After the dust settled after last season the Kansas State Men’s Basketball team was down to just five returning players, and only three of them had seen substantial playing time that season.

When Kansas State opens practice Friday it will be the first official practice in a Wildcat uniform for 11 of the 16 players on this year’s roster. Considering all of the new players, Coach Bruce Weber seems to be enjoying this years team.

“This group likes to play, open gym you don’t have to kind of prod them to get into the gym, they’re there,” said Weber. “Just the drills and stuff they’ve been very coachable, want to work at it, come with excitement. Now that we’ve started practice it will be a whole other level of intensity and we’ll just have to see how they adjust the next four weeks.”

When comparing this year’s team to last years Wesley Iwundu, Junior Guard said that this year they’re the, “underdogs.”

“That’s what strives us to go out there and play hard and perform. Everybody’s just taking things serious this year. There’s no things going on off the court everything is more mature and guys are just ready to go,” said Iwundu.

Kansas State will kick off the season with two exhibition games starting on October 30th against Emporia State and November 6th against Fort Hays State. This year’s non-conference schedule includes six potential matchups against teams that participated in the postseason a year ago, including three from the 2015 NCAA Tournament.