 12 in scoring, is an ace. Mark Smith, who currently leads the Big 12 in rebounding, is a king. Markquis Nowell, who currently ranks second in the Big 12 in assists, is also a face card of some kind. Let’s call him a jack.
After that? It’s not pretty. Let’s just say you would be returning most of them to the deck for new cards in a game of five-card draw. Mike McGuirl and Selton Miguel are wild cards. Sometimes, they really help. Sometimes they don’t. Everyone else on the roster is a low numbered card. Their big men might all be deuces. Very rarely do they add value.
I hope that isn’t being too harsh.
But I feel like it’s a fair comparison. The Wildcats have two top-shelf players, a quality point guard and then ... a bunch of guys who struggle to consistently produce at the Big 12 level.
That is why the Wildcats are somehow 0-2 when Pack scores 30 points. That is why the Wildcats are also improbably 0-2 when Smith grabs 16 rebounds.
Bruce Weber upgraded the team’s overall talent level via the NCAA transfer portal last off season, but K-State’s best players still don’t have much of a supporting cast. They need a competent center, a backup point guard and a stretch four to help them reach their full potential.
Fans can gripe all they want about poor coaching. Weber can show all the motivational videos he wants about Chinese Bamboo Trees. But the real problem with this team is that it lacks those one or two cards (remember the analogy) to turn a promising hand into a full house.
And now, let’s dive into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
Nijel Pack is scoring at such an impressive rate that it’s probably time to start wondering if he could challenge Jacob Pullen for the program’s all-time scoring record.
It won’t be easy to do. Pullen scored a whopping 2,132 points during his four seasons with the Wildcats. Pack is currently sitting at 676.
That means Pack needs to finish this strong and then average more than 20 points per game as an upperclassman and remain at K-State for at least four seasons. Even then, he would need to lead the Wildcats to several postseason victories in order to play enough games to have a shot at Pullen.
Right now, Pack is on pace for about 1,700 career points ... if he stays for four years.
That would make him one of the top 10 scorers in school history. But he’s still got a long way to go before he can think about joining Mike Evans and Pullen in the 2,000-point club.
His biggest problem is that he only played in 24 games as a freshman and missed two games as a sophomore.
Pullen played in 135 games for the Wildcats. Pack will need to lead K-State to a pair of Final Fours to hit that number. Well, unless he returns for a fifth season. But that seems unlikely.
For now, it’s probably best to appreciate him as one of the best players of the Weber era and enjoy the ride.
It depends on how the rest of the basketball season goes.
If the Wildcats can win five of their final seven games and receive an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament, he will probably return unless he decides to retire.
A return to March Madness, combined with Pack coming back as a junior could give Weber enough clout to receive a school-friendly contract extension.
Winning a game in the NCAA Tournament would really strengthen his case for more time.
Only one team in Big 12 history has fired its coach the same year it reached March Madness. That designation goes to Texas when it parted ways with Rick Barnes in 2015. I don’t see K-State joining that club.
Still, it’s hard to see Weber returning as coach with anything less than the NCAA Tournament. Maybe reaching the NIT and winning some games in that tournament would be enough, but that would do little to eliminate fan apathy.
It’s fair to say he’s coaching for his job the rest of the season.
Well, basketball attendance has improved since the beginning of the season. The Wildcats have gone from playing in front of 4,000 fans to 6,000 fans.
But it’s definitely troubling that K-State couldn’t sell 10,000 tickets when KU came to town. The Wildcats haven’t played in front of 10,000 fans since 2019. That’s not good for an arena that holds more than 12,000.
The Octagon of Doom days feel like they were ages ago.
Apathy has set in for some in the fan base.
That is why this could easily be Weber’s final season with the Wildcats. He needs to do something in K-State’s final few games to not only make a push for the NCAA Tournament but create some excitement for the future of this team.
This might have been a good question five years ago.
But just about everything that was once considered cheating by the NCAA is now legal. The “sleaze balls from Lawrence” wouldn’t have anything to worry about if the current rules were in place 10 years ago, right?
I hope every K-State coach, current and future, is open to helping his players make money off NIL deals while they are in college. It would be silly not to.
Weber uses a three-step approach during his halftime speeches.
1. First, he shows his team a motivational YouTube video about Chinese Bamboo Trees.
2. Next, he pulls out a dictionary and reads the definition for the word “passion.”
3. Finally, he shares a passage from his favorite “Pete the Cat” book.
That is what it sometimes feels like, anyway.
The Wildcats signed Taj Manning to their 2022 recruiting class.
He is a 6-foot-8 forward from Indiana. Rivals has him rated as a three-star recruit, and he had scholarship offers from other power-conference teams like Creighton and Wake Forest.
There’s a chance he turns into a quality college basketball player.
If Weber is back next season, I assume he would try to hit the transfer portal hard for a big man (or two) who is ready to make an immediate impact.
Antonio Gordon (Southeastern Louisiana): 4.9 points, 2.4 rebounds.
DaJuan Gordon (Missouri): 8.6 points, 4.3 rebounds.
Joe Petrakis (Western Carolina): 8.3 points, 3.5 rebounds.
David Sloan (East Tennessee State): 12.6 points, 5.2 assists.
Levi Stockard (VCU): 5.9 points, 2.7 rebounds.
Rudi Williams (Coastal Carolina): 13.1 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.2 assists.
I also looked up Montavious Murphy, but I don’t think he is playing college basketball this year. It seems as though he never found a transfer destination.
My analysis: K-State clearly won the Mark Smith/DaJuan Gordon “trade with Missouri. It would be interesting to see what Sloan and Williams could do this season had they stayed in Manhattan, but I like Nowell better than both of them. They probably made a smart move switching to mid-major teams.
This is a great question.
Funny thing about great questions, they don’t usually have answers. I cringe whenever an interview subject responds to one my questions by saying, “that’s a great question” because it means he or she has absolutely no idea what to say.
Congratulations, you have me stumped on this one.
Anything I can tell you would be a flat-out guess. But here goes: Will Howard and Jake Rubley will probably be the favorites to replace Adrian Martinez as K-State’s quarterback of the future. Howard has played and started in plenty of games for the Wildcats and he’s the current QB2. Rubley will have two years of practice under his belt by 2023. Perhaps the former four-star recruit will be ready to overtake Howard and win the job.
I suppose Adryan Lara could also factor into the equation. I really liked his highlight video. He possesses impressive speed and a strong arm. But he also looks like a project who may need time to adjust to the college level. I doubt he’s leading the pack in 2023.
Same goes for Avery Johnson. Even if the Maize junior picks K-State, are we really thinking he will be ready to start for the Wildcats as a true freshman?
Don’t forget, there is always a chance that K-State goes out and finds another transfer to take the job.
Let’s wait until the end of spring football practice and look at this topic again then.
Much as I would love to pay for my favorite Texas restaurants to open up shop in Manhattan, the number you’re throwing at me is extremely high.
I could probably own every Whataburger from here to Corpus Christi for $1.3 billion.
For that kind of money, I would rather bring in a pro sports team or a Disney amusement park or a medical lab that eradicates all forms of COVID.
Then again, the smart move is probably to build a monorail that completely encircles town. Remember, it put Ogdenvlle, North Haverbroook and Brockway on the map!
Oh boy. I haven’t done anything special for my wife to celebrate Valentine’s Day since we were in college two decades ago.
Maybe I should buy her flowers or get her candy to make it feel like a special day, but that’s not my style. The price of flowers sky rockets in February. Seriously, go into a grocery store this weekend and you will have to pay $50 for a dozen roses. You’re much better off buying your wife flowers at other times throughout the year when the same 12 flowers costs $10.
In my experience, it’s better to give your wife 60 flowers just because than 12 flowers on a goofy holiday that was invented by companies to sell greetings cards.
The only special thing I do on Valentine’s Day now is make sure my kids have plenty of candy to bring to school for their parties.
I could only think of one clever saying for your players, but I think it’s pretty good. Enjoy!
For Deuce Vaughn: Roses are red, violets are blue. Win the Heisman in 2022.
It is always best to be at the arena or at the stadium for a game.
There is so much more you can notice when you are there live rather than watching on TV. Not to mention, when you are on site you have access to fans, administrators, coaches and sometimes players before games. You don’t get those conversations when you’re sitting at home.
For a TV crew, it seems of the utmost importance to call a game live. You can notice the quality of announcers and commentators drop off when they are watching games from home. And they have no idea what to tell viewers about questionable foul calls or technicals. I much prefer it when the TV crew is calling a game live and in person.
I can also do my job better as a print reporter when I’m at games. I always try to travel for football games, because there is so much going on at the stadium that they don’t show you on TV. You get a different, and better, perspective watching from the box. And there are lots of people to interview afterward.
That being said, there are exceptions to every rule.
Sometimes the time and money it takes to get to a road game just aren’t worth the squeeze, especially if the reward is nothing more than a Zoom call with the head coach afterward. That has happened a few times to me this season. I prefer to travel and attend all of K-State’s games. But talking to Weber on Zoom instead of chatting with him in person after road games against Nebraska and Ole Miss made me regret traveling all the way to those arenas when I could have gotten the same access at home.
That’s why I’m leaning toward watching Saturday’s road game against Iowa State from home. As much as I would love to watch from inside Hilton Coliseum, I’m wondering if it’s worth spending 13 hours in the car.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "K-State Q&A: How hot is Nijel Pack? How cold is Bruce Weber? Which QB is the future?."