MANHATTAN — Kansas State held out hope until the very end that it would squeeze into the NIT basketball tournament, but when that didn’t happen the Wildcats called it a year.
“We thought we had a chance to get in the NIT,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said Monday in an interview with The Capital-Journal. “It’s like the NCAA: This one has a higher RPI, this one has a better strength of schedule, this one has a few more wins.”
There weren’t many spots for a team like K-State, with a 17-16 record, after 14 automatic bids went to mid-major teams that won their regular season title but didn’t win the conference tournament to earn an NCAA Tournament berth.