SLATE: Kansas State weekend sports preview

It’s a random sort of morning, and we’re just going to dive headlong into the content.

Football

Keep an eye out later today for a pair of articles from Drew Schneider previewing tomorrow’s tilt against West Virginia Mountaineers.

At the Eagle, Kellis Robinett examines some film to figure out just how Skylar Thompson seems to keep being able to hit Dalton Schoen for touchdown bombs.

A pair of pieces from the Mercury’s Ryan Black: Justin Hughes has finally started to get it, earning more playing time while his high school teammate Elijah Sullivan should be ready to go Saturday. Meanwhile, everyone’s giving rave reviews to the coaching switcheroo which sent Collin Klein to the Kansas State Wildcats press box and offensive coordinator Andre Coleman down to the sideline — the receivers more than anyone.

Corbin McGuire finally gets around to everyone’s favorite kicker Blake Lynch in today’s Sports Extra.

From the other side of this weekend’s battle, there’s a bunch of stuff to share. Tom Bragg at the Charleston Gazette-Mail suggests that the Wildcat run game, which has not been its usual self thus far in 2018, will still be the biggest problem the Mountaineers must solve tomorrow. At the Morgantown Dominion-Post, Alex Hickey explores the same topic, as does Greg Hunter at the Morgantown News.

Also at the Morgantown News, Kevin Kinder offers his pregame notebook with a focus on how West Virginia will stop the Wildcat special teams.

We owe our friends at the Smoking Musket (who we really do like, honest) a huge apology this week, as schedules precluded getting together with them for any of our usual interactive content. For today’s minimal effort toward repentance. we’ll offer you WVUNite’s three guarantees for tomorrow.

Basketball

Sports Illustrated ranked the ten toughest places to try and play basketball while wearing something other than white, if you catch our drift. Bramlage didn’t make the top ten, but it did get an honorable mention.

On the women’s side of the coin, GPC’s Riley Gates reports on 2020 commit Ashton Verhulst, a Bishop Miege junior who gave Jeff Mittie her word before Mittie even had a 2019 commit lined up. Verhulst is pushing K-State to other players hard herself — including her younger sister, five-star 2021 target Peyton.

Volleyball

After a five-set heartbreak against Texas in which the Wildcats actually had match point, K-State (10-2, 0-1) is in Norman tonight at 7:00pm to try and recover as they face Oklahoma (8-5, 0-1) at McCasland Field House (without a drunken KSUEMAW! and Benevolent Despot in attendance, alas). No video unless you want to pay Oklahoma for the privilege, but you can listen at the K-State site.

Tennis

It was a bad opening day for the Cats at the Big 5 Challenge at Friedman Tennis Center in Fort Worth, as K-State dropped all three doubles matches against Arizona State. Two of those losses were to top-50 pairs, so it wasn’t really disastrous. Action continues through the weekend.

Golf

The men are in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the Maui Jim Intercollegiate at Mirabel Golf Club. Action’s already under way for today’s first round, and the tournament will continue through Sunday.

Other

The 2018 K-State Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony is next Friday night, and a limited number of tickets are now available at $75 a pop. If you can’t make it or would rather not pay to attend, the inductees will also be honored at halftime of next Saturday’s game against Texas.