K-State bounces back, beats George Washington at Las Vegas Invitational
Kansas State’s basketball team came to Las Vegas looking for the same thing most visitors do — something shiny and valuable to take home with them.
While the Wildcats won’t be bringing the Las Vegas Invitational trophy they had set their sights on back to Manhattan, a consolation third-place finish and overall solid play in its first true tests of the seasons isn’t a shabby consolation prize.
K-State (5-1) bounced back from its first loss of the year with a 67-59 victory over George Washington (2-4) Friday night in the third-place game of the Las Vegas Invitational at the Orleans Arena.
“You look for positives from it. We came here to win the championship, that was our goal and I think it really crushed them last night that we didn’t,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “But were are gonna have a lot of big games coming up, and we just got to get better.”
Turns out Arizona State (6-0), which held off K-State 92-90 in Thursday’s semifinal, might be better than expected as they rolled pasted No. 15 Xavier (5-1) 102-86 in the title game, paced by senior guard Tra Holder’s career-high 40 points.
“Arizona State is a good team. They play fast, and when they are making shots they are tough. But at last night’s team meal we talked about how we had to just let yesterday go, we couldn’t let one loss become two,” said junior guard Kamau Stokes, who led K-State with 19 points and was the Wildcats representative on the all-tourney team.
“We played hard, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to, but I’m proud of my guys and the way we played.”
A night after connecting on 15 three-pointers, which was tied for second-most in school history, Kansas State utilized a more balanced offensive attack Friday — relying on midrange jumpers, drives and points down low against George Washington as three Wildcats scored in double figures.
In addition to Stokes, big man Dean Wade added 17 points and Barry Brown Jr. contributed 15. Xavier Sneed and Makol Mawien eached tallied eight.
While Kansas State controlled the tempo and the scoreboard (KSU outscored George Washington 34-18 in the paint) for the majority of the game, amassing its largest lead of 15 with 10:38 left—for the second straight night the Wildcats had to scramble down the stretch.
George Washington went on a 12-2 run over the next six minutes to cut KSU’s lead to 56-51.
Some more untimely fouls, which significantly hurt the Wildcats against Arizona State (a major storyline was ASU outshooting K-State 44 to 9 from the free-throw line), gave the Colonials a few good opportunities to comeback in the final minutes.
Arnaldo Toro, who led GW with 21 points, scored on a drive and hit the ensuing free throw to cut the lead 56-54, but K-State answered with timely free throws of its own—hitting 7 of 8 (KSU was 16 of 18 on the night), including three by Brown in final minute to secure the victory.
While K-State will return to Manhattan still seeking its first holiday tournament win since the Diamond Head Classic in 2011, a year before Weber took over as coach, Weber said his team definitely took some valuable memories away from this trip.
“It’s a really good tournament. We got a chance to go to a show, which was great, to see a little bit of Vegas and to face some good competition,” Weber said. “Obviously I wish last night would have went a different way, but you have to take what you get and make the best of it. Now we have to move forward.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2017 at 9:10 PM with the headline "K-State bounces back, beats George Washington at Las Vegas Invitational."