Topeka played a part in the last basketball victory Kansas State managed at Allen Fieldhouse.
Rather than stay in Manhattan and make the 80-mile drive on game day, or book rooms for an overnight stay in Lawrence, the Wildcats slept in a Topeka hotel.
“There was a lot of negative feeling at the time,” said former K-State coach Jim Wooldridge, “so we took our team the night before and let them spend the night in Topeka to get them out of their normal environment and change the rhythm a little bit.”
The Wildcats apparently were never distracted by the neon atop the Jayhawk Tower.