one thing that i keep pinning my hopes on as a strong maybe is that this kstate team is currently like jimmy the rabbit smith in the first part of the movie 8 mile. he's had a rough go, dumped by his girl, moved back in with his mom and just froze on the battle stage. i'll call this the "preseason" part of the movie. what doesn't kill him makes him stronger though and jimmy aka "rabbit" goes on to (even in a small way) rise above what people (himself included) though he was capable of. that leads us to denouement. jimmy is back on that same battle stage which caused him to freeze earlier but this time he is older, wiser and takes out his competition (the free world members) with hardened moves of a trained assasin. the denouement is what i'll refer to as tourney time, with rabbit taking out opponent after opponent and that's my hope with this team. this team struggles early, faces huge adversity and then when the denouement comes around they are blasting the split lickety's (ku), lotto's (kentucky) and papa doc's (duke) of the big dance aka battle stage aka ncaa basketball tournament.