K-State’s problems are exposed in season-ending loss to TCU

Whatever happened in its Big 12 Tournament opener against Texas Christian on Wednesday night at the Sprint Center, Kansas State wasn’t likely to redeem its bewildering season by securing an NCAA Tournament berth this weekend.

To do that, the eighth-seeded Wildcats would have had to defy some hefty history:

No team seeded worse than fourth has won the tournament. And only two teams relegated to playing on the first day had reached the title game by surviving three games in three days to get there.

Then there was the more present issue of top-seeded Kansas, looming on Thursday and 8-0 vs. K-State in Big 12 tourney play.

Still, the idea was to generate a last stand, to put an exclamation point on a season of radical mood swings.

Instead, the clarifying signature was this: a grimace-inducing 67-65 loss to TCU that officially snuffed out a school-record five straight NCAA berths and illuminated all that went awry this season.

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In the end, this was a scatter-shot team that played hard in spurts but too often didn’t play together and ultimately had no real identity.

That partly reflected a season of turbulence off the court, where suspensions and injuries left the roster in constant flux.

But it all manifested on it.

“The game was kind of a microcosm of our whole season, a bunch of ups and downs and all-arounds,” coach Bruce Weber said, later adding, “It’s just a shame, because we had enough tools to be better than we were.”

At the crux of this is sophomore Marcus Foster, who a year ago emerged as affirmation of Weber’s disputed ability to recruit but on Wednesday stood as a symbol of regression and pause about the future.

The mercurial Foster, who was suspended for three games earlier this season, in a sense might as well haven’t played against TCU.

Though he grabbed five rebounds, he scored no points and his two assists were trumped by three turnovers.

He played only 19 minutes and, most tellingly, wasn’t in at game’s end as K-State tried to complete a comeback from a 12-point deficit.

“It was definitely tough (to sit out),” Foster said. “I felt I could have impacted the second half.”

For the record, Foster wasn’t squawking, just responding to questions.

Even so, he sent a shudder when he was asked if he planned to be back next season.

“That’s the plan,” he said, “for right now.”

Later, he deflected a follow-up question by saying he was thinking only about getting better in the off-season.

To be clear, Foster isn’t the reason K-State, 15-17, sputtered this season and lost.

Anyone who watched the game could attest to that.

From the start, TCU, 18-14, looked like the more seasoned team and the one more desperate to make an impact.

It was something you could see in all the 50-50 balls the Horned Frogs nabbed, or the way they moved the ball as the Wildcats either stagnated or freelanced and the way they stayed poised as K-State scrapped back.

Foster’s future, though, is going to be something between a lightning rod and a litmus test of Weber.

K-State can win without him, and it already has shown it can lose with him.

But the optimal thing for all here would be for Weber and his staff to be able to find the way to tap his reset button.

It’s no easy task nowadays to find that line of being able to reel in a player and convince him it’s in his best interests, and that’s the code they’ll have to crack with Foster.

Alarming as Foster’s words might have sounded, there’s also plenty of reason to believe both that he wants to stay and that he knows he was his own worst problem in a season he entered expecting to be Big 12 player of the year and to lead his team to a title.

For one thing, Foster smiled when Weber’s name was brought up.

“We can be mad at each other, but at the end of the day we still love each other,” Foster said. “I still love Coach. He’s always going to be my favorite coach, because he gave me a chance when nobody else wanted to.”

For another, Foster seems to embrace the idea that he has had plenty to do with his own issues.

Looking back, Foster said he believes the team was just “too happy about last season” and was complacent in the off-season.

“We didn’t have a clear mind through every day,” he said. “We didn’t take advantage of days we should have been in the gym.”

Asked if that applied to him, he said, “I’m the main one, honestly.”

The odd combination of that laxness and “worrying about trying to do too much” ultimately seemed to gridlock Foster, who knew only one thing for sure after the game.

“I don’t ever want to feel like this again,” he said.

And what he does about it will be pivotal to K-State’s immediate future.

This story was originally published March 11, 2015 at 10:20 PM with the headline "K-State’s problems are exposed in season-ending loss to TCU."