Kansas State Basketball lucky to be 10-2 at end of non-conference play
Kansas State basketball is 10-2 after their first 12 games, but watching their games might make one say, “Yeah, but…”. The Wildcats will take that 10-2 record into Big 12 play, which begins next month.
The Kansas State Wildcats started the 2018-2019 hoops season ranked in the top 25, but losses to Marquette and Tulsa took them out of the national polls. Since then, K-State has won all of their games, but it hasn’t necessarily been pretty for the Wildcats.
K-State hosted George Mason on Saturday and despite having a big lead in the second half, the Patriots didn’t go away quietly. George Mason went on a 17-5 run, making the game 49-44 and causing a bit of a panic among K-State fans.
Thankfully Kamau Stokes was hitting three pointers and that proved to be the difference for Kansas State, as they’d squeak by with a 59-58 victory.
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A 10-2 record is obviously a great start for this K-State hoops squad, but there are definitely things to be worried about with this team moving forward. The Wildcats will begin conference play next week and if they struggled as badly as they did in non-conference play, what are teams like Kansas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma going to do to them?
The Wildcats kick off the Big 12 portion of their schedule on Wednesday where they’ll host Texas. The following weekend they travel to Lubbock for a match-up against the 11th ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders. K-State won’t play Kansas until February 5th, for those of you who are wondering.
As I mentioned above, 10-2 is a respectable record, but the Wildcats struggled to put away opponents in non-conference play. They had George Mason on the ropes, but the Patriots fought back and almost stunned K-State in Manhattan. That’d have been an embarrassing way to head into conference play.
Stokes was impressive in this most recent win, putting up 20 points and going five of seven from the three-point line. Xavier Sneed had 13 points while Barry Brown had 12.
Not having Dean Wade has been tough and hopefully the senior returns to the lineup soon because the Wildcats miss his production a lot. He’s a difference maker when he’s on the court and his absence could be why the team has struggled in tight games.
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With Big 12 play beginning on Wednesday, the Kansas State basketball team is going to have to regroup and figure out how to get back to their early season form. Last year was a lot of fun and it’d be great to see the Wildcats follow up on that in Brown’s and Wade’s final year in Manhattan.