SLATE: Six more Wildcats qualify for NCAA Track

It was a slow Saturday, and with one exception it’s going to stay that way for the summer. We’ll get to the important Kansas State Wildcats news in a moment, but first we need to take a moment to acknowledge a tragedy.

Last night, a voice you have undoubtedly heard was silenced. Rod Bramblett, the radio voice of the Auburn Tigers, was killed along with his wife in a two-car collision in Auburn. Their SUV was rear-ended by a Jeep driven by a teenager (who survived with no life-threatening injuries). It’s hard to fathom that confluence of events.

Bramblett will forever be remembered from his call of the infamous Pick Six game against Alabama in 2013. You may also recall the game just two weeks previously against Georgia when an absurd deflected pass from Nick Marshall to Ricardo Louis in what is now called the Prayer at Jordan-Hare gave Auburn a 43-38 win.

For a month Bramblett’s calls were being blasted over endless reruns of highlights from those two games on every network imaginable. That wasn’t the entirety of Bramblett’s career by any means; he was beloved in Auburn both on and off the air, and his death is a loss to all of college football.

Track and Field

K-State added six more names to the list of Wildcats heading to Austin in two weeks for the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

(Yes, Austin. Not Eugene. It’s okay, it’ll be alright.)

Those six names represent seven qualifications, as Ranae McKenzie was already headed to Austin to compete in the women’s 400m hurdles. She’ll now also be competing in the women’s 100m relay along with teammates Taishia Pryce, Asha Cave, and Lavaun Stephenson. They posted a 44.6 to grab the tenth spot in the preliminaries yesterday in Sacramento.

Taylor Latimer finished eighth in the women’s shot put at 17 meters even, and Shardia Lawrence leapt 13.44m in the women’s triple jump to place second. And, of course, Tejaswin Shankar tied for first in the high jump to advance to the championships.

Brett Neelly narrowly missed adding a second event to his Austin buffet, finishing 16th in the men’s shot; he’ll be competing in the discus at the championship. The Wildcats also narrowly missed a chance to get two entries into the women’s triple jump; Konstantina Romaiou — who had a 13.33m mark to finish second in the Big 12 championships — had an uncharacteristically bad day and topped out at 12.70m, finishing 18th and missing the cut. (She’ll get one last shot next year, presumably.)

The big event starts on June 5 and lasts five days. K-State will have 15 athletes competing in 13 events, which is about normal. The women have posted top-10 finishes while only competing in six events, so it’s possible the Cats can make a nice run in Austin. The men have only had one top-10 finish ever, and did that competing in only four events back in 1998; they’ll compete in five this year.

Basketball

Over at the Mercury, Jakob Katzenberg reports on Peyton Williams and her reaction to making Team USA for the upcoming Pan American Games.

Other

Also at the Merc, Emily Porter checks in with outgoing dean of students Pat Bosco, who just saw his final graduation in an official capacity.