For Kansas State Men’s Basketball It’s the Same Old Song
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Kansas State interim coach Matthew Driscoll recently said he wasn’t interested in moral victories.
Well, Saturday night, Driscoll and the Wildcats had another one, with the same outcome: a moral victory, but a defeat on the court. K-State lost to TCU, 77-68, at Bramlege Coliseum on Saturday in a game that could have gone either way.
The Horned Frogs outscored K-State, 9-0, to stretch their lead to 76-65 with a little more than two minutes to play.
TCU (19-10, 9-7 Big Ten) is on a roll, having won 6-of-7 games. TCU is among the NCAA Tournament’s “last four in,” according to ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi’s latest projections that were published Friday morning.
As K-State fans know, the Wildcats (11-18, 2-14) are decidedly not on a roll, having lost 9-of-10 games. Under Driscoll, who replaced the fired Jerome Tang, K-State is 1-3. Two games remain — the home finale on Tuesday against West Virginia (7 p.m. CT, ESPN+). The Mountaineers are 17-12, 8-8 Big 12. K-State’s season will end next Saturday in the Sunflower Showdown at 14th-ranked Kansas (1 p.m. CT, CBS) on Saturday. The Jayhawks are 21-8, 11-5, and a projected 3-seed by Lunardi in the NCAA Tournament.
“I’m not a moral victory guy,” Driscoll said after the Wildcats battled but lost at Colorado. “I’ve never been.”
Turnovers hurt K-State on Saturday, with 18 by the Wildcats and only eight by TCU. The Horned Frogs scored an astounding 28 points off turnovers.
K-State shot the ball well — 28-of-56 (50 percent) from the field, and 8-of-23 from distance (34.8). But K-State was only 4-of-9 from the foul line (44.4 percent). TCU was 16-of-23 from the line (69.6 percent).
Driscoll, on the record
“So, do you have a record player?” Driscoll said in a postgame news conference. “Have you ever seen the 33-inch vinyls? Right? Have you ever had one that had a bad scratch on it? That’s what we have.
“We put it on the record player, and it plays and plays and plays and plays and plays, and then it hits that scratch and it just [circles]. We get there, and then for whatever reason, we just can’t break through.
“And Baylor [90-74 K-State win] was start to finish, and when Baylor made the run to eight or nine, we were able to get it back to 18, right? But in this case, we were trying to fight back.
“We cut it to two, and then they hit five in a row, and then we took a timeout, and then we cut it to one. [TCU had] 28 points off our turnovers, 12 steals. Like you can’t guard a live ball. It’s impossible.
“And so that’s the most disappointing part, the fact that we have such good guards, yet it seems like we either over-dribble or we get too deep.
“And you know the red zone in football, the reason why it’s so hard to score is because the angles are so much tighter. Well, that’s the same way in basketball. It’s a red zone between the women’s hash and the second hash. That’s a red zone. And in that red zone, everything’s tighter, everything’s more compact.
“And I thought we had at least five that we lost in there alone. And I think, if I’m not mistaken, weren’t there two in the second half that we got the rebound and they took it off us? And I think they scored them.
“And so those are the things where we have to shore that up.”
For K-State, having TCU in town was an opportunity to grab something out of this season — a chance to ding a potential NCAA Tournament team.
“I felt very, very confident coming into the game, I felt great,” Driscoll said. “It was a double-edged sword in the sense that we played well at home against Baylor. So now we get a chance to stack it, and then we get a chance to knock [TCU] out of the NCAA Tournament and put a bad loss on their resume.
“And so that was something that we talked about, and kind of give some kind of encouragement or motivation to go out and play, that it’s not just another game.
“There’s some things that we can start doing here. And when it was a one-point game, I was like, man we’re gonna turn this corner. We’re gonna turn this corner. The difference between being comfortable and uncomfortable is breaking through the wall. And it just seems like we just keep getting closer and closer, and we just can't break through that wall.”
Numbers for the Wildcats
The Wildcats haven’t defended home court well this season. They are 9-8 at Bramlage Coliseum, 2-6 in the Big 12. Eighty points seems to be a magic number for the Wildcats. K-State is 0-14 when scoring fewer than 80.
K-State guards P.J. Haggerty and Nate Johnson started their 29th consecutive games. Haggerty led the Wildcats with 18 points, and Johnson had 16. They were the only double-figure scorers for K-State. Haggerty scored 34 points and Johnson scored 33 in the Wildcats' 90-74 win over Baylor in Driscoll's debut.
‘They haven’t quit’
Driscoll said the Wildcats haven’t quit on the season and there’s something to be said for that.
“As a father of two boys, one of the greatest things that you can ever see is that your children don’t quit,” Driscoll said. “If your children quit at whatever, it’s just really difficult to find joy.
“These guys, they haven’t quit. They haven't quit in school. They haven’t quit in competing. They haven't quit, we just haven’t completed the deal. There’s a difference between the two.
“We didn’t change. We just are a little bit different. And there’s a difference between the two, and that’s the joy that I see in them, that they haven’t quit, that they still want to compete, and they still want to go out there and win. And so to me, that’s really important, and it shows their resiliency.”
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Chuck Bausman is a writer for Kansas State on SI. Chuck formerly was the Executive Sports Editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, Executive Sports Editor of the Courier-Post in South Jersey and Sports Copy Editor for the Detroit Free Press. He has been a Big Ten enthusiast for nearly forever. He learned how to cuss by watching Philly sports. You can reach Chuck at: bausmac@icloud.com