Wildcat Weekly Wrap (06.23.12)

Welcome to the Wildcat Weekly Wrap (WWW). Last week’s edition featured humor, football playoff discussion, recruiting, basketball, track and golf. Let’s call it an eclectic mix of summer sports coverage. Well, this week’s edition is much the same.

Leading off this week is news that impacts all sports at K-State. The NCAA announced that all 16 K-State sports teams exceeded NCAA Academic Progress Rate standards. The news may not strike you as particularly interesting if you came here to read sports news today, but the consequences of not passing can be severe…cough, cough, UCONN, cough. The academic success of K-State’s student athletes continues to be well documented as the Wildcats have led the Big 12 Conference in graduation rate 4 of the past 5 years.

It was a quiet week in the world of conference realignment, but an active week in the discussions for a college football playoff. Dean Jameson provided a detailed look at the current proposal for a 4-team playoff that seems to be dominating the discussions among the college football decision makers. With dissenting opinions likely from the weaker conferences, it appears as if we are headed towards the 4-team playoff to determine the national champion. If the proposal is adopted, it will likely lead to breaking conference realignment news of some kind. Stay tuned!

In basketball news, the week kicked off with the announcement of a verbal commitment from Alex Etherington. Alex is a 3-star forward from Indiana who was also getting looks from Xavier, Boston College and New Mexico. In other basketball news, the team will be making a trip to Brazil in August. The NCAA allows foreign trips once every 4 years and the trip couldn’t come at a better time as coach Weber will be working to get to know his team. The added practice time and competition should help ease the transition of the coaching staff and positively impact the cohesion of a team that is full of both senior leadership and young talent.

Jug of Snyder’s own Brady Bauman unleashed his second edition of “Bill Snyder Laughed So Hard…” this week and turned his attention towards K-State high jumper Eric Kynard and new basketball recruit Alex Etherington. And Russell Westbrook.  And concussions in the NFL. And puppies at Christmastime. And Katy Perry…lots and lots of Katy Perry. Brace yourselves JOS readers: Brady is “going through some stuff” this week.

Finally, with Olympic trials getting underway Friday, a trio of K-Staters are set to compete for spots on their country’s Olympic teams. High jumper Erik Kynard and heptathlete Ryann Krais will compete in the US Olympic trials beginning this weekend while K-State freshman Alyx Treasure will compete in the high jump in her native Canada. JOS will post updates on results as the trials take place during the next two weeks.