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MANHATTAN (KSNT) – K-State women’s basketball is currently allowing less points than any other team in the Big 12. The Wildcats sit at No. 11 in the country with a 15-1 record.
The team has lived up to lofty preseason expectations so far. Despite great work from three-year starting twins Brylee and Jaelyn Glenn, one of the best point guards in the country in Serena Sundell, Big 12 First-Team selection Gabby Gregory and All-American Ayoka Lee…the Wildcats attribute a bulk of their success elsewhere.
Meet Gap Goat: K-State’s version of football’s “Turnover Chain” to celebrate an in-game accomplishment. While a team may tout an interception on the gridiron, the Wildcats use their goat to applaud a “gap.”
“In basketball, if you get seven three-stop sequences in a game, your win percentage is over 90 percent,” K-State head women’s basketball coach Jeff Mittie said.
In other words, if the Wildcats can get three defensive stops in a row, seven times in one game, there’s a 90 percent chance, according to Mittie. Three stops in a row is what the team calls a “gap.”
“Coach Mittie comes to the three captains: me, Serena [Sundell] and [Ayoka Lee],” senior guard Gabby Gregory said. “Come up with some way we can track our gaps.”
With goats being Gregory’s favorite animal, and the alliteration with “gap” and “goat” both starting with a “G,” Gregory made the decision to purchase the $65 stuffed animal off Amazon.
“‘[Gabby told us] maybe like a goat, that can be our representative, we can hold him up every time we get our gaps,’ and [Ayoka Lee] and I were like…what?” junior guard Serena Sundell said.
The Wildcats got behind the idea, though. Every time the defense gets three stops in a row, the team managers hold up the goat in celebration.
If K-State gets seven “gaps” in a game, the goat gets his chains: a “seven” pendant off Amazon and a Cuban link stolen off Ayoka Lee’s cat, Chadwick.
“As silly as it is, I honestly think it does help,” Gregory said. “We are honestly sad at the end of the game if he doesn’t get his chains…we will win the game, but we didn’t get seven gaps.”
Gregory and crew were invested, and Mittie was happy to have something to rally around.
“[Gregory] was walking off the court, and I said, ‘you know, you ought to get that thing an Instagram account,'” Mittie said. “She turned around and I knew I probably shouldn’t have said it.”
That night, the Gap Goat Instagram account was created and has amassed over a thousand followers. Gap Goat has been able to get pictures with some big-time celebrities, including Consensus All-American football player Cooper Beebe and legendary K-State football coach Bill Snyder.
With the added press of a social media account, fans started to take notice of the team’s furry friend.
“People are finding Baby Gaps,” Gregory said. “It’s like a little baby version of him.”
K-State women’s basketball super fan Kevin Riley was the first to bring the Baby Gap Goat to the game. He and his wife wanted to make Gap Goat shirts, but licensing would have been too expensive. So, the couple went to Amazon to get a goat of their own.
“The whole goal was to support the Gap Goat, but to get everyone in the stands to start supporting,” Riley said.
Sundell said that Coach Mittie was hesitant at first that the goat may become a distraction, but now, he’s all the way behind it.
“If you can find ways to have fun and emphasize things that are good team things, good basketball fundamental things,” Mittie said, “then that goat can travel with us every trip.”
This story aired in Sunday’s edition of K-Nation. K-Nation airs every Sunday night on KSNT.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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