Kansas State Men’s Basketball Faces Rough Road Test at No. 1 Arizona
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MANHATTAN, Kan. Kansas State men’s basketball team had a tough game, and loss, on Saturday to No. 10 BYU.
It was a strange game, too, for the Wildcats.
K-State turned what’s normally a strength into a weakness, shooting only 14 percent on three-pointers on their home court.
And the Wildcats turned what had been something of a soft spot, defense, into a solid performance, especially going against BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, who scored 24 points and might be the best freshman in the country.
K-State ranks 292nd in the nation in scoring defense (out of 350 teams), allowing 78 points per game.
The Wildcats’ 83-73 loss to BYU is history but maybe there are lessons they can use this week at No. 1 Arizona, and Arizona State. And what a way to start a conference schedule — the first time K-State opened with two top-10 teams.
K-State visits undefeated Arizona on Wednesday (8 p.m. CT, FS1), so the Wildcats better be a quick study. Arizona ranks 15th in the nation in scoring at 90.8 points per game.
Preparing for Arizona
“We have some glaring things that are standing out, but they’re correctable,” K-State coach Jerome Tang said in a news conference. “And I know our guys’ heart and so I know that we will improve in the areas that we need to.”
First, K-State’s defense. The Wildcats forced 19 turnovers against BYU, a number that projects into a close game, or even a victory.
“Yeah, the execution, the aggressiveness,” Tang said. “You know, we wanted to be the more aggressive team.
“It was great, but when you force 19 turnovers, you can’t have 17 points off [of turnovers]. You need to have 27 points off of it, because there are a lot of them were live-ball turnovers, and so we’ve got to capitalize.
“I don’t think that we capitalized on that. And I thought that they controlled the pace of the game in the second half, like we didn’t play fast enough, we didn’t. We got to get out and play in the open court and too many times we walked the ball up the court.”
Shooting from distance
K-State’s numbers from distance against BYU were dreadful — 3-of-21 (14 percent). K-State came into the game ranked ninth nationally shooting from distance at 39.9 percent.
Against a powerhouse like Arizona, K-State needs solid distance shooting to hang around.
BYU coach Kevin Young’s strategy seemed to contain K-State’s distance shooting.
“This isn’t rocket science, but it’s how do you guard [K-State’s P.J.] Haggerty and how do you guard the three-point line?” Young said at a news conference.
“And sometimes those can be difficult, because you want to show him a crowd. You want to put two on the ball and pick and roll. But when you do those two things, you’re susceptible to giving up three.
“So I thought our guys did a good job of kind of toeing the line in mixing up our coverages and not helping too much. He’s a great player, and he did a good job of drawing fouls, but to only let one guy hit any threes, I thought was impressive.
“I mean, [Abdi Bashir Jr.], that’s a big-time shooter. And so he was the one that was able to get some off.
“But I just thought the attention to detail in terms of what we were actually asking our guys to do relative to our coverages, I thought was good.”
Big 12 continues
“I know our guys, especially, there’s a lot of these dudes, first time playing in the Big 12, probably only the second time the crowd’s been like that this year, on CBS and all that stuff,” Tang said about the BYU game.
“And I’m hoping they walk away with confidence that if that’s a top-10 team [in] the country and the team people say can win a national championship, and we didn’t play close to what we’re capable of playing, then, I mean, the ceiling is high, and so we should be really confident, excited about getting back into practice and improving them.
“Excited about this road trip [Arizona, Arizona State], both because of the weather, and because we get to spend a lot of time together, and then the opportunity that’s in front of us to go play the No. 1 team [Arizona] in the country on their home court. And so I’m excited about this.”
Haggerty scored 24 points against BYU, and Bashir had 16, shooting 3-of-8 from distance.
“I feel like we were, we’re good enough to compete with them,” Bashir said. “They just did the little things more than we did. You know, they got more offensive rebounds for one and, I mean, we didn’t finish layups for two.
“There’s a couple things that we just got to fine tune and can’t hang our heads. But I mean, I feel like we showed that we compete just moving forward, just clean up those little things.”
The Wildcats get another chance, a big chance, in Tucson on Wednesday.
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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