SLATE: Kansas State prepares for Marcus Foster, Creighton

We apologize for the lack of a Slate yesterday. It’s all KSUEMAW!’s fault, and he’s been given the black sanction by our wetworks team. He’ll be missed terribly, at least until his zombification process completes and he comes back none the worse for wear.

Because of that, guess what? You get TWO days’ worth of links today! Truly, we are the most benevolent despot of all time.

K-State vs. Creighton preview pieces:

• TB previews tonight’s game, which you should already have read since it was posted an hour ago. Slackers. (Also, stay tuned at 10:45 for today’s open thread, and later in the afternoon our How to Watch and K-State open thread will miraculously appear as well.)
• Robert O’Neill at our sister site Big East Coast Bias did a Q&A with our own Eric Rubottom. Meanwhile, BECB’s Alex Sindelar examines the game by the numbers.
• Eric also participated in a roundtable hosted by Rock Chalk Talk to discuss the Big 12’s tournament participation — NCAA and NIT — as a whole.
• In today’s Sports Extra, Corbin McGuire notes that the Wildcats are leaning on experience tonight.
• Kellis Robinett previews the game for the Star and Eagle. Robinett has K-State by a bucket; Blair Kerkhoff, whose prediction is tacked on as well, picks the Cats by a slightly bigger bucket. In other news, Robinett reports that Dean Wade is a game-time decision, with perhaps a 60% chance of being ready to go.
• David Smale, special to the Capital-Journal, reports on Bruce Weber and Marcus Foster (i.e., the storyline that won’t die).
• Jon Nyatawa at the Omaha World-Herald previews the game, and picks Creighton by a trey.
• We have no idea who the responsible party is, but USA Today previewed today’s games and decided Creighton might win because Foster has a bone to pick and K-State might win because they’re overdue. These are, of course, perfectly sensible reasons to pick a team to win a basketball game; at least as sensible as the suggestion that I’m jetting off to Bali with Gal Gadot because I made a good joke about Arizona last night.

Other K-State men’s basketball items from Charlotte:

• Robinett delves into how Weber rebuilt the program after the chaos of 2014-15, and examines Wade’s status as a small-town hero.
• Kerkhoff defends Weber and postulates a shiny 2018-19.
• Not really Wildcat-related, but Jason Tidd at the Eagle picked bracket winners based on the schools’ basketball budgets. By that metric, K-State gets bounced in the first round because Creighton is a Big East team and spends all their money on basketball. Duke wins it all, knocking off Villanova in the Final Four before dispatching Kentucky. The surprise? Kentucky’s Final Four opponent — Florida State.

Women’s Basketball

The Wildcats survived round one of the WNIT last night, smashing Saint Louis 75-61. Peyton Williams had 21 (plus eight boards) for the Cats, while Kayla Goth added 19 and Rachel Ranke posted her first career double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Shaelyn Martin came tantalizingly close to a triple-double, with eight points, eight assists, and nine rebounds.

Additional staff reports from the Capital-Journal and the Star.

Their reward: another home game, although the timing could be atrociously bad for attendance. The Wildcats will face the Utah Utes in the second round at Bramlage on Sunday at 5:00pm CT. The male Wildcats could, of course, be busy with Virginia at the very same time. Sigh.

Baseball

Well, the BatCats (10-6, 0-0 Big 12) already lost to one March Madness team this week, falling to Creighton in a midweek one-shot. They get three more chances this weekend, as they host the College of Charleston Cougars (13-5, 0-0 CAA) starting today at 3:00pm CT. Kasey Ford should take the hill today against lefty Evan Sisk, with righties Gabe Littlejim and Griffin McLarty squaring off Saturday at 2 and righties Justin Heskett and Jakob Frishmuth hurling the noon Sunday contest. All three games are on ESPN3 and KMAN.