Manhattan ? Western Illinois coach Leslie Crane figured it would be tough to contain Kendra Wecker and Nicole Ohlde.

She was wrong. It was impossible.

Wecker scored 19 points, and Ohlde added 17, leading No. 8 Kansas State to a 76-48 victory Friday night over Western Illinois.

“You might stop one,” Crane said, “but you won’t stop them both.”

Four players reached double figures for the Wildcats (1-1), who were dangerous with or without the ball. Kansas State had 23 steals and forced 35 turnovers, converting them into 35 points.

“That was the downside right there,” Western Illinois forward Tiffany Cornelius said. “If you would have said coming in that we would have 35 turnovers, that would be the game.”

The Wildcats put away Western Illinois (0-1) with a 25-7 run in the second half.

Wecker started the decisive run with just more than 14 minutes to go, hitting a three-pointer for a 48-30 lead, then added a basket off a feed from Ohlde 18 seconds later to make it a 20-point game.

Freshman Twiggy McIntyre scored nine of her 12 points in the run, which she capped with a three for a 70-37 lead with 61/2 minutes remaining. Her basket with 7:45 to go gave Kansas State its first 30-point lead, 65-34.

“We saw some sparks of life tonight, and we started to see some good things — especially in the second half,” Kansas State coach Deb Patterson said. “I thought our first half was very good, but our second half was even better.”

Laurie Koehn added 11 points for the Wildcats, who won their 10th home opener in the last 11 seasons.

Kansas State led 35-20 after a streaky first half in which the Wildcats went on a 22-2 run for a 24-7 lead — and then scored just one field goal during the next 71/2 minutes.

But after Western Illinois closed to 27-20 on Orinta Kavaliauskaite’s two free throws with 3:26 left before the break, the Westerwinds didn’t score again until Cornelius’ basket 48 seconds into the second half made it 35-22.

“Going down 15 at halftime was too big,” Crane said. “I was hoping it would be 10. Fifteen was a little bit too big of a hill to climb.”

Cornelius led the Westerwinds with 18 points — but 11 of those came in the final 6:07 with the game well out of reach. Kansas State held her to four points in the first half.

Kansas State committed 21 turnovers.

“That’s entirely too many for us,” Wecker said. “I’d attribute it to us and the mistakes that we made, rather than their defense.”