K-State Q&A: Future football schedules, Jerome Tang’s hunt for transfers and baseball

It’s time for another K-State Q&A.

No need for an elaborate introduction this week. Let’s dive right into your questions, of which there are many. Thanks, as always, for providing them.

The next time we get a destination football game can we have our opponent lose their home game? -@3rdejenkins via X.

Hey, I hear ya.

Fun as it was for K-State fans to watch the Wildcats dismantle Stanford at the beginning of the 2021 season inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, it was still a little bit lame to trade it for a home game against the Cardinal.

I could write the exact same sentence looking ahead to the Ireland game against Iowa State in 2025.

Some (most?) fans are excited about it. This could be the trip of a lifetime for coaches, players, band members and K-State supporters. But giving up a home game against your Farmageddon rival is definitely disappointing.

To steal a line from Matthew McConaughey’s character in the classic film “Dazed and Confused” ... “It would be a lot cooler if” Stanford and/or Iowa State were the teams giving up their home games to make these matchups happen.

But it’s worth pointing out that athletic director Gene Taylor and the Wildcats have gone out of their way to schedule more home games than they absolutely had to in the past.

K-State has played seven home games in every non-pandemic season going back to 2016, and that’s even with moving that Stanford game to Jerry World. So it’s not like the Manhattan community is starving for home games. Losing one home game every five years doesn’t seem like something worth crying about.

Who knows, maybe the Wildcats will get an extra home game by qualifying for the expanded College Football Playoff.

But there are a few ways K-State could play “destination” games without giving up home games in the future.

The easiest solution would be to play in one of the many neutral site games in Week 1. You see them every single year in Atlanta, Arlington, Charlotte, Orlando and other cities. K-State has openings on its schedule in 2027 and beyond. It still needs to schedule a team from a power conference in 2027 and 2028. Either of those years could work for another neutral game.

How does K-State vs. Ole Miss in Atlanta sound?

Or, and this is my favorite idea, K-State should talk Vanderbilt into playing at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. The Commodores still technically owe the Wildcats a return game in the home-and-home series they agreed to during the Bill Snyder era. Vanderbilt beat K-State 14-7 in 2017 in Nashville. But the second leg of that series was called off because of COVID.

While it’s true the Wildcats would technically be giving up another home game to play Vanderbilt in Kansas City, right now they are giving up that home game for a big pile of nothing. Maybe floating the idea of playing that game at a neutral venue instead of Manhattan would make it more palpable for Vandy.

Just an idea. I feel like Vanderbilt still owes K-State something, even though that game was canceled for understandable reasons.

The only other thing I can think of is asking Arizona to move its “nonconference” home game against K-State in 2025 to Las Vegas.

Are the football coaches still looking for anything special in the transfer portal? -@BenHurley9410 via X.

They would like to bring in an experienced quarterback to serve as Avery Johnson’s backup next season.

That is easier said than done when you consider that most experienced quarterbacks are only looking for starting opportunities in the transfer portal. For example, Utah State transfer Cooper Legas was in town for a visit last week, but he ended up choosing Tulsa because the Golden Hurricane can offer him a chance to start.

Nevertheless, K-State would like to add another arm to that room.

K-State has confidence in current backup Jacob Knuth, but he is largely unproven. It would help to add some competition to that position ... even if the competition is for a No. 2 role.

Of all the leading contenders in the Big 12 this season, K-State has the most difficult schedule by far. KU has the easiest. With Arizona and Tulane on the nonconference schedule, it gets tough right away. Strength of schedule is a consideration for the CFP, but winning the championship is the only guaranteed way to get in. What are your thoughts on the schedule? -John S. via e-mail.

I don’t know that Kansas State’s schedule is as hard as you are making it out to be.

The Wildcats’ over/under win total for next season is 9.5, which is the highest I can ever remember it being heading into a season.

A road game against Tulane could definitely be tricky, but the Green Wave just lost Willie Fritz (an excellent coach) to Houston. I will be surprised if they continue to be as good as they have been. Arizona will be a hard game, but that team also just lost its coach. And the contest will be in Manhattan.

It will be harder than a home game against South Dakota, sure, but it’s not like the Wildcats scheduled Ohio State.

Also worth noting: K-State played a similar nonconference schedule two years ago with Tulane and Missouri on the slate. The Wildcats won the Big 12 that season, even though they lost one of those games to Tulane.

With an expanded playoff, suffering an early loss will no longer mean what it once did. But winning against a hard schedule could give your team a boost.

Besides, K-State might end up being favored in all 12 of their games. The few exceptions could be at West Virginia if the Mountaineers start hot and at Iowa State if the Cyclones can live up to their sleeper potential. Arizona, Kansas and Oklahoma State will all be worthy opponents, but K-State gets to play them at home.

Seems to me that Iowa State got things much harder with trips to Iowa, West Virginia, Kansas and Utah on the schedule ... plus a home game against K-State.

TCU really got a tough slate with road games at SMU, Stanford, Kansas and Utah plus home games with Oklahoma State and Arizona. Yikes. The Horned Frogs could be in for a long season.

Colorado closes with this schedule: at Texas Tech, Utah, at Kansas, Oklahoma State. And that’s after playing K-State and Arizona in back-to-back weeks in the middle of the season.

I’m not sure who got the easiest schedule in the Big 12. But strength of schedule definitely matters.

Just look at West Virginia last season. The Mountaineers went 8-4 in the regular season thanks to wins over Duquesne, Pitt, Texas Tech, TCU, UCF, BYU, Cincinnati and Baylor. Anyone who thinks they have sleeper potential this season needs to remember how badly they lost to every good team they played in 2023.

Summer is almost here and we barely have enough basketball players to field a starting lineup. Is it time to panic? Does Jerome Tang not know how to recruit out of the transfer portal? - Andrew B. via e-mail.

Stressful as it may be to look at the K-State basketball roster and only see nine scholarship players on it, my advice to you is to take a deep breath and reassess the situation when Jerome Tang is finished recruiting.

Remember, things looked even worse two years ago than they do right now for the Wildcats.

Back then, Tang was slowly building a roster before his first season in Manhattan. Fans had to wait long into the summer months before a Florida transfer named Keyontae Johnson enrolled at K-State. That one addition transformed the Wildcats into a team that was capable of winning 26 games and nearly reaching the Final Four.

Tang likes to add transfers late in the recruiting process. This offseason will be no different.

Graduate transfers are still allowed to enter the portal whenever they please, and some talented players will become available after they pull their names out of the NBA Draft. If Tang can land a few of those dudes, then things will suddenly look much different (and better) than they do right now.

Now, maybe Tang rounds out the roster with four bums and it will be time to panic. But there’s no need in rushing to judgment right now.

Even with just nine players on the roster, Bart Torvik projects K-State as the nations’ No. 65 team heading into next season. Believe it or not, that is a slight improvement over last season when the Wildcats had a full assortment of players.

K-State has landed some impact transfers already. There’s no reason why Tang can’t still find a few more.

If Tang has a problem with anything, it’s player retention. Things would be a lot easier for him right now if some combination of Dai Dai Ames, Jerrell Colbert and RJ Jones were still on the roster.

Ok - 4 schollies left to hand out. I’m assuming they’re looking for some bigs. What hear ya on the direction of roster management? -@ChadFullington via X.

Yes, the Wildcats definitely need to another big man before next season arrives.

They probably need to find two.

David N’Guessan and Baye Fall give the Wildcats a decent nucleus to start with, but they will need more than just those two to make it through an entire season. It’s too bad they missed out on Rutgers transfer Clifford Omoruyi. He would have been perfect. But there are other options still out there.

Florida State transfer Baba Miller comes to mind.

I think K-State could also use another point guard to help complement Dug McDaniel and David Castillo.

Those feel like the top priorities at the moment.

Why did Arthur Kaluma wait so long to transfer? -@dinzerillo via X.

Arthur Kaluma was in a position where he didn’t have to rush.

Just about everyone expected the 6-foot-7 wing to declare as an early entrant for the NBA Draft following his junior season with the Wildcats. And he did exactly that. But there is no advantage to declaring for the draft before your peers. There aren’t a limited number of spots. As long as you beat the deadline, which came and went earlier this month, then you’re good.

So Kaluma waited to announce that decision.

Entering the transfer portal is a little different. But if you are a talented player there is no rush to enter your name in that database, either. Most teams have open scholarships remaining, and some of them will be happy to recruit Kaluma if he returns to college.

Of course, Kaluma is hoping to impress at the G League combine, stay in the draft and begin his professional career in a few weeks. That is his primary focus, so he felt no rush to enter his name in the transfer portal. But it is a smart idea, simply because it gives you more options. I’m guessing his advisors convinced him to join the transfer portal for that reason.

Some thought Kaluma’s plan was to stay in the draft or return to K-State. I suppose both remain possibilities. But his NIL value is probably higher on the open market than it is only negotiating with the Wildcats.

I suppose he could have made these decisions immediately after the 2023-24 basketball season came to an end. But he was likely somewhat torn on what to do. And there was no need for him to rush.

Are the Bat Cats in good shape to reach the NCAA Tournament? - Garrett B. via e-mail?

If the regular season ended today and the NCAA Regionals were announced tomorrow then K-State would almost certainly be in the field.

The Wildcats are projected as a No. 3 seed by Baseball America. It seems like they are safely in the tournament right now, mostly because they have played a strong schedule.

Winning a series against Kansas last week was big for them. It’s the Jayhawks who have work to do the rest of the way.

K-State currently sits at 28-19 with a Big 12 record of 12-12. Splitting the final six games of the regular season against West Virginia and BYU would likely be good enough to get the Wildcats back to the NCAA Tournament.