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 Kansas State had to make Underwood its head coach, though his head-coaching experience was limited to the junior college ranks. Kansas State hired Bruce Weber, while Underwood followed Martin to South Carolina for a year before his first successful three-year head coaching stint at Stephen F. Austin.
Meanwhile, at K-State, Weber led the Wildcats to consecutive NCAA Tournaments to start his career in Manhattan, before missing the next two. Those two missed appearances, combined with Underwood’s success, led some Wildcat fans to hope the school would push Weber out to bring Underwood home. Instead, K-State stuck with Weber, while Underwood became the coach at Oklahoma State.
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Retaining Weber paid off for K-State, which made the NCAA Tournament the following three seasons, including an Elite Eight appearance in the second. Underwood led Oklahoma State to the NCAA Tournament in his first year and was immediately hired away by Illinois.
Underwood didn’t have immediate success at Illinois, where it missed the tournament in his first two seasons, while K-State was dancing. His success started to turn around in 2019-20 when the Illini would have been tournament-bound if the pandemic hadn’t canceled March Madness. That’s when Kansas State started its spiral under Weber.
When Weber and K-State parted ways after the 2021-22 season, Underwood had just led Illinois to its second-straight NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats may have made a push to hire him away, but it ultimately resulted in a contract extension and raise for Underwood at Illinois, while K-State settled on Jerome Tang.
It looked like the Wildcats hit a home run with Tang to start, reaching the Elite Eight in his first year, before crashing and burning over the next three seasons. Underwood continued to win, making the NCAA Tournament each year, earning a No. 1 seed in the 2021 NCAA Tournament and then reaching the Elite Eight in 2024.
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Underwood was never a serious candidate when the Kansas State job opened after Tang was fired for cause in 2026, a move that led to Alexander’s hiring.
The timing never quite worked out for Kansas State, when its best chance of hiring Underwood would have been after Martin left for South Carolina. Even then, Underwood had limited head coaching experience.
Keaton Wagler wasn’t recruited by Kansas State, Kansas
Wagler, a freshman out of Shawnee Mission Northwest, has developed into a player who will likely be a lottery pick in the NBA Draft. He was a three-star prospect, ranked as the No. 261 player and No. 47 shooting guard in the 2025 class out of high school.
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Wagler was a bit undersized and often overshadowed by his high school teammate, Ethan Taylor, a four-star prospect ranked No. 30 in the Class of 2026, now at Link Academy (Missouri). Taylor held offers from KU and K-State and is now committed to Michigan State.
Neither Kansas State nor Kansas recruited Wagler. He mostly held offers from mid-majors until Illinois recruited him late. Underwood was tipped off about the guard by a connection he had made when he was an assistant at Kansas State. The Illini quickly developed Wagler into a consensus second-team All-American player.
Kansas State, under Tang, all but gave up on high school recruiting, outside of offering some of the biggest names in the country, who never bit. The Wildcats turned mostly to the transfer portal and overseas recruiting.
Brad Underwood isn’t the only Kansas State coaching connection on Illinois’ staff
Underwood isn’t the only coach on the Illinois staff with direct ties to Kansas State, nor is he the only Underwood.
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Tyler Underwood, Brad’s son, is an assistant on the staff and is considered the team’s offensive coordinator. He played for his dad at Stephen F. Austin and at Oklahoma State in his one year there, before transferring to Illinois for the next four seasons. He grew up in Manhattan before moving to South Carolina and finishing his high school career in Oklahoma.
Neel Ganta, Illinois’ director of player personnel, is a Manhattan native who graduated from K-State in 2020. He’s largely responsible for Illinois’ analytical efforts.
Wyatt D. Wheeler covers Kansas State athletics for the USA TODAY Network and Topeka Capital-Journal. You can follow him on X at @WyattWheeler_, contact him at 417-371-6987 or email him at wwheeler@usatodayco.com
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Brad Underwood’s Final Four run provides K-State a big ‘what if?’
