Kansas State women’s basketball coach Jeff Mittie believes his squad still has a couple of different paths to a home-court advantage in the NCAA Tournament, even though the 16th-ranked Wildcats weren’t among the selection committee’s list of projected hosts revealed on Feb. 29.
The most decisive route, he said, is winning the Big 12 tournament, something no K-State team has ever done. But if that doesn’t happen, Mittie thinks a win or two at the conference championship should get the Wildcats (24-6, 13-5 Big 12) back in the running for hosting privileges.
And at that point, he said it comes down to the “eye test.”
However, while playing the first and second rounds of the NCAA tourney at Bramlage Coliseum is certainly on K-State’s bucket list, it’s not the primary objective right now.
“Our focus is 100% on (the) chance to win a Big 12 championship,” Mittie said Wednesday afternoon. “ … That’s our mentality going in: to take it one at a time. And we’re fortunate that we only have to play three (games) to do that.”
The Wildcats’ first game in the tournament is slated for 8 p.m. Saturday at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. As the No.-3 seed, they earned a double bye, meaning they’ll open in the quarterfinal round against either No.-14 seed UCF, No.-11 seed Cincinnati or No.-6 seed West Virginia, three teams against which K-State posted a 4-0 mark during the regular season.
The Knights and the Bearcats will play on Thursday evening, with the winner playing the Mountaineers on Friday evening. The victor in that game will face Kansas State on Saturday.
If they win, the Wildcats will have a day off on Sunday before taking on the winner of a contest between No.-2 seed Texas and either No.-7 seed Kansas or No.-10 seed BYU in the semifinals at 4 p.m. on Monday.
The conference title game is set for 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Mittie said it’s hard to prepare for any one opponent during tournament time, especially when his squad will face one of three possible teams in its first matchup. He handles that by finding commonalities among the potential foes and addressing those in practice.
“I think Cincinnati, UCF and West Virginia all play very similarly,” junior guard Serena Sundell said. “Even (Wednesday), we started some scout stuff. They’re all good, scrappy teams. … We’ll be ready.”
A bit of uncertainty about whom to get ready for is an easy trade-off since it means K-State will have a few more days to rest after a regular season in which it collected the most wins in the Mittie era.
That extra opportunity to recuperate is particularly crucial for a squad that has dealt with injury and illness in recent weeks.
The Wildcats leading scorer and rebounder, senior center Ayoka Lee, missed seven out of eight games between Jan. 20 and Feb. 17 because of injuries to each ankle. While she’s reached double figures in every contest since then, her playing time has been limited as she’s recovered.
Mittie said Wednesday that Lee is no longer “restricted in practice like she was a week or two ago.”
“The main thing for us right now is being as healthy as we can be going into this postseason,” Mittie said. “Right now, I feel like we’re as healthy as we’ve been in a long time.”
This season, the Big 12 scheduled the women’s tournament a week earlier than usual as it moves from Municipal Auditorium to the T-Mobile Center, which has hosted the men’s tournament since 2010.
Moving the tournament so it ends the Tuesday before Selection Sunday rather than on Selection Sunday means the Big 12 will play simultaneously with other Power 5 conferences, allowing Big 12 teams a similar amount of time off between the league championship and the start of the NCAA Tournament.
Mittie said in his experience coaching in various conferences with earlier and later tournaments, he’s never felt as if one offers a definitive upper hand. Instead, he thinks it has more to do with each individual squad’s needs and how it handles the situation.
“It gives you a chance to get some rest; it gives you a chance to regroup,” he said. “Looking at that schedule for our team coming out of the Big 12 (tournament), I think that’s the main thing. You’ve got to look at how your schedule is and how you can best improve them, how you can best keep them engaged.”
Sundell said she’s looking forward to playing in the T-Mobile Center, where she’s been a couple of times for concerts with “big-name celebrities.”
Gregory added that, between road games against conference newcomers and league mainstays building new arenas, Kansas State is no stranger to playing in unfamiliar venues, but she expects plenty of folks in purple to show up to make it feel a bit more like home.
“I’m excited to have a lot of fans there,” Gregory said. “Playing in Kansas City, we have a lot of K-State alums who live out there in KC, a lot of fans, and it’s just a short drive from Manhattan. Really, really hoping that we can get several thousand people out there in Kansas City to the games this weekend.”
The Wildcats are solidly in the field of 68 for the NCAA Tournament, but they aren’t planning to relax during the conference tournament.
“Everything we want is right in front of us,” Gregory said. “Nothing’s off the table at all, especially getting that top-16 hosting spot.”
“We’re where we want to be, but we don’t want to just settle, obviously,” Sundell said. “We want a chance to host, and we’ve never won a Big 12 tournament championship before. … We’re not settling. We still have high goals, even knowing that we are in the (NCAA) tournament.”
