Welcome to the Big 12 era for Arizona women’s basketball! Everything is new, from the style of play to the coaches, the players and the cities the Wildcats will visit. To get to know more about the league, the Star is taking a look at the new and the not-so-new opponents for the Wildcats. Next up is Kansas State, Arizona’s opponent Thursday.
Kansas State’s coach Jeff Mittie is in his 33rd season as a head coach — 11th at K-State. He has 667 wins with 207 of them coming as a Wildcat. His No. 11-ranked Wildcats are off to a 17-1 start, 5-0 in the Big 12. Their lone loss of the season came to Duke in the Ball Dawgs Classic in November, and they’ve won 12 straight since then. K-State leads the nation in field goal percentage (.509), scoring margin (+33.2), field goal percentage defense (.322) and assists per game (23.1).
K-State women’s basketball defeated Belmont 82-56 on Nov. 7, 2024. Kansas State’s coach Jeff Mittie is in his 33rd season as a head coach – 11th at K-State.
On Culture: “We had a really good like pass the baton culture — getting in the gym, getting up shots. We’ve got a lot of really good things that help us with that. For example, our apartments are right next to the practice facility. Literally, we’ve got players that are 80 steps away from the front door of a practice facility that they can get in essentially 24/7 and about 75% of our players live there.
“You go all the way back to when I took over the program and Kindred Wesemann was a player that set that culture of hard work in there and it was an expectation that players were in there. That passed along to players like Kayla Goth and Peyton Williams that passed along to players like Serena Sundell and Jaelyn Glenn and Gabby Gregory and all the above. My belief is, and I’ve told every team this, it’s my job early to make sure that the standards are high and that they understand the expectations of the standards of our program, but every team, every locker room, has to take over those things at some point if we’re going to be really good. The really good teams, they’ve taken over. They’ve handled the locker room, they’ve handled the things that they needed to handle, and the coaches haven’t had to do it.”
Kansas State head coach Jeff Mittie and his players convene during the second half of a game last season against Texas Tech on Jan. 14, 2024, in Manhattan, Kansas.
The perfect Wildcat: “I think perfect fit is one that’s got enough athletic ability to make plays on their own, has a skill set that you can move around the floor. We have liked players that were interchangeable. Certainly, we’ve got tall guards in a lot of our spots, not every spot, but a lot of our spots, and that allows me to utilize them differently offensively. I think that’s a perfect fit for us. An athlete that is athletic enough to make plays you have to have, you have to have some God-given athletic ability, and then you’ve got to have a skill set that you’ve got to be skilled enough to pass, catch, shoot, all the above.
“I put a huge premium on work ethic and body language. When we go recruit somebody, I want evidence of a work ethic. Everybody tells you they play hard. Everybody tells you that they work hard. And in today’s world, the high school coaches, the AAU coaches, they don’t want to be the reason a young lady loses an opportunity. I hate to say this, you can’t always believe them because they’re for the most part, they’re going to tell you that they work hard. My coaches need to do a deeper dive on those things. I mean, I want to hear it from if we’ve got a chance to talk to a former teammate. I want to know if we’ve got a chance to get some evidence of ‘is she in the gym late at night? If she has a choice, what is she wanting to do? What kind of teammate is she?’ It’s important for me to watch body language. It’s important for me to watch when a player is not playing, ‘what’s her body language like? What’s her interaction with teammates, officials, coaches?’”
On tradition: “We’ve got the Wabash cannonball, which is unique. That’s something that they do before every game and after the game. That’s a cool thing that the students are really into. The band plays … it’s a song … I don’t know how to explain it. Everybody in the stadium … if you are standing next to somebody, you’re supposed to go forward, they’re supposed to go back, and the entire stands does it. At football games, you’ll see 50,000 people plus doing it. Basketball games, 12,000, that’s a pre-game and a post-game tradition for us.
“Defensively, we created a little mascot, which is called Gap Goat. And the goal for us in women’s basketball is to get seven Goats in a game, which that is seven three consecutive stops defensively in a game. There’s a stat out there that if you do that, you’ll win 95% of your games. Our defense is called gap defense because I’m wanting our defense to build a wall and be in the gaps of the driving lane. Last year, I went to the team and I said, ‘Look, football has a turnover chain. They’ve got different things that they do to celebrate. Major League Baseball, a guy hits a home run, different teams have different ways to celebrate. If you guys want to come up with a way to do that, then do it.’ They come up with this goat and named it Gappy. And this thing’s got its own social media Instagram page. You can follow it, and it took a life of its own on. Our fans will show up to games with little miniature goats. It’s kind of weird because we’re the Wildcats, but it’s fun.”
Why is K-State special: “The people here feel very invested in our athletes. They feel a responsibility to show, whether it be recruits or families or players that are already here, how much Manhattan cares about them. That is different. I think most fan bases go and cheer at the games and do those things. But here, there’s a genuine ‘How can I help?’ We want to make sure that these kids know that Manhattan really cares about them, and that’s a unique thing for our young ladies. It really is. In today’s world, you have so many players coming from different programs, they’ll talk about how different it is here. Part of that is just a relatively small community. We have 50,000 to 60,000 and it’s the same people at the games that are at the grocery stores and movie theaters, all those things.”
