Shortly after Kansas State’s basketball season ended with a thud in the opening game of the Big 12 Tournament last March, Brian Rohleder gathered a handful of mechanical engineering books and began studying inside the team’s hotel.
With spring break looming, there was no urgency to the academic session. He simply wanted a head start on his classmates, so the former Bishop Carroll standout and K-State redshirt senior guard studied into the night.
That work ethic, combined with a long list of academic accolades, earned him an internship with Koch Industries in which he was to work for an ethanol plant in Iowa this summer.