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Grant Flanders
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EMAWOnline - OPINION: Where does the basketball program stand?
Where Bruce Weber and the Kansas State basketball program stand
kansasstate.rivals.com
I was writing this response in the @Baller-Status thread (poll) where he posed the question:
“Is Bruce operating like he’s desperate to save his job or is business as usual?”
My response was getting really long and I decided I may as well turn this into a little content and it’s own board post as my first official opinion piece all surrounding Baller’s question. So here it goes...
Is Bruce operating like he’s desperate to save his job or is business as usual?
I think it’s both. We’ve never seen this staff land a quality high major transfer until Mark Smith. For that reason, they seemed to at least maybe push harder and be more open to new ideas in order to make these additions.
I completely get why the word is used in these instances, but the word “desperation” might be a little strong for me, because if you’re actually showing desperation, it can sometimes be hard to get what you want.
The word I would use is “pressure”.
They felt the pressure, stayed calm, moved quickly, and locked up a guy (Smith) that can possibly (and maybe quite easily IMO) exceed DaJuan Gordon’s offensive production, while adding more experience.
People can talk down on Nowell all they want (no pun intended), but I think he can be a legitimate, and key piece for this team. He will have to be if they want to reach their full potential.
When I watch his tape, he’s fast with a tight handle, even at max speed. He can shoot off the bounce. He’s not afraid to be a playmaker and set his teammates up. And most importantly he will likely be asked to come in as a sixth man off the bench. A bench sniper/facilitator, if you will. A second quality ball handler next to Nijel Pack that this team desperately needed this past season.
At Arkansas Little-Rock he was a high usage player. He was their best player IMO. I’m sure the staff has discussed with him his options before he decided to commit to them. Knowing the staff, they didn’t gaurantee Nowell a starting spot.
If they were willing to let David Sloan go last season because they knew Nijel Pack was their guy as a frosh, then they weren’t going to gaurantee another point guard to come in and take Pack’s spot next season as a second year player, especially after seeing that potential ooze in year 1.
Nowell knows what he’s signing up for and that is a first guy off the bench type of role where he will likely have a lot of freedom to handle the ball when he is out on the floor to set up his teammates.
He’s an upgrade of Rudi Williams who was never a great ball handler or playmaker to begin with. Williams essentially filled a role they didn’t need from him. He couldn’t be the guy they needed him to be. Doesn’t mean Nowell is going to be perfect, but I think he has the skillset to easily be considered an upgrade over Willaims and will therefore reap the benefits of decent amount of playing time at the high major level.
Now, none of this gaurantees a damn thing. The team as a whole still needs to perform. They still need to make the NCAA tournament a year from now if they want to guarantee themselves another go at it and keep building to show they can compete for Big 12 championships once again in the 2022-23 season and beyond.
The staff has no precedence of much success in the transfer portal, a horrible track record of attrition, most seasons with a roster of too many damn bigs, and one too many early exits in the tournament.
Where they do have some precedence is with winning league titles. And in the Big 12, if you’re not named Kansas, that hasn’t been easy to do the last decade or so. Dating back to 2009, outside of Kansas, K-State is the only team to win 2 league titles in that span. And both happened under Weber’s watch (2013 and 2019).
—Scott Drew is a really good coach that receives a lot of admiration (for good reason). He has coached Baylor since 2003 and finally picked up his first ever Big 12 regular season championship almost 20 years later, and the first for the program. It took one of the best college basketball teams I’ve ever seen assembled to accomplish the feat and ultimately this incredible roster has a chance to win it all next Monday if they can get past Houston in the Final 4.
The only other team to win at least one Big 12 title in the last decade outside of the three teams already mentioned is Texas Tech, the year they shared it with K-State in 2019. Chris Beard. Another coach who is adored.—
But with the peaks of some of best seasons ever in K-State basketball history, that was directly followed by two of the most embarrassing seasons ever in the program. They went from an Elite 8 appearance in 2018, to a Big 12 championship in 2019, only to fall off a cliff and finish dead last in 2020.
Obvisouly that screams that there are no doubt flaws with Weber and his poor roster management was magnified even more.
So Weber did what he knows how to do best when his team is in a rut. He did a mass exodus and saw 8 of his players exit the program and welcomed 8 new peices.
A new core was born, with Pack, Selton Miguel, and Davion Bradford. It still wasn’t enough though and the staff failed to find the right pieces to put around them to make them successful in the 2020-21 season.
They finished 9th in the league and have one of the most embarrassing losses in college basketball history falling to D2 foe Ft. Hays State. Something not even a shortened to non exitstent off-season can excuse.
What they did do though was never gave up. The team and the coaches never quit. And that paid off by finishing the season winning 4 out of their last 6 contests and putting together a tremendous fight against that Baylor team I was talking about earlier as being the best college basketball team I’ve seen with my own two eyes. This finish earned this staff another season. Had they finished the season with only one league win (which seemed likely when they were sitting on 13 losses in a row), you’d think that would gaurantee Weber’s dismissal.
The most important reward this program received for finishing the season out strong was ensuring that the core of Pack, Miguel, and Bradford stayed together. That could change and there is still time for them to bounce if they chose to do so, but nothing up to this point has inferred that notion.
So now you see the K-State staff evolving, even if just by a degree. They actually landed someone worth getting excited about in the transfer portal, and did it late in the cycle. Those are two things I, along with plenty of others, thought wasnt going to happen.
Now the key is to make what would be a hell of a turnaround, and sneak into the tournament next season. If they can’t, it could be when Gene Taylor feels the need to finally pull the plug and move on from Weber.
But if this team is capable of going from first place to last place in a matter of one off-season, I don’t think it is insane to think they could go from ninth place to seventh place in a matter of one off-season and sneak into the tourney. Getting seven teams into the tournament is no stranger to the Big 12.
Had they not added Mark Smith (and Nowell) I would not be saying this. So I know it may sound crazy, but I do believe this team just got better.
This team already had a little something cooking near the end of the year. They lose the energy and rebounding Dajaun brought to the roster and added in better shooting and ball handling skills in Smith and Nowell. And Smith isn’t a slouch on the boards, but reboundkng was something DaJuan was no doubt elite at for a guy of his slight stature. Add in what should be even better seasons for these frosh from year one to year two, and it gives me at least a little hope.
Antoher big key, and maybe the most important is they have to learn how to manage the roster much better. There cannot be even one more mass exodus of this roster in the future. They have to keep plugging away on the recruiting trail and build on the core they already have. Some attrition is normal. But the attrition rate K-State has accrued over the years is unacceptable and almost laughable. But here the staff still stands.
It is their chronic attrition rate that scares me the most. They have to prove all that is in the rear view mirror.
Ultimately I think the staff has done a good job patching things up. We will have to get to signing day to be able to feel fully comfortable in knowing everything is still on track.
It will be interesting to see what other rosters in the league start looking like in the months leading up to the basketball season, but K-State has positioned themselves as good as they could have done in my opinion.
I did not expect them to land a quality high major transfer. They proved me wrong. I don’t expect them to win a Big 12 championship in 2 or 3 years, but I also can’t be surprised if they prove me wrong on that either. At least with that, there is some precedence.
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