NCAA track concludes today with several K-State women in contention

Previously

Two more entries in our March Through Time, as basketball makes its first (albeit abortive) appearance at KSAC (1902-03) and Mike Ahearn arrives from Massachusetts (1903-04). Gracey Terrill provided all the information you need to know about traveling to Peoria for the Midwest regional of The Basketball Tournament to cheer on Purple & Black, and there were a couple of other items which we’ll touch on at the end of the next section.

Track & Field

Today marks the end of the 2016-17 athletic year for K-State, as the NCAA outdoor track championships come to a close. The Wildcats are represented by a few ladies today. Four of them will definitely be appearing live on ESPN, which is showing the track races but only dropping very brief post-event highlights for the field events.

Those four will be the women’s 4x100 relay team, making their first appearance in the NCAAs. They will lead off today’s ESPN coverage, which will begin at 5:30pm CT.

The very first thing you’ll see if you tune in, however, is the reveal of the heptathlon champion. At 7:13pm, the 800m will begin, and should wrap up immediately prior to airtime. Nina Schultz finished day one in fifth place, but is a strong contender in the three events on day two, so she’s still got a shot.

(Your benevolent despot’s brain forgot to translate from PT to CT when writing the previous paragraph. Apologies.)

At 5:05pm, the women’s discus begins with K-State’s Shadae Lawrence being the top-ranked competitor in the field. Her sister Shardia, as well as teammate Konstantina Romaiou, will participate in the triple jump, which begins at 5:40.

That means K-State has 48 points available to them; a reasonable expectation would be that they’ll pick up somewhere between 20-30. They currently have 6, thanks to Janee’ Kassanavoid’s fourth-place finish in the hammer throw on Thursday. Georgia, leading the way, has 24.2 points; obviously, they’re still mathematically within reach, but Georgia’s Kendell Williams is currently leading the decathlon and the Bulldogs also have two entrants in the triple jump.

In other words, don’t expect a national team title. But the Dawgs have a 10-point lead on second-place Kentucky, so a top-five finish for the Cats is not out of the question.

Yesterday, the men’s competition concluded. As we reported, K-State’s Christoff Bryan (profiled yesterday by wildcat00 in her Know Your Track Star series) became the fifth Wildcat in the last decade to claim the men’s national title in high jump. It’s the seventh high jump title overall for K-State in the last decade. There’s a reason we call it #HighJumpU.

Football

Athlon’s Big 12 preview is live, and Steven Lassan predicts a fourth-place finish for K-State while reminding us all that a Big 12 championship game appearance is entirely possible.

As the Bob Stoops retirement tornado starts to settle, the Tulsa World’s Bill Haisten reminisces about Red October — that three-game stretch in 2000 when Oklahoma marched through three top-11 teams in four weeks, including #2 K-State, to return to dominance.

Men’s Basketball

William Desa at nbadraft.net ranked the top 10 seniors in the NBA draft, and sitting at the top of the list is one Wesley Iwundu. Frank Mason? All the way down at number nine.

Baseball

Pittsburg’s Jake Webb, a 6’5” righty starter, is committed to K-State. But in baseball commitment only matters if there isn’t money on the table via the MLB Draft. The Joplin Globe’s Lucas Davis checks in with Webb with the draft looming next week.