How Kansas State blocked out distractions in first basketball game after brawl
Alabama fans wouldn’t normally have much heckling material to use against Kansas State at a basketball game, but they had plenty to work with during the Crimson Tide’s 77-74 victory on Saturday at Coleman Coliseum.
The student section chanted the word “fight” over and over when K-State players took the court for warmups and throughout the game.
The Wildcats were trying their best to block out all the outside noise that followed their much-publicized brawl with Kansas at the end of the Sunflower Showdown last week, but that turned out to be a difficult task, even against a nonconference opponent in the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
“I thought our coaches did a good job. I thought our players did a good job. We gave ourselves a chance,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “I am happy with how the guys came to play and I’m happy with how our coaches dealt with it.
“It’s tough. It’s tough what they went through. You hope you say the right thing to the kids, to the media, to everybody. It’s a sad thing that happened, but we move forward. The guys did, now we have to worry about Oklahoma on Wednesday night.”
K-State players seemed to respond well to the road environment after being part of a national story for several days. The Wildcats led 37-36 at halftime behind a new starting lineup that featured freshman DaJuan Gordon instead of junior Cartier Diarra and then cut a 16-point deficit all the way down to one in the second half before losing by three.
There were positives to take away from this game, even though it was a loss.
It should also be easier to move past the brawl now that the Wildcats and Jayhawks have both played another game.
“We just tried to move past the incident,” K-State guard Mike McGuirl said. “We are just growing. It’s in the past now. We just zoned it out. Now it’s time to move forward as a program.”
“It’s over with,” added Makol Mawien. “It is a distraction, but I am just trying to focus more on basketball. We’re all on to the next game.”
“We are here to play basketball, and that is all we are here to do,” K-State senior Xavier Sneed said. “We just put the past behind us got locked in. We are ready to move forward.”
One thing that won’t come any easier for K-State moving forward: roster depth.
The Wildcats were shorthanded for their game against Alabama and that will once again be the case for their upcoming game against Oklahoma. Antonio Gordon (three games) and James Love (eight games) aren’t allowed to travel with the team or attend home games while they serve suspensions for their roles in the Sunflower Showdown brawl, leaving K-State thin inside.
Weber hoped he would be able to get by with a rotation of just eight players against Alabama, but that became impossible when the Wildcats committed 28 fouls. He responded by playing former walk-on Pierson McAtee for five minutes in the first half.
“We had everyone in foul trouble,” Weber said. “Pierson, I love him. He has persevered and got a chance to play. We kept the lead when he went in. You are happy that you have got a guy who is so dedicated to our program that he got the chance, but I think the foul trouble hurt us more than anything.”
Mawien responded with one of his better games down low, delivering 13 points and 12 rebounds. Montavious Murphy also played well and finished with 10 points and eight rebounds. But neither of them got many breathers.
Weber will need to continue to manage their minutes until Antonio Gordon returns against Baylor on Feb. 3. By then, perhaps, the Sunflower Showdown will no longer be a distraction.
This story was originally published January 26, 2020 at 11:22 AM with the headline "How Kansas State blocked out distractions in first basketball game after brawl."