K-State Slate 3.16.26
· Yahoo Sports
*Editors note: Due to login and scheduling issues, this Slate from Sunday is being posted on Monday. It’s not April Fools Day just yet!
The Sunday Slate is back! The famous Confucian admonition may be both blessing and curse, but at least we live in interesting times.
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Basketball
Let’s just jump right in and address the purple elephant in the room. The men’s basketball team has a coach again. On Friday, the athletic department announced Belmont’s Casey Alexander as the program’s new head coach. He will make his first formal public appearance at a presser on March 16 in Bramlage Coliseum.
Alexander’s contract is reasonable, 5 years and beginning at $3.3M, with a $50,000 raise for every year remaining on the contract. Alexander has been a mid-major head coach since 2011and has had significant success coaching at that level, including winning six conference titles. Most recently, his Belmont team lost the Missouri Valley Conference title game to Drake, but turned down an NIT bid after losing their head coach to the Wildcats.
The women’s team made a great run at the Big 12 Basketball Tournament before losing to TCU in the semifinals. That effort is likely to lead to a bid to play in the WBIT, the tournament that is just below the NCAA Tournament in the postseason hierarchy. Meanwhile, K-State senior Tess Heal is a finalist for the College All-Star game.
Baseball
Heading into Sunday, the BatCats had won nine straight contests, including a 16-1 pasting of Big 12 foe Houston in the series clincher on Saturday. In the final game of the series today at Tointon, the Cougars managed to claw one back, beating Kansas State 16-6. This was the most runs and hits allowed by the BatCats all season and it snapped not only the nine-game winning streak but also ended a long stretch of games where the Wildcats scored first and won the game.
In this game, the bats were hot at first, with senior Carlos Vasquez hitting a grand slam to left field in the opening frame, the fourth grand slam for the BatCats this season. But the Cougars were not going away so easily this time. Tied 5-5 in the bottom of the 8th, Houston went on an 11-run tear on seven hits to put the game out of reach for K-State.
Next up, the team heads to Waco for a mid-week tilt against Baylor on Tuesday at 7:30 PM. The game can be seen on ESPN+.
Tennis
The tennis team is struggling somewhat right now, and that was never more apparent than in a 4-1 loss to #27 Oklahoma State. The Cowgirls were actually short-handed and forfeited at #6 singles and at #3 doubles. But despite getting the doubles point and only needing one more match to clinch the victory, the Wildcats could not quite put it all together.
The team is now 5-6 overall and 2-3 in the Big 12, but the Wildcats will at least get to come home for their next matches against #44 Baylor on Friday and #19 TCU on Sunday.
Track
The Kansas State men’s track team finished fourth (24 points) in the 2026 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Fayetteville this weekend. This is the first-ever NCAA trophy for Kansas State in track and field, and the men’s team scored more points than ever before.
Not only is this the highest ever postseason finish for the track team, it is also the best postseason finish by Kansas State in any team sport in my lifetime and most likely in yours as well. Only the men’s basketball team has done better, ending the 1951 season as the NCAA runner up.
The women were also in the Top 10, notching 25 points to finish 7th in the competition, about two places higher than predicted by their ranking. It’s also the women’s highest finish since 2000 and the points total was just under the 26 points scored by the 2016 team.
So how did it all happen? Well, that don’t call Kansas State #JumpsU for nothing. (They don’t actually call us that. But they should).
The TrackCats absolutely dominated the triple jump at the Indoors, and were the only team to put multiple athletes on the podium in the event. For the women, Daniela Wamokpego jumped a personal best 13.84m to win the national title. She also crushed the school record in the process (Shardia Lawrence, 2017). This is the Wildcats’ first individual title at the Indoors since 2016 (Akela Jones, high jump). Teammate Destini Smith also notched a personal best jump of 13.66m to finish 5th in the event.
For the men, Selva Prabhu took silver on his way to, you guessed it, a personal best 17.05m in the men’s triple jump. In the process, he rewrote a school record that has stood for 46 years (Vince Parette, 1980). This is Kansas State’s first silver medal at the Indoors since 2008 (Scott Sellers, high jump). Prabhu’s teammates, Aaron Antoine and Trevon Hamer, also hit personal best jumps of 16.60m and 16.33m to end up on the podium at 5th and 8th place respectively.
The TrackCats also put on a show in the long jump. The women had two podium finishes with Big 12 champion Maud Zeffou-Poaty and freshman Chisom Nwafor finishing 6th and 7th respectively. On the men’s side, Tah Chikomba took bronze in the event with a personal best jump of 8.15m, while Big 12 champion Uroy Ryon also made it to the podium in 5th place with his own personal best jump of 8.04m.
By #HighJumpU’s usual standards, this was not the best outing, however. On the women’s side, Shari Enoe fouled out early, but not before hitting 1.85m, good enough for a tie for fourth place and a podium finish. The men experienced a minor disaster though. Big 12 champion Devin Loudermilk fouled out after his first jump, as did teammate Alan Hanna, finishing last in the field as a result. Had the two combined for even 2 points in the event, the Wildcats would have ended the meet in third place, and just 16 more points would have meant being national runners up.
Two other Wildcats claimed first-team All America honors at Indoors. Vanessa Mercera finished 7th in the pentathlon with 4,310 points and Kade McCall made the podium in men’s weight throw with a heave of 22.70m, a new personal best mark.
The best part is that the TrackCats are not done yet. The outdoor season is still to come, and the Wildcats have historically performed better in Eugene than at the Indoors.
What I’m saying is, Kansas State is a track school, more properly a field school. We might as well embrace it.