Screaming fans, the Wabash Cannonball on repeat, a sea of purple as far as the eye can see... You're picturing a Kansas State football game, aren't you? Well, you're wrong. The scene I'm describing isn't Bill Synder Family stadium... It's Bramlage Coliseum. Kansas State is turning tides, from a football school into a basketball school.
K-State has had a rough football season so far this year. There's no way around it. And while most all faithful K-State fans remain loyal to the purple and the white, many of us are anxiously looking toward what could be a record-breaking kind of basketball season. Now I'm not going to get too technical, as I am no expert in sports and don't want to lose those reading who don't understand too much of basketball, but I'll give a brief layman's overview.
The Kansas State Men's Basketball team ranked 11th nationally in the USA Today Coaches preseason polls and 15th in ESPN Power Rankings. They also have been ranked #2 in the Big 12 standings, right on the heels of our red and blue Kansan neighbors to the East. That's the Kansas Jayhawks if you didn't quite get that last sentence. K-State's rise in the world of the court and the hoop has been a long time coming. But why now?
Coming off of an incredible NCAA tournament run that ended in the Elite 8, K-State has a finely tuned team with seasoned players who are hungry to finish what they started last winter. K-State has the highest percentage of scoring of any Division I team, at 93.2%. They have a top 10 defense and a top 25 offense. In simple terms, this team knows how to score and they know how to keep other teams from scoring. Need more evidence that this is going be an amazing season? The Cats recently took on the Oregon Ducks in a closed scrimmage in Denver and ended the matchup scoring 75-70 and outrebounding the Ducks 40-33.
The Cats are returning many key players, including Barry Brown, Dean Wade, Xavier Sneed, and Kamau Stokes. Brown and Wade were recently named to the 2018-2019 Preseason All-Big 12 First Team, and Wade was named 2018-2019 Preseason Big 12 Player of the Year. With these kinds of stats, it's not hard to believe that this will be one hell of a season.
So in conclusion, we're all hoping for a better Bill Synder football team next year and looking forward to a rocking basketball season this year.
And without further ado...
Bring on the Cats.
