Now that Kansas State basketball coach Frank Martin has accepted the job to become the new South Carolina head coach, Wildcats athletic director John Currie "looks like a fool," according to Kansas City Star's Sam Mellinger. The finger is being pointed at Currie since Martin, who helped the Wildcats men's basketball team be nationally relevant again for the first time in a long time, left without even waiting for an offer from K-State.
What’s worse is that Currie wants you to believe that he had "a strong relationship" with former basketball coach Frank Martin, who for the last few weeks has been telling friends he wanted away from Kansas State.
According to Mellinger, sources have leaked that Martin was hoping to leave Manhattan due to the fact that Currie's management style was micromanaging and undercutting. Now it's on Currie's shoulders to find a suitable replacement to keep the Wildcats at the level they are now instead of letting them fade back to where they were before Martin took over as the head coach six years ago.
Mellinger also wrote that there were two sides of Martin and while most are missing the fact that he was intense and helped the Wildcats, another side will be remember soon now that he's gone.
This is a coach who, in a postgame news conference replayed across the country, called out his boss. This is a guy who used a national television platform to say that as a high school coach he often committed an NCAA violation — bad rule or not — by giving money to former players that he felt needed some help in college.
This is a coach with a temper that often hijacked substitution patterns, caused unexplained midseason "suspensions," and once drove him to hit a player’s arm with the back of his hand in a huddle. Martin is loved by most of his players. Many others have transferred out, including Wally Judge and Freddy Asprilla, who were once thought to be potential cornerstones.
If Currie can replace Martin with a coach that can keep the Wildcats on par with where they were over the last couple seasons, he'll save face. However, if he isn't able to find a suitable replacement soon, fans will grow more and more frustrated as time goes by.
For more on the Wildcats, head to Bring On The Cats, and for more on Martin's departure from Kansas State, follow SB Nation Kansas City's StoryStream.
