‘He may have been the best guard in America today’: Nijel Pack shines against KU
There is no better way for a Kansas State basketball player to carve out a memorable spot in program history than by scoring a boatload of points during a victory over Kansas.
Michael Beasley was immortalized by fans when he scored 25 points and led the Wildcats to a home win over the Jayhawks in 2008. So was Jacob Pullen when he dropped 38 points on K-State’s biggest rival back in 2011.
Nijel Pack tried his best to follow in their footsteps on Saturday inside Bramlage Coliseum. The sophomore guard played the game of his life by draining eight three-pointers and erupting for 35 points. His previous career high was 26. It was the type of performance that deserved adulation.
But no fans rushed the court following his monster performance ... because the Jayhawks escaped with a 78-75 victory. Instead, all he could do was think about what might have been.
“It was great,” Pack said. “I loved the energy in the stands. My teammates were looking for me. It was great to be able to shoot the way I did. It was great, personally, but it doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, we got a loss. Nobody’s ever going to talk about a loss.”
This might be an exception.
Pack shined so brightly against the Jayhawks that he was the talk of both postgame news conferences, even though the Wildcats were unable to protect a 17-point lead and lost painfully in the closing seconds.
“Nijel Pack played like a first-team All-American,” KU coach Bill Self said. “He may have been the best guard in America today.”
It was fitting that Pack opened the game by making a corner three. That was a sign of things to come.
He went on to make his next six shots. He had 22 points at halftime, a number so large that Self tried a number of different defensive schemes to slow him down. But none of them seemed to work. Not man, not zone, not even a box-and-one.
It wasn’t until the Jayhawks switched to a triangle-and-two defense in the final minutes that the Wildcats seemed incapable of freeing him up for open looks.
“When he’s that hot you just have to keep feeding him and keep believing that he’s going to make it,” teammate Markquis Nowell said. “He was playing at the magic level.”
Pack was playing with so much confidence that he fired away just about every time he touched the ball. It was a good strategy.
“My teammates found me early, and I just got the rhythm going,” Pack said. “It felt great to be able to make some shots. Everything I threw up, l felt like it was just going in. I mean, I could see it in the air. I’m like, dang, I made that one, too.”
Getting the ball to Pack quickly became a priority for the Wildcats.
“You could just see it,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “You just knew on a couple of them. When the ball left his hand you knew they were going in. hey just you know, a couple of them ... He just had one of those special days.”
Pack was so hot that K-State reserve Logan Landers yelled the words “you can’t guard him” at KU defenders after most of his buckets. Self laughed after Pack drained a contested three early in the second half, calling it a “pro shot.” There wasn’t much else he could do.
Pack was in the zone. He was on fire. He was unconscious. There was no hyperbole for the way Pack was playing.
Pack cooled off in the second half with the Jayhawks focusing their defensive efforts on him, but he still found ways to get to the basket and make important shots for the Wildcats.
It was the best individual game from a K-State player in this rivalry since Pullen had his signature moment against KU 11 years ago.
The only thing missing was a victory celebration.
This story was originally published January 22, 2022 at 7:28 PM with the headline "‘He may have been the best guard in America today’: Nijel Pack shines against KU."