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MANHATTAN — “What could have been?” will be on the mind of plenty of Kansas State basketball fans when they watch the Final Four this weekend.
Illinois will take the floor against UConn at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in the NCAA Tournament national semifinal on Saturday, April 4, at 5:09 p.m. The Fighting Illini will be led by a K-State grad, whose best player was an underrecruited Kansas high school prospect.
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Brad Underwood, a McPherson native who played at K-State from 1984-86 and was on the Wildcats’ coaching staff from 2006-12, will continue to be seen as the coach who got away. His best player, Keaton Wagler, attended Shawnee Mission Northwest last year, wasn’t pursued by either the Wildcats or the Jayhawks, and is destined to be a lottery pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.
Meanwhile, Kansas State missed the last three NCAA Tournaments and is coming off a dreadful season in which head coach Jerome Tang was fired midseason for cause. Casey Alexander’s hiring provides hope, but Underwood has established himself as one of the nation’s best coaches, when many believe he should be in purple.
Why isn’t Brad Underwood the coach at Kansas State?
After graduating from K-State in 1986, Underwood had to climb through the coaching ranks at Hardin-Simmons, Dodge City Community College, Western Illinois and Daytona Beach Community College before landing back at K-State as an assistant under Bob Huggins.
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After Huggins’ lone season at K-State, he stayed on staff with Frank Martin as an assistant. He was promoted to associate head coach for Martin’s final season in 2011-12. Together, they led the Wildcats to four NCAA Tournaments in five years, including an Elite Eight appearance in 2010.
After the 2011-12 season, Martin left Kansas State for the same position at South Carolina. Many believed there was a rift between Martin and the then-athletic director John Currie that led to Martin’s departure, though both denied it at the time.
That was the first chance…
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Publish date : 2026-03-31 08:04:00
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