AMES, Iowa — One of the most entertaining, back-and-forth basketball games of the early Big 12 season ended in frustrating fashion for Kansas State.
Iowa State came through with enough clutch plays in the final moments to hold off K-State 80-76 on Tuesday inside a sold out, raucous Hilton Coliseum.
The No. 12 Cyclones (15-4, 6-2 Big 12) defeated the No. 5 Wildcats (17-3, 6-2 Big 12) thanks to 23 points from Jaren Holmes and 19 points from Gabe Kalscheur.
K-State countered with 23 points from Markquis Nowell and 15 points from both Cam Carter and Keyontae Johnson.
That type of production was enough to give the Wildcats a 33-31 lead at halftime and to keep them in the game until the bitter end, even after Iowa State led by 10 with 8:12 remaining. But it wasn’t enough to keep the Wildcats’ winning streak going.
“Losing is never fun,” Nowell said. “But everything we did today was correctable. We will fix it and move on.”
With the loss, the Wildcats dropped into a three-way tie for first place in the conference standings with Iowa State and Texas. Still, K-State head coach Jerome Tang was encouraged by the result.
It was a much closer final score than K-State’s last road loss against TCU, which ended in an 82-68 loss.
“I thought this was just an unbelievable Big 12 game,” Tang said. “The environment was incredible. Obviously, we wanted to win, but we also wanted to see how much we improved from TCU. ... We competed tonight. We didn’t let their runs get us out of character.”
Tang’s team will look to bounce back from this result when K-State returns to the floor against Florida on Saturday at Bramlage Coliseum.
Until then, here are some thoughts and analysis from the Iowa State game:
Iowa State won by scoring from 2-point range
Credit the Cyclones for coming up with creative ways to score against the Wildcats. Rather than moving the ball around and trying to find open shooters on the perimeter, which has long been a staple for Iowa State teams on offense, the Cyclones attacked the rim all game long and scored almost at will on 2-pointers.
Iowa State wasn’t just hot from within the arc, it was emitting flames. The Cyclones made 23 of 33 shots from within the arc, which made their 31% shooting from beyond the arc a moot point in this game.
K-State could do little to stop the Cyclones, as TJ Otzelberger helped his players find advantageous matchups for easy layups. They were the first team in a long while that was able to make Nowell seem undersized, as their taller guards had lots of success scoring over him with layups and floaters.
Later in the game, as K-State’s Ismael Massoud encountered foul trouble, the Cyclones started to pick on him. When they did miss, they often grabbed offensive rebounds and scored that way.
Holmes was 8 of 11 from the field. Kalscheur was 7 of 11. Osun Osunniyi was 4 of 7. The Cyclones also got to the free-throw line 25 times and made 19 of them. It’s a safe bet that other teams will try to mimic that approach moving forward.
Big game from Cam Carter
For once, the best player on the court for K-State was not named Keyontae Johnson or Markquis Nowell during long stretches of this game. This was Cam Carter’s night.
The transfer guard from Mississippi State helped the Wildcats get off to a promising start by scoring nine points before the first media timeout, and he stayed hot the rest of the half.
K-State took a 33-31 lead into the locker room thanks in large part to Carter making all five of his shot attempts and scoring 13 points in the first half.
He drained a 3-pointer from the corner, attacked the rim for points and scored from the free-throw line. If anything, K-State should have looked to get him even more looks.
Carter went on to score 15 points, which opened up scoring opportunities for Johnson and Nowell as the game went along.
Rest of Big 12 breathes a sigh of relief
K-State fans weren’t happy about the result of Tuesday’s game at Hilton Coliseum, but it produced smiles everywhere else across the Big 12. The Wildcats entered the day all alone in first place of the conference standings. A road win over one of the other best teams in the league would have made them even bigger front-runners in the conference race. Now it feels wide open.
_____
