Starting the Journey at Zero

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Here Casey Alexander sits and 199 days have passed since he began this journey as head basketball coach at Kansas State. The 54-year-old Alexander wears a purple hoodie as he glides into an awaiting chair at the front of the team meeting room in the Ice Basketball Center, and he smiles and shakes hands, and Monday, September 28, has basically been like the rest since May 31, when he addressed his Wildcats as a team inside this same team meeting room for the first time. Alexander talked to his team about expectations and "who we want to be," and about accountability, and representing K-State well, and not being entitled, and not lacking self-discipline, and "making sure we get all that stuff right."

"We're not ever going to be perfect," Alexander says, "but getting that stuff right has been a real reason for our success, historically."

Yes, Alexander has been a part of wonderful men's basketball programs and wonderful teams — first as head coach Stetson (2011-13), then Lipscomb (2013-19) and then his alma mater Belmont (2019-2026) with 303 career victories, six conference championships, and three postseason appearances, including the 2018 NCAA Tournament. Alexander has 10 consecutive 20-win seasons — something that only Gonzaga's Mark Few, Houston's Kelvin Sampson and Kansas' Bill Self can boast — while averaging 24 wins per season over that span.

On May 31, Alexander addressed this K-State team for the first time. Thirteen of 14 players are new. The coaching staff is pretty new as well. Basically, during his address, Alexander's message came down to this: Let's get this journey started.

"The journey of a season is my favorite part of coaching — starting at zero and seeing how far you can go," Alexander says. "The zero line is a little different year to year because of retention and how long you've been at a certain place, but this year, we literally started at zero. Almost every staff member was new. There's just great joy on going through that with a group and collectively trying to determine how we can all get the job done to the extent where you call it a success. Success is measured in different ways. That's what I love the most about this job."

Today, Alexander arrived for work at around 7:30 a.m. He held his first meeting at 9:00 a.m. with some coaches. Then he had two more meetings at 10:00 a.m. and at 11:00 a.m. Before Alexander entered the team meeting room for his news conference, he and his coaching staff finalized their practice plan. Alexander, his coaching staff and the team will meet at 1:15 p.m. Then players will work out, then they'll practice, and then the coaching staff and the team will watch today's practice.

"Then we'll get ready for tomorrow," Alexander says. "I'm not a late guy. I'll get home at 5:00 p.m. or 6:00 p.m. — something like that. Yeah, I'm not Bill Snyder, I can assure you of that."

Laughter thunders throughout the team meeting room as reporters at Alexander's news conference applaud his dry wit and humor — two qualities that Alexander brings to the table, along with his seemingly endless qualities and abilities to mold his basketball teams into consistent winners.

Oh, we'll see more of Alexander's serious side when K-State fires up its season against Missouri on October 23 at Bramlage Coliseum.

But, for now, there's something that transfer senior forward Brock Vice and transfer junior forward Isaiah Abraham want you to know about their head coach.

"He's a jokester, for sure," Abraham says, chuckling while recalling Alexander's antics to reporters.

"When we're just walking around, he'll hide behind corners and just scare us," Vice says, "so we're always walking around on the lookout these days."

Abraham shakes his head.

"Coach got me the other day really bad," Abraham says. "I was walking to the weight room and didn't expect that at all. Then right after he waited to get the next guy. It was funny. He has jokes about basketball — about everything."

But coaching, for Alexander — starting the journey at zero, in particular — is no joke.

"This is the fourth time I've taken over a new team," Alexander says. "I learned plenty from my first job at Stetson to Lipscomb to Belmont. Every circumstance has been different and has required a different kind of strategy. Hopefully I've gotten a little wiser with age and having gone through it before. I feel good about that. One of my strengths is the management piece of all that and being organized enough to see all that stuff come together. I feel confident in that part of it."

As for the biggest areas to improve from the start of practice to now?

"There's a lot of somethings that we need to improve," Alexander says. "It's pretty early. My greatest concerns right now aren't so much where I see a real deficiency. It's more 14 new faces and a new staff and a new everything. When bullets start flying, things can change. That's really my greatest concern is getting ready for those moments, and it's pretty hard to actually get ready for them until you're in them."

Where has the team grown the most since day one?

"We've covered a lot," he says. "We just left a staff meeting about today's practice. Basketball has a lot of possibilities, and it's a game of mistakes. We're trying to get as close to perfect as we can. With all the scenarios, there's still a lot of room for growth no matter what. When you think about everything being brand new and you look back to June 1 when we started and sitting here today, it's amazing how far along we are and what all we've covered. The culture and camaraderie come together pretty quickly, then you do basic install for offense and defense, and that comes along OK.

"We could definitely play a game today if we needed to, and we're still five weeks away from our first game. We've covered a lot."

Alexander is eager to see what players do playing underneath the lights and has yet to nail down a full starting five.

"It could change at the last moment," Alexander says. "It's so rare that even if everyone is healthy there aren't starting lineup changes. Health is going to dictate that to a great degree. We probably know who a few of them are going to be. We have a scrimmage with Tulsa and two exhibition games. Those things will tell us a lot. I've said it plenty of times, we'll learn more from two or three or four games of competition than we will from six months of practice."

Late last week, Alexander announced that senior guard Brandon Rechsteiner, fifth-year guard Jaden Schutt and Vice were selected as team captains by a vote of their teammates. Rechsteiner played at Virginia Tech (2023-25) and Colorado State (2025-26), and he earned Honorable Mention All-Mountain West honors after leading the Rams with 12.0 points, 24 double-digit scoring performances, and 86 made 3-pointers. Schutt played at Duke (2022-24) and Virginia Tech (2024-26) and led the Hokies in made 3-pointers in both seasons with 65 buckets from long range last season. Vice played at Creighton (2023-24), North Texas (2024-25) and Murray State (2025-26), where he averaged 2.0 points and 1.8 rebounds last season.

"We have some good leadership and experience," Alexander says. "We don't have a lot of super stars coming in here from the portal that everybody is just eyebrows raised and like, 'amazing what they did and how they'd get that guy?' but we have a lot of players who have really good experience. I'm banking on that. Even though roles are going to be different, we need a lot of those guys to outperform what they've done previously. I'm not concerned about having enough guys here who've done it. We're just going to have some guys be better than they've been.

"We have lots of guys who can make contributions. We've got to put pieces together."

And if all goes well, the hope is that K-State will be playing basketball into March with a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

"We've talked about it, and that's definitely our expectation," Alexander says. "We're not naive to the fact that it's not an easy accomplishment for this team this year, but at the same time, we have what we need, and we'll have a good plan, and we should expect to win games, and we'll be in a league that gets eight or 10 teams in it. If we're walking into this thinking that we're not one of those teams, we're probably not doing ourselves justice."

It's been 199 days since this this all really started with Alexander holding a K-State jersey and standing behind a podium and accepting the position of head coach at a Power 4 men's basketball program for the first time.

Now it's all about to begin and Alexander and K-State will start at zero and see how far they can go. Plenty of work remains, but so do the expectations for success.

And that's no joke.

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Players Mentioned

Isaiah Abraham

Brandon Rechsteiner

Jaden Schutt

Brock Vice

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