Kansas State Basketball | Bruce Weber gives a status update on Dean Wade | January 8, 2019

Kansas State is getting closer and closer to having senior forward Dean Wade back on the floor. Unfortunately, though, there’s still a little bit of waiting left to do.

On Tuesday afternoon’s media availability, head coach Bruce Weber told he local media that Wade was close to being back and healthy enough to play, but was not quite there just yet.

“He’s made progress. I don’t want to tell you he’s going to play this day or that day, because we don’t know," Weber said. "Each step, he’s got to survive the step and take another one. He worked out for the first time over the weekend. He’s been running — well first got out of his boot and into his shoe, then walking. Walking a mile, walking a mile and a half, walking two miles, then running in the pool, jumping in the pool, the AlterG, all the different things they do. Now he’s on the court and doing some things.

“The whole thing is when he wakes up in the morning, does he tell us he’s okay or not? So far we’ve been able to take each step. We’ll see. The next three, four days is big for him to really say, ‘Hey, we think we can have him here sometime soon.”

Wade, of course, has now been out of action for a little over three weeks, hurting himself in the Wildcats’ December 15 matchup with Georgia State. Wade landed normally on his foot coming off of a shot attempt, but the land came with some consequences.

The injury was classified by K-State as a partial tear of a tendon in his right foot. At the time of the injury, it was announced that the 6-foot-10 forward from St. John, Kansas, would be missing an “undetermined period of time after sustaining an injury in the second half of Saturday’s game against Georgia State.”

The absence of Wade on the floor has been seen in the past three weeks based on the way K-State (10-3 overall, 0-2 in the Big 12) has played without him.

Before suffering his injury, Wade was averaging 13.6 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game in his 29.8 minutes of action per game for the Wildcats. The team was 7-2 overall and had been scoring at a pretty consistent output, only failing to score 70 or more points, four times in nine games. Since his injury, though, things have gone downhill.

K-State did rattle off three-straight wins over Southern Miss, Vanderbilt and George Mason immediately following the injury, but the offense clearly regressed in those three, not reaching 70 points once. The Wildcats have now lost back-to-back games to start 0-2 in Big 12 play and haven’t scored 70 or more since that December 15 win over Georgia State.

In Wade’s absence, the Wildcats have had to roll with a small lineup. Makol Mawien plays the five spot, while Xavier Sneed had jumped up to the four. Cartier Diarra, Barry Brown and Kamau Stokes have manned the 1-3 spots, with also Mike McGuirl finding time with Stokes’ injury, too.

Unfortunately for K-State, nobody has really taken on Wade’s role fully in his absence and it is showing in the last three games, as the Wildcats are 1-2 and the one win came by a single point against George Mason.

Things are not great for K-State basketball right now and the return of Wade would only help improve the current situation. For the sake of Weber and the Wildcats, a quick return for their star player would be desired.