With recent hoops success hitting the floor at Bramlage Coliseum, totaling over four Top 25 wins since Jan. 25, both Kansas State men’s and women’s basketball feature a common denominator: The K-State student section.
Amid a six-game win streak that sparked nationwide conversation surrounding an improbable turnaround from 7-11, the K-State men have collected three top-25 wins since students returned from winter break.
Most recently, the Wildcat faithful surrounded the walls of the Ice Family Basketball Center, fittingly in freezing temps for a win over No. 13 Arizona. Before that, students wrapped around Bill Snyder Family Stadium’s east entrance for a Sunflower Showdown win over No. 16 Kansas.
“To have a student section like that, who shows up on a night when it’s 19 degrees outside, and they stand in line and come to support us, I love that,” men’s head coach Jerome Tang said. “I call them my people and I roll with them all of the time because they’ve got our backs.”
It’s not just men’s basketball K-State students have rallied around. Bramlage is at the forefront of a revolution in supporting women’s athletics. The now-No.14 K-State women downed No. 9 TCU last week in front of a crowd of 7,477 fans.
“There’s nowhere in the Big 12 that we go that is even close to that environment,” star senior Serena Sundell said after the win. “Women’s basketball in general throughout the country, you do not see that … They were big-time tonight.”
Global phenom and WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark and No. 3 Iowa lost at Bramlage on Nov. 17, 2022. Since that upset, some of women’s basketball’s best players in Clark, TCU’s Sedona Prince and Hailey van Lith are winless in Manhattan across four separate tries.
Opposing coaches have taken notice as well.
“An awesome college basketball environment,” TCU coach Mark Campbell said. “It was great to see the support for this team. We simply didn’t play well enough to win on the road in a tough environment against a really good team.”
It’s not all just being rambunctious for two hours, as K-State women’s head coach Jeff Mittie described the basketball savvy of K-State students.
“When your fans are really good, they cheer when things aren’t going well,” Mittie said. “It’s easy to cheer when things are going well. When you have a really knowledgeable fan base and they feel like they can help you, they cheer louder when things aren’t going well.”
The K-State women host UCF on Saturday, followed by a one-game trip to No. 18 West Virginia on Wednesday. Then on Feb. 22, K-State hosts the second round of the Sunflower Showdown against Kansas.
For the men, three home games remain on the 2025 slate: Arizona State on Feb. 23, Colorado on March 2 and No. 10 Iowa State on March 8.
“Every game we play for the rest of the year is super important, and we need [the fans],” Tang said. “I’m so thankful for the students and the band. This is just an incredible community here at K-State.”
