Kansas State Wildcats can boost their NCAA Tournament outlook at home against Arizona
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang and his players were asked a popular question after they put an exclamation mark on a five-game winning streak by defeating KU 81-73 on Saturday.
Are the Wildcats a NCAA Tournament team?
“I think we’re good enough to win games in the tournament,” Tang said. “Do we have the resume to do it? I don’t know that. I’ll leave that up to other people. Our goal is just to win the next game.”
For now, that is a healthy approach.
K-State has played its way into the NCAA Tournament conversation, but the Wildcats have much left to do if they want to be taken seriously as a bubble team.
A pair of college basketball statisticians have painted a good picture of K-State’s outlook for the NCAA Tournament.
The Wildcats rank No. 1 nationally in Bart Torvik’s expert model since their winning streak began last month. He rates them as the hottest team in the country and their recent run of strong play has moved them all the way up to No. 44 in his season-long ratings. Still, he has them as the 22nd team out of the projected field. His tournament odds for K-State: 4.7%.
Evan Miyakawa’s numbers conclude something similar. He has K-State rated as the No. 44 team in the country, but he rates its resume at No. 80.
In other words, K-State is playing like a NCAA Tournament thanks to recent wins over West Virginia, Iowa State and Kansas. But it does not own a NCAA Tournament resume with an overall record of 12-11 and a 6-6 mark in the Big 12.
Many left the Wildcats for dead when they lost six straight games and their record dipped to 7-11. Tang has guided K-State on an impressive turnaround since then, but all those early losses still hurt resume strength.
That is the main reason why K-State is at No. 73 in the NET rankings. The Wildcats have a losing record in Quad 1 games (3-5) and in Quad 2 games (2-4). They also have a pair of losses in Quad 3 games, against Wichita State and LSU.
K-State needs to improve its NET ranking to make a run at the NCAA Tournament. There is only one way to do that — keep winning.
“I feel like we’ve been (an NCAA Tournament team), we just haven’t put it together,” K-State forward Coleman Hawkins said. “We let some games slip. But we showed glimpses of it in those games we did lose. Now we’re starting to put them on the other side and in the win column. I’m just glad we’re starting to heat up.”
It’s hard to project exactly how many more wins the Wildcats need to reach March Madness. But they can’t afford many more losses. No team has ever received an at-large berth with more than 14 losses.
The rest of the schedule is both a blessing and a curse for K-State.
It is good, because the Wildcats get many more opportunities to pick up big wins, starting on Tuesday against Arizona.
It is bad, because the Wildcats still have to play several challenging games, including road games against BYU, Utah, UCF and Cincinnati.
You won’t find K-State on any projected brackets right now. But that might change if Tang’s team can win six, or more, of its remaining eight games.
This story was originally published February 10, 2025 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Kansas State Wildcats can boost their NCAA Tournament outlook at home against Arizona."