Here are a few snippets from an hour-long Q&A I conducted last week with Kansas State coach Frank Martin. A very, very condensed version focusing solely on the K-State program will appear in the Eagle and the Star tomorrow, but the complete transcript will be available tomorrow on the papers’ Web sites.
Have there been times when you felt the team wasn’t prepared well but you still managed to win?
That happens every year. You have games that you… just don’t prepare as well as you should. You don’t put players in the best situations that you can as a coach to allow them to succeed. Yet, you’re resourceful, you create the will and you overcome and still figure a way to win. That’s why I don’t just evaluate myself after losses. I evaluate myself after every game.
That Nebraska game the other day that we won, I felt in practices we didn’t do a good job of doing some of the things that we needed to do defensively to allow us to be as consistent as we needed to be to win. When it was over, I went home and spent time re-evaluating what we did in practice, what was right and wrong, to make sure the next time we play Nebraska – if we do again this year – that I do a better job in the preparation time leading into the game.
At Oklahoma State the other night, I wasn’t satisfied with what we were trying to do offensively in the last three minutes of the game. Our players turned it over, but I felt the calls I made put our guys in a tough spot. Whether it did or didn’t, that was my evaluation. I had to go home and understand that. Should the players turn the ball over? No, that’s not acceptable. It’s their job to shoot the ball, yet I wish I could have a do-over and call different sets.