Manhattan ? Kansas State associate head basketball coach Dalonte Hill looked like the most underpaid man in sports Monday night and he makes $420,000 a year.
That salary, when it was revealed, horrified the masses and triggered the usual “What have sports come to?” blather.
Yet, when Texas defensive coordinator and head football coach designate Will Muschamp signed for a $900,000 annual salary, not a peep from any of the national TV moralizers. Such is life in college sports. Certain schools have chosen-ones status in certain sports and K-State basketball doesn’t qualify.
That’s fine, K-Staters love to play the martyr role anyway. It motivates them and man did the Wildcats look motivated in giving No. 1-ranked Texas its first loss of the season, 71-62, in a physical, attractively flawed game played before an absolutely jacked purple-clad crowd.
Kansas State students began lining up outside Bramlage Coliseum at 4:30 a.m. Monday for an 8 p.m. tipoff. With each passing hour, the fuel they consumed made them louder. Watching 6-foot-7 sophomore forward Jamar Samuels made them louder yet.
Samuels, the best sixth man in the Big 12, also happened to be the best player on the court. On a night National Player of the Year candidate Damion James couldn’t make his layups for Texas, Samuels outscored him, 20-9, outrebounded him, 12-7, and outhustled him.
Samuels came to K-State from the AAU program DC Assault, which really does need to find a better name, but doesn’t need to always find talented basketball players. Former Wildcats star Michael Beasley played for DC Assault and so did current K-State players Dominique Sutton, a junior who contributed four points and five rebounds, and smooth freshman Rodney McGruder, who pitched in with 11 points, seven rebounds and a pair of blocked shots. Hill’s connection to the fertile farm system that is DC Assault led to his gaudy salary. He’s earned it.
“I’m happy for my assistants who worked so hard to get these guys here and I’m happy for the players,” third-year K-State coach Frank Martin said.
Hill gets the players from Washington, D.C., and Martin, who draws a $760,000 salary, modest by Big 12 head coaching standards, knows how to get them to play with hunger.
Credit Martin with a cagey move Monday. Samuels scored 15 first-half points to get his team a 10-point lead, yet Martin didn’t put him into the game in the second half until the 14:30 mark, with the lead down to three points. The Longhorns, who won an overtime game Saturday, couldn’t keep up with the fresh, quick, sky-walking Samuels, who immediately influenced the game upon his return. He wasn’t the only one to make life tough on the Texas stars.
UConn transfer Curtis Kelly, who guarded James at times and Texas center Dexter Pittman at others, outplayed them both, contributing 17 points, eight rebounds and smart defense.
Whatever national publicity No. 10 Kansas State gets generally centers on its talented backcourt duo of Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente. The consensus going into the game held that both guards needed to shoot with hot hands for K-State to pull off the upset. Well, they combined to make 4 of 24 field goal attempts and went 0-for-8 from three-point range. Clemente missed three consecutive free throws late in the game and made just 1 of 7.
Meanwhile, Texas made 9 of 22 free throws on the night.
“We missed wide-open layups,” James said when asked about K-State’s defense. “We don’t think they did anything special. I missed point-blank layups. My teammates count on me and I just can’t do that. Period.”
Asked if he knew Samuels was as good as he showed Monday, James shook his head in disapproval of the question and passed the microphone to a teammate. He didn’t have to say anything. The box score on the table in front of him said it all.
On top of the college basketball world coming into the night, the Longhorns finished the night listening to K-State’s always-entertaining student section serenading them with, “We own Texas! We own Texas!”
Former Kansas State football coach Ron Prince, who went 0-3 against ousted KU coach Mark Mangino, went 2-0 against Texas. K-State also defeated Texas in a basketball game in Austin a year ago. The difference this time: K-State expected to win. Otherwise, the students would have stormed the court. They didn’t. This Wildcats upset felt different from those. This one didn’t feel like such an upset.
Three teams have legitimate shots at the Big 12 title and all three have enough balance and talent to get mentioned in any conversation about national-title contenders.
