SLATE: Kansas State’s new soccer complex gets a name

There’s only one actual piece of news to share with you this morning, and that’s the announcement yesterday that we won’t have to refer to Kansas State Wildcats ‘s new soccer facility as “the new K-State soccer facility” anymore.

John and Ann Buser, who both received their bachelors degrees in Manhattan and whose son is currently pursuing his MBA at K-State, made a significant donation — in the seven figures — to the program. In return, the university is honoring them by naming the new facility Buser Family Park. Groundbreaking on the new stadium will be next Friday during halftime of that evening’s meeting with Texas Tech; full-fledged construction will begin after the season.

Elsewhere in the soccer world, in today’s Sports Extra the intrepid Corbin McGuire profiles lifelong Jayhawk Haley Sutter, who jumped aboard the Wabash Cannonball as soon as K-State added the sport and has no regrets.

Football

Yesterday, two good pieces from our own staff: Derek Smith argues that it’s actually time to start asking Bill Snyder tough questions, and Drew Schneider asks why we can’t use both Skylar Thompson and Alex Delton... at the same time. (Sadly, as noted in our next link, the answer to that is “Hunter Hall”.)

It’s Friday, so it’s Q&A time for Kellis Robinett over at the Eagle. It is skewed more heavily toward basketball for some strange reason upon which we cannot quite place our fingers.

Arne Green, via the Capital-Journal, discusses the optimism felt by the one part of the team with reason to feel optimistic: the defense.

Our pals Peter Pope and David Fankhouser at Our Daily Bears drop this week’s edition of their podcast, where they of course discuss K-State.

At the Dallas Morning News, Chuck Carlton opines on whether a loss to K-State tomorrow will sink Baylor’s bowl hopes. Speaking of bowl hopes, the Mercury’s Greg Woods says K-State is ignoring those implications as far as they apply to themselves.

Basketball

Kellis is also busy on the bouncyhoops front, discussing the wealth of options Bruce Weber finds himself juggling at point guard: Barry Brown Jr., Kamau Stokes, Cartier Diarra, and Shaun Neal-Williams.

Baseball

There was baseball last night at Tointon, as K-State kicked off its fall exhibition schedule with a deliberate 13-inning game against Cowley County Community College. Of course, the result of playing extra innings on purpose just had to be a 6-6 tie, didn’t it? Freshman Mason Crews was the star yesterday as he announced his presence with a three-run dinger in the eighth inning with rescued the Cats from a 5-2 deficit.