K-State basketball coach Bruce Weber is a survivor, whether you like it or not
Kansas State men’s basketball lost 20 of 29 games, including once at home against a team that went .500 in the MIAA, a Division II conference, and here we are at the end of the season and this team is ... hopeful?
“I see this team being the No. 1 team in the country next year,” sophomore DaJuan Gordon said. “We all work, and I feel like if we had to start over right now, and start from today, we’d be one of the best teams in the country and an NCAA contender.”
K-State lost 14 of its 18 conference games (shoutout to Iowa State), including six by more than 20 points, and here we are at the end of the season and this is ... cocky?
“We’ll be able to shock some people next year,” freshman Nijel Pack said. “I feel like we got the talent, we definitely got the coaching, we definitely got the support to win a Big 12 championship.”
Bruce Weber’s program is in an awkward place. He’s won two Big 12 championships in nine seasons, but just seven conference games in the last two. He is one of the country’s most experienced coaches in a sport that’s friendly for quick turnarounds but now has four irredeemable seasons out of the last seven.
This was the wrong season to have a team built around freshmen and sophomores, with a limited offseason and more challenges for development.
This was the right season to stink out loud, with less exposure and lowered revenues for everyone tempering the motivation and ability to make a coaching change.
No coach in the country has more closely or consistently flirted with being fired. No coach in the country has quite this path of survival.
Next season would be Weber’s 10th at K-State, and he’s always had a conflicted relationship with the people he needs. He’s coached under two different athletic directors with consistent support from administration, but his teams have given fans plenty of frustration.
In each of Weber’s conference title seasons the team lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed. The run to a regional final in 2018 was fun, but college coaches who go 20-41 over two seasons often don’t get to coach the third.
Weber has achieved more than Frank Martin, the predecessor he’s still often compared to, but Martin’s teams had a way of making you think about the possibilities.
Weber’s teams have a way of making you think about the challenges.
All of that is true, and so is this: Weber should be K-State’s coach next season.
There have been times this season — including in recent weeks — when that was uncertain at best.
But with the entirety of the season in view, we see that went from losing to Fort Hays State at home in early December to winning four of its last six.
The Wildcats’ season ended with a 74-68 loss to No. 2 Baylor in a Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal Thursday at T-Mobile Center that came down to the final minutes. We can wonder about Baylor’s interest, but the Bears have an enormous talent advantage and for most of 40 minutes it looked every bit like one team that’s been steadily improving against another team that’s fading.
Four of K-State’s top five scorers were freshmen or sophomores. The exception is Mike McGuirl, who Weber believes will return for another senior season.
K-State doesn’t get credit for starting so poorly, but if wouldn’t it make sense that a group with such little experience would be particularly impacted by the lack of practice and stunted time to develop?
The jokes are easy to make, but seasons with this many losses don’t often end with players and coaches talking this positively.
“We’re actually playing high level basketball,” Weber said. “We can compete with anybody. I think we just showed it.”
That stuff matters, particularly as it relates to Weber’s job status. K-State did not win a single game between Dec. 29 and Feb. 20. That’s 53 days and 13 losses and these players would not have been the first to quit on each other or their coach in that situation.
That they came out of it with some level of success should matter. Baylor scored 100 and 107 points against K-State during the regular season. In the Big 12 Tournament, Baylor scored 74 — the third-lowest total of the season for the nation’s No. 3 scoring team.
That’s not a fluke, either. K-State’s defense developed into one of the country’s most efficient toward the end of the season, giving up an average of 60.3 points over the last eight games.
Weber is something like the joke about Keith Richards and cockroaches, because Weber could have been justifiably fired a few times now — the disaster during and exodus of players after the 2015 season is the most obvious example.
In 2017, security guards confiscated a FIRE BRUCE sign from the front row of the Bramlage Coliseum student section early in a senior day win over Texas Tech that may have saved his job.
If K-State fired him now, there would be no passionate defenses. He could not claim to have been treated unfairly, or judged too harshly.
As much as anything else, this form of uneasiness has defined Weber’s time at K-State. He has a case as the program’s most successful coach since Lon Kruger, and enough failures that these questions about his job security don’t stop.
By all appearances Weber will get at least one more year. He’ll have a core he loves and that is expected to be back in full. There will be no excuses, and the standards will be high.
Weber has always seen himself a fighter. He coaches that way. He’ll get one more round, at least.