Technical sparked run, but it was too little too late
Manhattan ? Jim Wooldridge didn’t want to talk about his two technical fouls. Not at first, anyway.
“All I can say is it’s unfortunate  uh, I can’t say anything,” Wooldridge remarked after spending the last 11:21 in the Kansas State locker room following his ejection.
Minutes later, though, Wooldridge loosened up as he met the media following the Wildcat’s 98-71 loss to Kansas on Monday night in Bramlage Coliseum.
“I want to say this,” Wooldridge said. “The officiating was fine. It was just that one play and I reacted to it  I thought we had made a good defensive play.”
The K-State coach was referring to a under-the-basket goal by KU’s Nick Collison, who appeared to have knocked K-State’s Matt Siebrandt down while going to the basket.
“I felt I had position for a charge,” said Seibrandt, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound junior. “But it was a call that could go either way.”
At the time, Kansas was in cruise control with a 74-46 advantage. Moments later, after referee Steve Olson, tagged Wooldridge once for something he said and a second time for walking onto the floor, KU’s Jeff Boschee nailed three of the four free throws and KU’s lead grew to 31 (77-46). It would grow no larger. K-State outscored KU, 25-22, over the last 1112 minutes.
“We just had to play for him after he got ejected,” Seibrandt said. “That just shows how much he cares for us. We’d run through a brick wall for him.”
Kansas State hit a brick wall early when Kansas rang up a double-digit lead after three minutes and no matter how hard the ‘Cats tried they couldn’t run through it.
“Kansas really hit us hard early,” Wooldridge said, “and we had trouble staying in our format. Their quickness and size inside really bothered us. It got fast in a hurry, and we couldn’t get it under control.”
With 27 points, senior guard Larry Reid was virtually K-State’s only offensive weapon.
“I wanted to get everybody else involved first, but it didn’t work out like that,” Reid said.
Phineas Atchison came off the bench to score 16 points, but no other ‘Cat managed more than eight points. Reid was 9-of-17 from the field, including four of seven from three-point range.
“Larry seems to be our bailout guy if things don’t go well,” Wooldridge said.
Things rarely went well for K-State. In losing for the 19th straight time to Kansas in Manhattan, the ‘Cats also surrendered the most points ever to a KU team. The old mark was 94.
“The kind of team they are they get a lot of points in transition,” Reid said. “You’ve just gotta get back on defense, but it’s hard because they have so many athletes. Coach said it would be physical, too, that it would be a war.”
Kansas State lost most of the battles and ultimately the war.
“If we’re going to beat a team like that, it’s got to be ugly,” Seibrandt said.
K-State didn’t win, but it was ugly nonetheless. KU’s Drew Gooden and K-State Pervis Pasco, for example, were whistled for technical fouls with about 512 minutes remaining for trash-talking while running down the floor together.
But the ugliest incident was precipitated by Wooldridge’s ejection  not his career first, by the way, although his first at KSU  when fans began throwing debris onto the floor as Wooldridge walked out the tunnel.
“I’m disappointed in that,” the K-State coach said about the barrage. “I apologized to coach (Roy) Williams for that.”
No doubt frustration played a role in Wooldridge’s nationally televised tirade  the game was on ESPN  but the second-year KSU coach mentioned over and over that he just did what he did and he didn’t really know why.
“That team out there beat us and beat us soundly,” Wooldridge said. “I reacted to one particular call. I just reacted. Coaches react, and I reacted.”
Kansas State, 9-11 overall and 3-6 in the Big 12, will travel to Nebraska on Saturday.