K-State Basketball: Bruce Weber can’t control how other games play out
K-State Basketball is heading to the Sweet Sixteen after knocking off UMBC on Sunday night. People will still justify this as an unsuccessful season for Bruce Weber and the Wildcats.
In a season where Kansas State Basketball didn’t play the toughest non-conference schedule, they still were impressive enough in conference play to punch their ticket into the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. That in itself should be good enough for fans to lay off of head coach Bruce Weber a bit.
Weber isn’t the best coach in the world, but he gets blamed for a lot of things out of his control. The first weekend in the tournament is evidence enough of that.
I guarantee all week long people will be saying how Kansas State’s Sweet Sixteen bid isn’t legitimate because of who they played in the Round of 32. Well, let’s dive into that, shall we?
We all assumed that history would not happen in the first round and that Virginia would win comfortably. That would have been who the Wildcats would have faced and it would have been a tough match-up for the purple team for sure.
Virginia was a very strong team who relied on their defense to win them games. Kansas State probably would have had a tough time scoring against them.
Well, Virginia couldn’t even get past a 16-seed team. The UMBC Retrievers were probably under seeded, yes, but they knocked off the number one overall seed in the entire tournament. Not only that, but the Retrievers BLEW THEM OUT. I don’t care what seed UMBC was, that right there makes them a legitimate team in March Madness.
We’ve seen the Cinderella teams make deep runs in the tournament and a lot of the time it’s due to momentum pushing them. UMBC had everyone behind them after their upset win and Kansas State were the villains by default.
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That’s a lot of pressure for Kansas State to have on their shoulders, but Weber had them ready for the challenge, and he did it without Dean Wade (who has missed both tournament games).
K-State was the first team ever to face a 16-seed in the second round and could have been the second team ever to lose to a 16-seed. Instead, the Wildcats did what they were supposed to do and outplayed the Retrievers.
People aren’t going to give K-State a chance facing off against Kentucky because of who their second round opponent was and that’s not quite fair. All Bruce Weber and the Wildcats can do is play the teams in front of them. It’s not their fault that Virginia made history and they shouldn’t be criticized for playing a 16-seed as their second round opponent.
It would have been easy for Weber and the team to overlook UMBC and completely melt down in the Round of 32, but they didn’t. They played a tight game, but won and are moving on. Again, they did this without Dean Wade, who is one of their best players.
This is a well-deserved Sweet Sixteen appearance for the Wildcats and now they’ll be facing another Wildcats team in Kentucky.
If Bruce Weber can get his guys past Kentucky and into the Elite Eight, then anything is possible in the South Region. All four top seeds have been eliminated and Kentucky, a five-seed, is the highest remaining seed remaining.
It might seem like Weber’s Wildcats had an easy path to the Sweet Sixteen, but all he can do is get his team ready for whoever they might play. It’s not his fault how the other games shake out.