SLATE: K-State women beat TCU in overtime

It took an overtime session to get it done, but the Kansas State women pulled out a 79-76 win against Texas Christian University Monday night. Christiana Carr scored 31, and Ayoka Lee added 29 to lead the way. After only scoring 9 points in the 4th quarter to blow a 5-point lead, the Cats posted 15 in the four-minute overtime period to secure the victory.

With the win, the women’s record nearly mirrors the men’s: 8-15 overall, 3-13 in the Big 12. The game was the 1,600th in the history of K-State women’s basketball, and was K-State’s third straight win at Bramlage.

Over on the pitch, the athletic department announced a few changes to the spring soccer schedule, the most noteworthy of which was replacing annual purple/white scrimmage with a “friendly” against professional club Kansas City NWSL, the team that recently drafted Brookelynn Entz, on Saturday, March 20. The game will be played at Children’s Mercy Victory Field at the Swope Soccer Village. K-State opens its spring schedule on March 6 at the Buser Family Park against Kansas. That game begins at 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN+.

The athletic department website looked at ten takeaways from K-State’s sweep of the home opening series. Four of the ten focused on pitcher Jordan Wicks.

Wyatt Hubert is working out and preparing for the NFL draft at EXOS, a gym in Pensacola, Florida that Men’s Health magazine once called “the most elite gym in the world.” Hubert also talked about the Senior Bowl and the NFL interview process, in which he hopes he impressed some teams.

In one for the way-back machine, Mike Ekeler—better remembered in these parts as “Crash”—who played during the Bill Snyder emergence years of 1991-1994, has joined Josh Heupel’s staff with the Tennessee Volunteers. Ekeler, who was known in his playing days at K-State for sacrificing his body to break up wedges on special teams plays, for sporting crazy (and none-too-attractive) haircuts courtesy of then-roommate Kirby Hocutt, and for keeping a stuffed pet piranha that he named Carl Spackler after Bill Murray’s character in “Caddyshack,” started out in business after college, but just couldn’t shake the pull of football.

After working two seasons as a graduate assistant under Bob Stoops at OU, Ekeler has carved out a somewhat nomadic career in college coaching, working in various capacities at LSU, Kansas and Nebraska, while also putting in time at Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana and USC. If you’re counting, that means he has worked a stint in every Power-Five conference. Ekeler was most recently the special teams coordinator at North Texas.

The world needs more Mike “Crash” Ekeler, attacking life with reckless abandon.