Months from now, Alex Pyle hopefully can laugh about the peculiar predicament he encountered Monday night.

Pyle, a guard on the Emporia State men’s basketball team, was supposed to make his season debut that evening in the Hornets’ opening exhibition game against Wichita State.

But a funny thing happened to Pyle on his way to the scorer’s table.

Actually, it’s not all that humorous. Pyle never even got off the bench. His coach, David Moe, forgot to put him in the game.

Moe said he intended to make time for Pyle during his team’s 13-point loss. He simply had too many guys to keep track of in his rotation this early in the season.

“As the game was going on, we were in it, we were trying to get back, and I stayed with the guys that I’ve had a little rotation with,” Moe said Tuesday night after his team’s second exhibition game, a 103-58 loss against Kansas University. “I kept thinking, ‘I need to put him in.’ Then all of a sudden I forgot about him down the stretch.”

Moe felt so bad, he apologized to Pyle and his parents and decided to start him against Kansas. The move, made under unfortunate circumstances, worked better than anyone could have hoped.

Pyle’s first shot against KU came 47 seconds in. He calmly nailed a three-pointer from the wing for the Hornets’ first points.

“I shot it, and I thought it was going to be short,” said Pyle, a 6-foot-5 guard from the small Kansas town of Towanda, population 1,400. “Then it went in, and I was like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll have a little better night tonight than sitting on the bench the whole time the night before.'”

Pyle’s evening was just getting started.

He scored 10 points in the first half alone, en route to tying for the team scoring lead with 13. Seven of those points occurred during a two-minute stretch near the end of the first half, when he buried a three-pointer, a layup and a long jumper.

“He came out stroking the ball,” ESU guard Dustin Andrews said. “I talked to him on one of the timeouts. I think he hit two or three shots, and I was like, ‘Man keep stroking it. You’re hitting your shots.’ It’s good to see that. He’s been hitting in practice a lot.”

He shot 5-of-9 from the field, including three three-pointers during his 20 minutes.

Pyle has shined elsewhere in an Emporia State uniform. He earned All-American status on the track team in March for his efforts in the high jump. On the basketball floor, however, he has encountered a more difficult time since transferring last year from Barton County Community College.

In his first season with the Hornets, he averaged just 1.3 points and 0.6 rebounds, appearing in 12 games.

“He deserves everything he got tonight because he works hard and is a great kid,” Moe said. “I’m happy for him, and I’m happy things worked out that way for him individually.”

The Hornets briefly grabbed a 5-4 lead on Jeremiah Box’s fast-break pull-up jumper at the 18:19 mark of the first half.

Box’s free throw with 11:28 remaining in the opening frame trimmed the ESU deficit to 22-18.

But in a three-minute stretch, the Hornets went from having a puncher’s chance to lying motionless on the canvas.

Tuesday night, Pyle’s modest numbers from a season ago were forgotten.

The bigger question is this: Did Pyle’s performance against Kansas leave a good enough impression to break into the rotation next game?

Pyle laughed.

“I hope so,” he said.