K-State Basketball not off to great start in conference play
K-State basketball entered the first full week of Big12 basketball confidently after a road win at Iowa State. Things looked tough with a home game against sixth ranked West Virginia and at number 18 Texas Tech.
The games ended up being just that: Tough. Kansas State basketball dropped both match-ups in games that were not that competitive. We will look at each game individually in the next few slides, but I wanted to highlight some high-level thoughts first.
- K-State basketball is in a more dangerous position than you would like to see so early in the season. There’s a major injury to a starter in Kamau Stokes as well as inconsistent effort in both games this week that you wouldn’t expect with so many upperclassman starters.
- Dean Wade is playing at an all-conference level to open Big12 season. He’s having the best shooting start to in the Big12 in his career, while attempting more shots than ever. He’s also rebounding at the best rate as well. This adds up to a 34.8 PER (PER explanation here). For reference, that’s currently better than SuperStar Trae Young’s conference number
- For emphasis, Dean Wade is currently, in conference play only, beating Trae Young in a statistical measure. The belief around the team has always been Dean Wade is the most talented player, but never has had the killer instinct. If he maintains this level of play, Dean may not be around next year. Some former players agree.
I have a feeling that Dean Wade is going to be fun this year. I almost wrote an article focusing solely on him, because it’s so much more fun to talk about his rise than focus on two losses. It is not hard to suspect that any victories out there for K-State will go straight through Mr. Wade.
However, there’s more to break down than just Dean Wade. With that in mind, let’s get to the week’s opener.