K-Stated

Frank Martin spoke yesterday about it having coached Udonis Haslem at Miami Senior High and obviously Mike Beasley last season, and how now they’re both in the same frontcourt with the Miami Heat.

Well, the Kansas State connection with the Heat frontcourt actually goes further – assistant coach Matt Figger coached Shawn Marion at Vincennes.

Just something I found interesting…

- Fred Brown is bigger, especially in the arms. Darren Kent is bigger. Everyone is bigger, and that’s a credit to Scott Greenawalt. While it remains to be seen how good these guys are going to be, they’re no doubt they’re in fantastic shape.

- It’s a guard-driven league, folks. Sure, there’s Blake Griffin at Oklahoma and Damion Jones at Texas, but who else strikes fear in Big 12 frontcourts? If Jake Pullen and Denis Clemente are nearly as good together as Pullen insists, the Wildcats are probably going to surprise a lot of folks, which leads to my next point…

- These guys are upset about being picked to finish so low in the Big 12. “They must not know what we’ve got,” Dominique Sutton said, smiling. “You read the articles out there, and it’s amazing to me to see how much people don’t know about our team,” Ron Anderson said.

- On the topic of Anderson, I wrote about him yesterday, but a shortened version appears in the Star. The full version from the Eagle can be read here.

- There’s not a more thoughtful interview on the team than Chris Merriewether. Dude gets it. He’s a personal favorite.

- From top to bottom, this is such a likable group of guys. Can the Wildcats play? That remains to be seen. But there is an interesting mix of athleticism and depth, if the skill level maybe isn’t at last year’s standard. Rest assured there will be times when K-State races up and down the floor and scores with ease, and then some teams – maybe Colorado or Texas Tech – will slow it down and K-State will struggle to break 60 points. There will be growing pains.