K-State Slate: 7.8.14 - Bruce Feldman is talking about... Jonathan Truman?

Taylor Godinot is #54 in BracketCat's countdown, Ahearn spent four days in Rio and y'all aren't even commenting, and Derek... well, Derek did a thing. A bad thing. (Stay tuned, there may be even more bad things soon.)

As I'm sure you've heard, three Wildcats have landed on three different pre-season award watch lists, but they're taking up four slots. Ryan Mueller has been listed as an early candidate for the Bednarik Award, which goes to the nation's top defensive player. Tyler Lockett is on the list for the Hornung Award, awarded to the nation's best dual-position threat. Lockett is also on the list for the Maxwell Award, which honors the best player in the nation... but he's joined there, somewhat surprisingly, by Jake Waters. While watch lists are sort of fluff, and they don't really indicate the 70 best eligible players -- they're actually more a case of a bunch of different people thinking these are potential top ten candidates even if they aren't serious threats to win it -- it's still nice to see that of the 70 players the Maxwell Football Club thinks might be the best player in the land, two of them are Wildcats.

FOX's Bruce Feldman is doing his annual "Freaks" list, and there's a Wildcat on there. If I hadn't made it the headline, you'd never have guessed in a million years that it was Jonathan Truman, who Feldman has tabbed as the pound-for-pound strongest player on the squad. And you know what? We've spent the offseason focusing on a lot of other things, but it sort of feels like we've been ignoring Truman... who really is potentially a breakout candidate this year.

This is quite possibly the stupidest realignment post ever written, and it's unspeakably horrifying that the SI logo sits atop it. Not because of what it postulates; any damn thing is possible. No, it's stupid because the author is absolutely certain that the Big Five are going to continue expanding to 16 teams each... because the Pac 12 really wants to share its money with Hawai'i and UNLV.

Dude even thinks that an ACC which looks suspiciously like the American and a Mountain West with North Texas and New Mexico State but without San Diego State and Boise State would be a great part of a "Big Six" of "pretty good conferences". To be fair, his ultimate plans for the SEC, Big 12, and Big 10 aren't awful, but the reality is that if those three pieces were to fall into place as he suggests, nothing else in FBS would matter. At all. The entire article is the sort of junior-high fantasy realignment scheme which shouldn't be given voice by a purported professional.

Why link it, then? Laughs.

Kellis Robinett checks in with the very busy Marcus Foster, who's hanging out in Vegas with Perry Ellis and Ron Baker. Buried at the bottom, but also announced by the department: Brandon Bolden and Justin Edwards will be in the Baltic States in August with Athletes in Action. It's the same tour Thomas Gipson and Jevon Thomas took last year, albeit to a different locale. Bolden and Edwards will be joined by Baylor's Royce O'Neale and Ishmael Washington, Landen Lucas from Kansas, Darius Carter of Wichita State, and some other folks.

Whatever's going on at Tointon doesn't seem to be affecting Brad Hill's ability to attract talent from far-flung outposts. K-State's latest commit is Stoughton, Wisconsin shortstop Cade Bunnell, who picked the Cats over Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Xavier, and West Virginia. He hasn't signed yet, of course, but he's a solid verbal.

It's Tuesday, which means summer baseball update time. Alex Bee didn't have a hit all week, but did walk three times and got hit by three pitches, pushing his OBP up to .422. Incoming freshman Dalon Farkas hit .500 last week for Rossville in the Mid-Plains league, and he's hitting .356 with four homers in just 15 games. Levi MaVorhis, unfortunately, is melting down on Cape Cod. He got shelled in his lone start of the week, and then coughed up two runs in a one-inning relief stint; his ERA has ballooned to aircraft levels.

Wade Hinkle is on a tear at Inland Empire, the Angels' high-A affiliate. He's on a five-game hitting streak and hit .429 last week with a pair of doubles and two homers. Jared King, who's been on the DL since early May, returned to action in a rehab stint in the Gulf Coast League. Ross Kivett's doing well in Connecticut, hitting .278 last week.

Kelly McHugh profiles sophomore Sheridan Zarda, the Shawnee-Saint James Academy star who transferred back home from Nebraska this spring.