‘We needed this’: How Kansas State Wildcats flashed top form in victory over Baylor
No offense to Keyontae Johnson, but Scott Drew hopes he never coaches against him again.
Baylor has played a pair of games against K-State this season and its best overall player has lit up the Bears like a pinball machine both times. The senior forward steamrolled the Bears with 25 points during a 75-65 victory on Tuesday at Bramlage Coliseum. That came a little over a month after Johnson flattened them with 24 points in a 97-95 road win.
The No. 14 Wildcats looked at their best in both games as the No. 9 Bears appeared helpless against Johnson.
It was enough for someone to ask Drew if he thought there was anything he could have done to slow down K-State’s leading scorer. The Baylor head coach thought about it for a moment and ultimately shrugged.
“I’ve got one defense that I think will work,” Drew said, “him graduating.”
Johnson left Drew short on answers by doing a little bit of everything on Tuesday. The Florida transfer made 11 of 17 shots, sent out four assists and grabbed a rebound, all while playing strong defense against Baylor’s usually productive lineup of scorers. Johnson led all scorers by draining a pair of three-pointers and using his size to score near the rim.
At one point he broke away for an easy dunk and threw down an emphatic slam that extended K-State’s lead and sent the home crowd into a frenzy.
It had been a while since fans had seen Johnson explode for a big scoring effort. He had only topped 16 points in one of his previous nine games. But he reminded everyone, especially Baylor, what he was capable of.
“All the coaches were just preaching to get to my spot and just play free and just have fun out there,” Johnson said. “So that was what I did today. I was just wanting to get the win, to get back-to-back wins, and we haven’t had that in a while. So I was just trying to do everything I could to get the win.”
Thing is, Johnson was far from the Wildcats’ only special player in this game.
K-State looked like the team that sprinted to a 17-2 record earlier this season thanks to major contributions from Markquis Nowell (14 points, 10 assists on Tuesday), Cam Carter (10 points, eight rebounds) and Nae’Qwan Tomlin (eight points, eight rebounds).
The game started with Nowell finding Johnson under the basket with a lob pass that resulted in an easy layup.
It was a sign of things to come, as well as a departure from recent games in which the Wildcats struggled to score and lost five of seven. Bouncing back with home victories over Iowa State and Baylor gives K-State an opportunity to move past that slump and enter the Big 12 Tournament with momentum.
“This was really fun,” Nowell said, “especially when you can get a win in front of your home crowd. It’s just fun. It gives you confidence going into, you know, a hostile road environment. We needed this, we earned it. We put it in the work. When things were going bad we adjusted and we looked over our mistakes and fixed them. It was good to be back on the winning side of things.”
Baylor did put up enough fight to lead 34-31 at halftime, but the Bears were no match for K-State in the second half.
It’s difficult for any Big 12 team to sweep a regular-season series against Baylor. The Bears have one of the most explosive offenses in all of college basketball and Drew has a national championship on his resume.
But K-State coach Jerome Tang clearly knows how to coach against him. After spending decades on his staff as a Baylor assistant, Tang is off to a 2-0 start against Drew..
Leading up to this game, Tang said he reduced practice time for his players and gave them as much time off as possible leading up to tipoff. He wanted them to be well rested or “have legs,” as he put it. Then he encouraged them to run up and down the floor as quickly as they could. He sped up the tempo of this game, knowing that Baylor might be tired on the second leg of a two-game trip through the Sunflower State.
Drew was also asked what makes it hard to coach against Tang. He couldn’t do much more than shrug about that topic, either.
Unfortunately for him, it looks like Tang is just getting started at K-State.
“Coach Tang should be National Coach of the Year, period,” Drew said. “He returned two players and they filled the whole roster. They were picked at the bottom (of the Big 12). He’ll get my vote. That’s not because he’s my brother. He’s earned it.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 11:07 PM with the headline "‘We needed this’: How Kansas State Wildcats flashed top form in victory over Baylor."