K-State vs. Colorado Recap

All that work to secure a first round bye in the Big12 tournament ended up being worthless as Colorado continued its dominance over Kansas State this season. It’s hard to understand how a team that has less depth and talent can have the death grip on the Wildcats but they absolutely do. Colorado effectively punched their ticket to the big dance with the K-State three-peat so let’s hope that they don’t end up in the same side of the NCAA bracket. Normally you could at least take the “more Big12 teams in is a good thing” argument but at this point CU is basically gone and in the Pac10. Continue reading to see the good, bad, and ugly of the only Big12 tournament game the Wildcats played this season.

Good

Spradling… Will Spradling continues to impress in his freshman season and provided some big moments for Kansas State against Colorado. He finished with 14 points and went 3-6 from downtown. A couple of those shots provided a much needed jolt of energy but K-State never kept a hold of any momentum Spradling made.

Tournament CK… Curtis Kelly has played great over the last few games and if it continues, he is going to be a beast in the first round NCAA game. Kelly did work and earned himself a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. That wasn’t even the most impressive part of his game against Colorado. Kelly was a work horse and pushed towards the rim constantly getting fouls out of Colorado and was a big reason K-State was in the bonus as early as it was. Keep it up CK.

Bad

Not Using Tournament CK… As shown, Curtis Kelly was a dominant force inside the paint. For some reason, that wasn’t exploited every single trip down the floor. Ck was in position plenty of times and CU never put anything but man to man defense on him but the ball just didn’t come. Instead, K-State settled for jump shots that didn’t fall and failed to get what could have been 10 more points out of CK.

Wrong Focus… This was an interesting thing to look at. On the one hand, CU’s Levi Knutson was shut down and had basically no point total impact on the game. That was a welcome thing considering how much damage Knutson did in the first two CU-KSU games this season. On the other hand, the focus was so much on him that both Burks and Higgins were allowed to run free all over the court. That’s why the finished with a combined 52 points which was 60% of Colorado’s offensive production. It’s hard to second guess but I’d rather see the two players on Colorado’s team that everyone knows are going to be able to put up huge points be the focus of a defensive scheme and take the risk of a bench player producing.  But hey… Knutson didn’t do nuttin”!

Ugly

Defense… The win streak that was broken was built on defensive effort and that was gone from this game. Colorado shot 58% on their field goals and finished with 87 points. K-State had only been letting opponents score an average of around 65 per game recently. Basically that means Colorado was open… a lot. I hope this can all be attributed to looking ahead to the NCAA tournament or not being motivated because if it’s anything else, Kansas State’s season is going to be done by next Friday. Let’s hope the men get it together in the next week. EMAW!