Some thoughts…from Manhattan

Gary Bedore, Journal-World KU men’s basketball beat writer

“It really wasn’t unexpected. Those who have come here yearly for all these KU-KSU games realize how loud the crowd is. It’s truly remarkable KU was able to keep The Streak alive as long as it did. Fans seem to get louder here every year. They WERE a factor on Wednesday.

Factor in Beasley and Walker, who will be lottery picks in this year”s draft, and you get what happened – a KSU victory. It’s amazing the Big 12 has Beasley and Walker in Manhattan. Arguably the two best players in the league play for KSU. Simply amazing how that’s worked out. KU didn’t play so well, but the better team won…at least on this night. See what happens in March. KSU might win again. It’s going to be ESPN Gameday and the ‘Cats – who enjoy mugging for the cameras – will be fired up. That game might be for the league title. KSU is that good. KU is still a top-four team nationally; KSU probably is as well.”

Tom Keegan, Journal-World sports editor

“It means that, as is the case with every team that has played since Bob Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, Kansas will not finish the season undefeated. And that’s all it means. Sometimes, when a very talented, young team, is spurred on by its crowd, it can upset a more veteran team ranked higher in the polls. It happened last season in Las Vegas when Kansas defeated Florida, which went on to repeat its national title. And it happened again Wednesday night.”

Ryan Greene, KUSports.com editor

“Well, there are a couple of positives for KU to draw from. Going 17-of-20 from the free throw line can never be scoffed at, and Sasha Kaun showed that he can muscle up on Michael Beasley better than anyone else in crimson and blue (useful info for the March 1 rematch in Allen Fieldhouse). But Darrell Arthur’s foul trouble hurt, and Brandon Rush disappearing in the second half offensively didn’t help any.

The schedule now plays out OK for KU to be able to put this loss way in the past, with games coming up against lowly Colorado (Saturday) and shorthanded Missouri (Monday). KU has played very well this year after sloppy wins. It’ll be interesting to see how the Jayhawks play following their first loss. I’m picking a 78-50 win at CU in front of essentially a home crowd, I’m sure. Also, that atmosphere was nuts. When Beasley dunked in the second half to make it a 12-point game, that was the loudest moment I’ve ever experienced at a college hoops game – Allen Fieldhouse included.”

Inside the numbers

12: Kansas State was 12-of-26 from three-point range, and that proved to make a huge difference. The most impressive long-range sniper was Michael Beasley, who after coming into the game 16-of-42 on the year from deep went 4-of-4 Wednesday night.

20: K-State’s three-headed freshman monster – Beasley (25), Bill Walker (22) and Jake Pullen (20) – each topped the 20-point barrier, and I’ll pretty much guarantee that if the three of them do that at any other point this season together in one game, they’ll win no matter who they’re playing. What went overlooked was some nice depth behind those three. Senior Clent Stewart had 11 points, including a couple of threes, and Dominique Sutton was good as an athletic glue guy starting in place of Andre Gilbert, who was suspended before the game.

15: Brandon Rush finished with 15 points and seven rebounds, which on most nights for the balanced Jayhawks is a solid line. But given how he looked in the first half Wednesday (5-of-7, 12 points), the second half provided a bit of a thud from KU’s junior gunner. In the first half, he even showed some nice slashing and finishing inside which hasn’t been on display too much since his return from knee surgery. But his only points in the second stanza came with under a minute left and the game all but decided.

34: The rebounding war was won by K-State, 34-30. This was with Beasley, who came in averaging nearly 13 boards a game, grabbing just six in this game. It was only the third time all year that the freshman star was held to single digits in the rebounding column, but others such as Dominique Sutton (six), Bill Walker (five) and Clent Stewart (five) stepped up in that category. K-State also took down 16 offensive rebounds to 21 defensive boards claimed by KU.

3: Plenty of the talk coming into this game centered around K-State’s backcourt protecting the ball, getting into the paint and not giving away possessions. KU only recorded three steals, while the ‘Cats protected the ball pretty well (just 13 turnovers on the opposite side of 17 assists). Pullen’s 20 points were accompanied by four assists to just one turnover. He now has 19 assists and 4 giveaways in five Big 12 games.

Just in case you missed it…

Bill Self pointed out that the game was truly claimed in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Coincidentally, that’s when Mike Beasley truly made his presence felt, scoring KSU’s first nine points out of the halftime break. That came on the heels of scoring just eight points in the first half and not recording his first tally until more than 10 minutes into the game.

Hopefully, you didn’t miss it…

That was without question the most hostile environment KU faced all year, and probably will be once this season is said and done with. The Jayhawks didn’t say it had anything to do with the final outcome, but Brandon Rush pointed out that it was tough to hear each other on the floor because of the constant crowd noise.

They said it…

Bill Self’s general summary of the game: “K-State was just a better team than we were tonight. You could say defense, you could say offensively. Their defense was good, but we still shot an excellent percentage, but we got sped up, though, and it was one of those atmospheres where that could easily occur…I don’t know if you could pinpoint one thing other than, to me, of the 50-50 balls, they got 70 or 80 percent of them. And it seemed to me like they scored an awful lot off of loose balls, and that’s something we usually are pretty good at but we weren’t tonight.”

Bill Self on when the game truly turned: “We didn’t lose the game in the first half. We lost it in the first 10 minutes of the second half.”

Bill Self on K-State’s guard play: “I thought they had good guards coming in. I thought their guards definitely did a good job of handling the ball and getting the ball to the right guys and everything.”

Bill Self on whether this loss can be a good thing: “I would say yes if we get better from it. If we don’t get better from it I’d say no. There’s plenty of things we can work on, and become hopefully tougher. We will not play in an environment like this again this year. I mean, this was fabulous. There will be some other good ones we go to, but this was fabulous. I couldn’t even hear the whistle blow. And our guards probably didn’t communicate with the guys as well as possible to get everybody on the same page. And we can’t blame that. We still simplified that and got the ball where we needed to be for the most part, they were just better than us tonight.”

Sherron Collins on what KU did wrong: “We weren’t as physical as we should have been. Our guards didn’t do a good job of cleaning up on loose rebounds. We just need to block out more, and we didn’t make shots when we needed to.”

Sherron Collins on the loss as a wake-up call: “It’s just a wake-up call, something we needed. We needed a game like this. We’ve got good teams in our league, but I don’t think this is a loss that will hurt. We’ve just got to pick up, stay positive, get another good win here.”

Sherron Collins on what the guards could have done different: “We should have been more poised. We rushed the shots a lot, took bad shots, bad passes, we just made bad decisions.”

Sherron Collins on Jacob Pullen hurting KU: “It was our fault. He just did stuff that we couldn’t guard or couldn’t deal with. We just made stupid plays. We fouled him, put him on the line and he went 10-of-10 from the free throw line, and that’s a good percentage there. Just making bad reach-ins, just making bad plays.”

Brandon Rush on what happened to him offensively in the second half: “I guess they kind of had a defensive adjustment on me, and I didn’t take many shots in the second half and I wasn’t staying aggressive at all. It was kinda frustrating, but I still had to play through it, because I was just trying to help my team win.”

Mario Chalmers on whether the pressure is gone now with the unblemished record no longer an issue: “We’ve still got pressure on us. We know we’ve still got a lot to do. We’ve still got to win the Big 12, then go and win the tournament after that.”

Mario Chalmers on Jacob Pullen: “Yeah, he definitely surprised us tonight. We really didn’t expect him to do that much tonight. We knew he was an OK player and that he could get to the paint anytime he wanted to. Tonight he just had a good night.”

Mario Chalmers on the rematch on March 1 in Lawrence: “That meeting will be a totally different meeting. When we meet them at our place, we’ve played them once already, we know what to expect and we know how to take care of them.”