Kansas State head coach Bruce Weber enjoyed a great start to his tenure as the Wildcats’ head coach, winning a share of the Big 12 championship in 2013. However, the Wildcats finished fifth in the league last season and a disappointing eighth in 2015 after being picked fourth in the preseason. Weber is also yet to win an NCAA tournament game at Kansas State.
Tuesday night, Bruce Weber kicked Kansas State’s best player, sophomore guard Marcus Foster, as well as freshman Tre Harris, off the team. Add those losses to the transfer of Jevon Thomas plus the graduation of Thomas Gipson, and Kansas State is losing its top three scorers, top four minute-getters, and top two rebounders. The Wildcats are losing the players who made 61.9 percent of their field goals last season. Ouch.
Weber has a group of five three-star recruits coming in next season, but with a young team in a deep Big 12, and a track record of not performing as well with his own players, the writing is on the wall in Manhattan.
Kansas State writer Jon Morse noted that the problem may lie with Weber recruiting players like Foster in the first place. Morse stated that when Weber was at Southern Illinois, he did not have to worry about players with attitude problems, because players with attitude problems don’t go to places like Southern Illinois. While Kansas State does not have much of a recent history with recruiting the type of player Marcus Foster had the potential to become, Weber has shown time and time again that he lacks the tact and skills to handle the personalities in major college basketball, whether as a coach on the court or as a recruiter.
Because of the success of the Kansas State football program, I expect the buck to stop with Weber. Yet, it’s worth noting that athletic director John Currie ran off former coach Frank Martin, who was 117-54 at Kansas State (50-32 in the Big 12) and only once missed the NCAA tournament, countering that with an Elite Eight appearance in 2010.
Kansas State is one of the tougher jobs in major-conference basketball. It’s not in a fertile recruiting area; the fan support is decent, but nothing great; and the program is in the shadow of one of the biggest programs in the country, Kansas. Frank Martin figured out how to leverage his recruiting connections, build a hard-nosed team, and win despite the obstacles KSU faces. The administration ran him off for Bruce Weber, the man who took a golden situation at Illinois and turned it into mediocrity. He started with mediocrity at Kansas State, and could be leaving the place in a much worse position.
