If you are satisfied with this being the ceiling for K-State basketball, Oscar's your man. You could make the case it is the ceiling. No final fours since 1964 despite seven Elite Eight runs. Two conference championships in the last four decades.
I would hope we could to better or at least more consistent, competing for the league title more ofter and making more of out tournament appearances. I wish I would spend the next few weeks worrying UCLA or Arizona was going to steal our coach. An aggressive recruiter could field a respectable team next year by building on what is in place.
Anyway some thoughts about how Oscar handled the opportunity before him this year. I fault him and the staff first and foremost for failing to improve the talent level of a final eight team. Given bench players who could only charitably be called projects who could have be moved on to make room for useful talent, this is even a greater failure. If ever there was a year to bring in a frad transfer to help with either of two glaring deficiencies of outside shooting and rebounding, this was it. The staff had to know Trice was too raw to solve the latter weakness. If not we have greater problems.
But rebounding wasn't the difference today. We lost when ICU went zone.
I credit the staff with handling the potentially troubling Stokes/Diarra well. They seemed to get the team to buy in with the Stokes decision. It always seemed to me a preference of steadiness over potential stardom. but Stokes was the best player on the team the last month. Diarra erased any potential conflict by foolishly injuring himself mid-conference. In retrospect, that injury likely contributed to Brown's late-season doldrums. He just didn't seem to be able to get into the lane like he did in the first three-quarters of the season.
Staff's reticence to post up Sneed mystifies me. It seems a missed offensive opportunity on a scoring-challenged team. On the other hand, they got more than I expected from Mak, as much as he frustrates me.