A short week is ahead of us, citizens. Not the sort of short week that means an annoying Thursday night football game, thank goodness. No, the sort that means most civilized folk don't have to work Thursday or Friday. Rolling with the theme of lassitude and indolence, our Slate will be short and sweet today.
(Edit: someone who shall remain nameless, but may be the idiot in charge of this operation, is a nincompoop and can't read a calendar.)
Before we get into the K-State part of our program, however, we'd like to extend our congratulations to the small-college teams from Kansas who earned post-season bids during yesterday's flurry of selection shows. Baker, the #2 team in the NAIA, hosts Point (Ga.), #8 Tabor hosts Doane (Neb.) and #10 Kansas Wesleyan visits Southern Oregon. In NCAA Division II, Emporia State earned the seventh and final seed in Super Region III and travels to Minnesota State-Mankato. All those games are on Saturday. (Northwest Missouri State also made the playoff, and garnered the top seed in SR3. They have a bye this week.) Also reaching the post-season: the Fort Hays State Tigers, who will host Minnesota-Duluth on December 5 in the Mineral Water Bowl at Tiger Stadium in Excelsior Springs, Mo.
So at least some football teams in Kansas survived their regular season...
K-State takes on the Columbia Lions in the second half of tonight's doubleheader at Bramlage. Daniel Radov of the Columbia Spectator previews the game, cannily noting that the two teams will be fighting for the right to be known as the best basketball team in Manhattan. If you were to suggest that Radov is including the Knicks in there, could anyone dispute the assertion?
At the Wichita Eagle, Tony Adams opines on the return of D.J. Johnson.
And last but not least, a week or so ago we announced that Plantation FL-American Heritage big man James Love III had committed to K-State. The 6'10" forward officially signed his NLI on Saturday as expected, and joins Xavier Sneed in Bruce Weber's 2016 class.
If there's a second half of a doubleheader, there must be a first half, right? The women take on Abilene Christian at 5:30 in a Wildcat-on-Wildcat affair.
Susie Fritz announced another signing over the weekend, her third. Elle Sandbothe of Lee's Summit West will join the Wildcats next fall. In a glorious twist, Sandbothe's father, Mike, was the captain of Mizzou's basketball team in 1989; her mother, Teri, is a member of the Mizzou Athletics Hall of Fame as a heptathlete. Take that, #UnholyAlliance.