Slate: High marks all around

Previously

The Countdown has officially begun. BracketCat returned from his months-long slumber to start off the BotC countdown to kickoff with profiles of #96 Joe Davies and #95 Logan Stoddard. Keep your eyes peeled for #94 Anthony Payne to drop a little later today.

Football

Keeping with football news, as announced a few days age, former Wildcats signal caller Josh Freeman has announced he is retiring from football after the former first-round NFL draft pick was released by the Montreal Alouettes, of the Canadian Football League, late last week (TSN). Freeman had a stellar sophomore campaign, and a solid first four seasons, in Tampa Bay that saw him set several franchise records, but was never the same after being benched three games into his fifth season. Freeman is often best noted by Wildcat fans for two wins over Top-10 ranked Texas teams, but also gets knocked for never being able to beat Kansas (of course, some of that was Ron Prince’s fault...).

Over at Roll Bama Roll, SB Nation’s site for...well duh, Erik Evans took a look at his favorite football uniforms. And while Alabama and Texas road uniforms took his top marks (and all-white unis in general), K-State got a lot of love in the comments section.

Volleyball

Susie Fritz and her staff got some high praise yesterday, as K-State’s 2018 recruiting class was named as the 26th-best by PrepVolleyball.com. K-State joins Texas (6th), TCU (21), Kansas (23), and Iowa State (24) in the publication’s annual top-30 recruiting classes list.

Track & Field

Senior Jeff Bachman and junior Emma Wren of the Kansas State track and field and cross country teams were selected to the 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-District First Teams, the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) announced on Tuesday. The first team nod means that both will advance advance to the Google Cloud Academic All-America ballot, with Google Cloud Academic All-America teams announced in June.

The Sports Extra for today features Wildcat hurdler Ranae McKenzie, as the junior from Jamacia is in the midst of a break-out season that saw her earn the Big 12 title in the 400m hurdles with a time of 56.06 seconds, her fastest mark and good for 3rd nationally as she heads into the NCAA Championships next week.

Golf

Recruiting season isn’t over yet, at least for the K-State men’s golf team. Head men’s golf coach Grant Robbins announced Tuesday that the Wildcats have signed German amateur Nicklas Borrmann to a National Letter of Intent (NLI). Borrmann joins two other players who have already signed NLIs for the 2018-19 season.