Slate: Recruiting on Fire

Basketball

We’ll start over on the women’s side first as Kansas State announced that the Wildcats have added Final Four participant Oregon to the 2019-20 schedule, and the Cats and Ducks will face off in Eugene, OR in December. This is the fourth straight season K-State will face an opponent from the Pac-12 Conference (Arizona State, 2018-19; UCLA and Utah, 2017-18; Stanford, 2016-17). Head coach Jeff Mittie described the addition as a “two-game series”, so expect to see the Ducks in Bramlage sometime in the next few years.

On the men’s side, while we should have some more clarity on the 2019 class today with an expected announcement from 2019 recruit Nick Blake (down to K-State and UNLV), the Wildcats and head coach Bruce Weber have already begun building the 2020 class. Earlier this week K-State hosted Indianapolis guard Nijel Pack, and he was so impressed during his visit that he decided to commit to the Wildcats on the spot.

Football

The commitment fire has not cooled off for Chris Klieman and his staff, and it’s safe to say that Van Malone and the other assistants have definitely earned their paychecks so far this June. The latest commit is 3-star DB Joseph “JoJo” Wilson out of Houston, who chose the Wildcats over offers from Arizona, Houston (and Dana Holgorsen), and Oregon State among others. Wilson becomes the 12th verbal commit for the 2020 class, and makes the sixth recruit to pledge to the Wildcats in the last 10 days.

Track & Field

Shardia Lawrence had quite the journey to becoming the latest Wildcat to become an NCAA National Champion. While we saw the senior jumping into the K-State record book while shattering the school record in the triple jump, we didn’t see the climb out of depression and disappointment to reach the peak of the mountaintop.