SE: K-State MBB, WBB Excited for Unique Venues

Sometimes a reminder is all anyone needs to refocus. For the K-State men’s basketball team, Saturday’s game against Washington State should serve as that reminder.

The Big 12-Pac 12 battle will take place in the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, a venue the Wildcats seek to return for multiple postseason games later this season. The Big 12 Championship will be held there in early March, and the NCAA Tournament hosts its Midwest Regional there a few weeks later.

“It definitely serves as a reminder. We want to get to that point later on in the season where we’re playing at big venues and we get the opportunity to do that,” sophomore guard Kamau Stokes said. “It’s definitely something to look forward to, and after playing in the Sprint Center on Saturday, we want to get there again.”

Senior Wesley Iwundu, who’s played seven career games in the Sprint Center, said competing there creates a different level of excitement within the team.

“It brings a different fan base that we have in Kansas City and all around from the surrounding cities, so it’s always exciting playing there, playing in front of some new people,” he said. “It has just a great NCAA feel to it because of the venue. It’s a nice arena, a pretty nice city and just great people all around it.”

Tickets, starting as low as $10, are still available for the 7 p.m., battle on Saturday, when K-State will attempt to improve their record in the Wildcat Classic to 7-1. (To purchase tickets or for more information: click here.)

“I like playing there. It’s a new place. It’s going to be like a home game, there’s going to be tons of purple out there. I’m pretty excited to go out there and play Washington State, but it’s just a great venue,” sophomore forward Dean Wade said. “That’s an NCAA place and hopefully we’ll be playing there in March. It gets us ready, gets us excited for it.”

“Obviously you have the Big 12 Tournament there. It’s an NCAA-type venue, NBA-kind of arena. The players get excited when they go there,” K-State head coach Bruce Weber added. “It brings a little different type of juice, energy-wise for the guys. We’ve had pretty good crowds there, so I think everyone gets excited when we have that opportunity.”

The Wildcats (8-1) topped Missouri by 24 points in the Sprint Center in last season’s CBE Classic. Stokes followed it up by pouring in a career-high 24 points in a tight loss to No. 9 North Carolina. This time, the point guard wants more than a breakout game.

“Last year, we lost in the Sprint Center when I played well,” he said. “This year I want to get a win. That’s my main goal.”

K-State WBB Eager for No. 1 UConn, Sellout Crowd

K-State’s women face a daunting task in No. 1-ranked Connecticut, on an 83-game winning streak and the four-time defending national champions, but they will do so with plenty of purple fans behind them.

The Wildcats (9-0) will play in front of the program’s first home sellout since February 4, 2012, when a “Pack the House” crowd filled Bramlage Coliseum for a battle with Baylor. Even more, Sunday’s game sold out nine days before tipoff.

“I was pretty shocked. Yes, it’s a big game, but women’s basketball doesn’t always have the greatest showing,” sophomore guard Kayla Goth said. “When we found out it was sold out, it was shocking, but with the fan base that we have here, it wasn’t completely unexpected.”

“It didn’t really surprise me just because of all the hype that it’s been getting,” added freshman forward Peyton Williams. “Just to imagine all of the people that are going to be there, that’s kind of crazy to think that all those seats toward the top are going to be full. That’s crazy to think about.”

Sunday’s game, which will tip off at 1 p.m., and be nationally televised on FS1, will mark only the second sellout for the K-State women since loge boxes were installed on the east side of Bramlage prior to the 2007-08 season, which cut capacity from 13,340 to 12,528. K-State’s home meeting against the Huskies will also become the highest-attended game nationally in women's college basketball so far this season.

“I was obviously very pleased, very appreciative of the fact that it was sold out nine days in advance. I kept checking the numbers. Once a week I would get an update on those numbers, and I wondered if we could do it, quite honestly,” said K-State head coach Jeff Mittie, whose team is off to the program’s first 9-0 start since the 2008-09 season. “Nine days out is really a credit to our fan base. Hopefully we had something to do with that, that we were winning at the time. Hopefully that helped gain some momentum. You’d like to think that people were paying attention to that, and I think they were.

“I’m going to bet that this crowd on Sunday will be larger than about half the men’s games, and maybe more, that are played on Sunday as well. It’s a pretty big accomplishment for our fans to respond this way.”

Besides the newcomers, K-State’s players have faced some sizable crowds before, but nothing like what Sunday will bring, Mittie said. The keys, he added, will be using the energy and excitement in positive ways.

“I’m sure we’ll be jacked. I’m sure there will be a lot of emotions, a lot of energy to that. We need to put that into the defensive end of the floor and play with poise on offense,” he said. “That’ll be my message to them: Use that energy and use it in a positive way. Make aggressive mistakes. We’re going to make some mistakes, let’s be decisive, let’s be aggressive. That’ll be my message.”

So far, the message has taken hold.

“I’m just worried about going out there and playing our hardest and keeping our team engaged in what we can do instead of what they can do,” freshman forward Eternati Willock said. “It’s going to be nerve-wracking for a sold-out crowd, but I’m just going to be focusing on what we have to do and what our goal is.”

Kansas State University Athletics

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