Kansas State falls to TCU in opening game of Big 12 Tournament

A basketball season that began with Kansas State players saying they had enough talent to reach the Final Four ended without a trip to the NCAA Tournament, the NIT or a winning record.

The Wildcats bowed out of the Big 12 Tournament with another inconsistent effort Wednesday at Sprint Center, losing 67-65 to TCU in the event’s opening game.

“I think the game was kind of a microcosm of our whole season,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “A bunch of ups and downs and all-arounds.… Our guys fought vibrantly, like they did all year, and it’s disappointing. You want to keep playing and you want to keep coaching, but you have to help the guys and move forward. That’s all you can do.”

It was a disappointing finish to a disappointing season. In many ways, it was fitting.

K-State (15-17) showed enough promise to defeat five ranked teams and win five of its first seven Big 12 games, sitting atop the conference standings after one month. It also had enough downside to lose embarrassing nonconference games and struggle mightily away from home.

“The team was never as mentally tough as we should have been,” junior guard Justin Edwards said. “We didn’t take every game as seriously as we should have. We played down to competition and didn’t play at a high level every single game. I think some guys didn’t take this game serious.

“Talent-wise, we all think we are better than TCU, and some of us know we are better. So we really didn’t play the way we were supposed to.”

That mixture sent the Wildcats into the Big 12 Tournament as its No. 8 seed, missing a first-round bye for the first time since 2006. A matchup with No. 9 seed TCU in front of a friendly crowd left the team hoping for a victory that could lead to memorable tournament run. Instead, K-State went out with a whimper.

The result is the team’s first losing record since 2003, snapping a run of eight straight 20-win seasons. It will miss the postseason for the first time since 2006 and miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009.

All streaks come to an end, but few expected these to die now. With Marcus Foster and Wesley Iwundu back as sophomores, Thomas Gipson and Nino Williams providing senior leadership and Edwards and Stephen Hurt joining the roster as hyped newcomers, many thought this would be a breakthrough year for K-State.

What went wrong?

“We had all the hype coming off last year,” sophomore guard Nigel Johnson said. “Everyone thought with the new additions and the guys we had back, we were going to be the team to beat in the Big 12. We had the talent to do it, obviously. We proved we can beat anybody. We just got too mixed up with the hype and didn’t work as hard as we should have in the offseason. We weren’t in the gym.”

Looking back, Williams could see it all coming. He’s upset he couldn’t do more to change things.

“Me and (Gipson) got stuck with a bunch of guys who didn’t understand how hard it is to win in the Big 12,” Williams said. “I hate it when people say Bruce didn’t do a good enough job. A lot of guys didn’t buy in. You can’t have two or three guys playing hard and the other people not. He takes too much weight on him. People don’t understand (what) he has to deal with.”

Gipson agreed.

“Some people didn’t buy in,” Gipson said. “Some people did. When you have a majority of people not buying in this is the season that you have — 15-17. It sucks. This is the first losing season I have had since middle school.”

TCU won behind 16 points each from Kyan Anderson and Chris Washburn, 15 points from Trey Zeigler and a first-half surge that gave it a 12-point lead.

The Horned Frogs led 35-27 at halftime, but it was K-State that opened the game strong, taking a 14-9 lead behind a balanced approach. Then Wildcats, as they tend to do, went nearly eight minutes between field goals, allowing the Horned Frogs to go on a 24-7 run.

The Wildcats ended the half on a small run to pull within single digits, and fought all the way back to within two points in the final minute. But the hill was too tall to climb.

When Williams traveled with 57.5 seconds remaining, TCU (18-14) took over and scored three straight points to take a 67-62 lead and clinch the game. It will take on No. 1 seed Kansas at 2 p.m. on Thursday in the tournament’s quarterfinals.

Gipson led K-State with 16 points, while Williams had 13 points and Wesley Iwundu and Malek Harris both had 10.

That was better balance than the Wildcats have had on most nights, but Foster, the team’s slumping leading scorer, finished a frustrating season by going scoreless.

Foster said the down year, which included a three-game suspension, will serve as motivation “to get back to the superstar I always wanted to be in college.”

“I just didn’t go hard every day like I should have,” Foster said. “I tried to go hard late in the season, but it was too late. I definitely want to go hard from the beginning. Somebody I am going to use as motivation is Rodney McGruder. He went hard every game and made his teammates better. That’s what I want to do.”

He will have to wait several months before he can do it. A long offseason awaits a team that had hoped to play deep into March.

“It’s just a shame,” Weber said, “because we had enough tools to be better than we were. I’m not saying we could have been 30-0, but we should have been a handful of games better.”

This story was originally published March 11, 2015 at 8:16 PM with the headline "Kansas State falls to TCU in opening game of Big 12 Tournament."