Perception in sports is so fickle and fleeting, and so often swings wildly on a tight hinge.
So it is that approaching a minute left in Kansas State’s South Region NCAA Tournament game against UMBC, Bruce Weber’s status among K-State fans was on the verge of absorbing a blow.
The ninth-seeded Wildcats were leading 16th-seeded UMBC just 44-41 and the Retrievers had the ball, and never mind the Cinderella stuff that just about the rest of the nation would have relished had the Retrievers pulled through.
This would have been a flubbed golden opportunity for K-State and certainly more fodder for the Weber naysayers, many of whom seem to feel that way just because that’s where they started when he replaced Frank Martin and … wasn’t Frank Martin.