Kansas State Wildcats find shooting touch in blowout win over Alabama State
Xavier Sneed swished a three-pointer. Then he made another, and another … and another.
Then he made a long jumper from two-point range before he finally missed his first shot midway through the first half of a 86-41 Kansas State victory over Alabama State Wednesday at Bramlage Coliseum.
This was a hot-shooting night for Sneed and the entire Wildcats basketball team. Unlike previous games in which they struggled to take advantage of layups and free throws, they put the ball through the net at an astounding pace, shooting 62.5% from the field and 54.5% from three-point range.
K-State began the game on a 20-2 run and led 52-16 at halftime and kept its foot on the gas in the second half.
Sneed, a senior swingman, led the way with 20 points, while Antonio Gordon and DaJuan Gordon both had 13 points.
“My guys did a great job of finding me in spots,” Sneed said. “I hit a couple early ones and the basket starts to look pretty big when you get those to go down. It was just a good night shooting.”
It’s hard to decipher exactly what a strong performance in a game like this means for the Wildcats going forward. While it’s certainly a good thing that K-State (6-3) piled up style points against any opponent, Alabama State (1-8) was by far the worst team remaining on the Wildcats’ schedule.
We will learn much more about the Wildcats in their final three nonconference games against Mississippi State, Saint Louis and Tulsa.
Still, there were some definite positives K-State fans can point to as signs of improvement from this one.
They were most visible in the first half, when the Wildcats passed the ball better than they have all season and then knocked down shots at an impressive rate. Cartier Diarra, David Sloan and Sneed all used touch passes to move the ball across the perimeter and wracked up 18 assists compared to five turnovers.
Diarra had an excellent game as a distributor, finishing with 10 assists, the most by a K-State guard since 2014.
The Wildcats will try to build on that when they are next in action at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Newark, N.J. for a neutral-court game against Mississippi State.
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 8:56 PM with the headline "Kansas State Wildcats find shooting touch in blowout win over Alabama State."