Kansas State Wildcats search for answers after another discouraging basketball loss
Kansas State has hit a wall.
Actually, scratch that. The way things have been going lately for the Wildcats, it feels more like they have crashed head first into an electrified fence. After starting the season 18-3 and climbing all the way up to No. 5 in the national rankings. K-State is now on a losing streak that leaves it searching for answers at 19-7.
How can Jerome Tang lead his team past the large obstacle that is currently impeding its path toward a special season?
For Tang, it starts with little things, such as playing with maximum effort. That’s not something he thought the Wildcats did during a 79-65 loss against Oklahoma on Tuesday.
“If you don’t play hard enough you can do a lot of good things and still lose,” Tang said. “But if you don’t play hard you don’t give yourself a chance to win and we didn’t give ourselves a chance to win.”
Preaching effort at this point in the season is less than ideal.
“You never want to coach that with a bunch of older guys,” Tang said. “It’s disappointing, but it’s not disheartening. We are going to figure this thing out because we have got good guys in that locker room and they care.”
Effort has been far from K-State’s only problem during its recent losing skid, which has seen the Wildcats lose five of their past seven games.
The offense that once carried them to thrilling victories at Texas (116-103) and Baylor (97-95) has gone cold and the defense that once prided itself on holding opponents below 60 points is now struggling to get stops.
K-State ranked 37th nationally in offensive efficiency during its first 21 games of the season, according to college basketball statistician Bart Torvik. But things have changed drastically since then. The Wildcats have ranked 170th in that statistic in their past five games. One of the biggest reasons for that has been three-point shooting. K-State went from making 35.5% of its shots from beyond the arc to just 28.6%.
Turnovers have also been up.
Now that opposing Big 12 coaches have studied the Wildcats, they are struggling to score in the same ways they once did. The days of Markquis Nowell and Keyontae Johnson seeing open three-pointers are over. Nowell has shot 9-of-42 (21.4%) from three-point range in K-State’s past five games.
“Everybody is doing scouting right now,” Tang said. “Teams are doing a really good job loading up on our two best players. We need to do a better job of manipulating the defense and helping them be more effective.”
The recent losses have forced K-State players to do some soul searching.
Nae’Qwan Tomlin thinks the Wildcats need to find a way to play with more of an edge. Early on this season, when nobody expected them to be good, they played with reckless abandon. Now that they are ranked No. 12, they have a target on their back. He wants K-State to get back to being the hunter rather than the hunted.
In other words, complacency has been an issue.
“It’s really about us being prepared and staying hungry,” Tomlin said. “At the beginning of the season we were picked last so we were really hungry and playing as the tougher team, more aggressive. Now that we have been winning and teams start to adjust to us they are just playing better than us.”
Nowell has an outside-the-box solution in mind. Back when K-State got off to its incredible start the team was spending crazy amounts of time together away from the basketball court. Players sang karaoke together and went bowling every single weekend. That hasn’t happened nearly as much since Big 12 play began.
Maybe this team just needs a little more camaraderie.
Hey, anything is worth a try after your team hits a wall.
“When we get back home we will probably do some bowling or go out to eat or go to a movie,” Nowell said. “That should help us regroup and get back to winning.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Kansas State Wildcats search for answers after another discouraging basketball loss."