Kansas State Basketball: Loss to Maryland Shades of Past Failures
By Stan Unruh
The Kansas State basketball season is underway, and fans are seeing shades of teams past in a recent performance.
After losing a game they could have and should have won over Maryland on Saturday night, Bruce Weber’s Wildcats returned home Wednesday and ran past a mediocre Green Bay team (3-4) at at Bramlage Coliseum.
It was the first of 3 home games remaining for the team in non-conference play, including Prairie View A&M (2-5) on Dec. 6 and Gardner-Webb (2-4) on Dec. 21.
Throughout the Wildcat pregame radio broadcast on Saturday from Brooklyn, the running theme was how tragic last season’s loss to national runner-up North Carolina was to the season.
Kansas State Wildcats
You may remember Roy William’s Tar Heels ended the CBE Hall of Fame Classic game in Kansas City on 21-3 run to beat the Cats.
You may have forgotten that UNC’s star guard Marcus Paige, who scored 21 against Villanova in the NCAA title game, didn’t play against Kansas State. The Wildcats saw a similar ending in Saturday’s Barclays Center Classic Championship game. A late-game collapse.
Senior All-American candidate Melo Trimble’s driving lay-up with 6.6 seconds left capped a furious comeback by the Terrapins in the final 25 seconds to give Maryland a one-point victory.
Kansas State led 68-65 with 1:35 to play after a lay-up from D.J. Johnson and had possession of the ball twice down the stretch, including with 54 seconds left after Johnson corralled his sixth offensive rebound. However, an errant inbound pass by Stokes was stolen by Trimble and converted into a lay-up after a Maryland timeout to cut the gap to 68-67 with 21 seconds.
Iwundu was fouled with 14 seconds, but missed the front end of a 1-and-1 from the free throw line to set up the final sequence. If you watched the game, you saw the Wildcats frozen at the free throw line while Maryland’s star guard- a guard- grabbed the rebound, raced down the court and made the winning basket.
The Wildcat big men didn’t crash the boards for a rebound, they retreated in an attempt to play defense but it was a halfhearted effort in crunch time.
A couple of night’s later, the University of Pittsburg “bullied Trimble” according to a headline in the Washington Post to hand Maryland their first loss of the season.
Kansas State had every opportunity to do what Pittsburg to the Terps.
If this Wildcat basketball team indeed learned from their loss in Brooklyn, they may have a chance for a memorable season. If not, Bruce Webber’s team will again miss post-season play and the coach will be looking for a new job.