Kansas State has played its final easy basketball game

The easy games are over.

Kansas State basketball has beaten its last directional school from a mid-major conference. From here on out, the Wildcats will exclusively play opponents from power conferences.

The journey starts at 10 p.m. Wednesday at Spokane Arena, where K-State will play a semi-road game against Washington State. Then Big 12 play begins.

Are the Wildcats ready for the challenge of 20 straight games against quality competition? At 9-2, that’s open to interpretation. The record looks good, but it has come against one of the nation’s weakest schedules. Their best wins are against teams with losing records — Vanderbilt (3-7) and George Washington (5-6). K-State lost to the only ranked team on its schedule, Arizona State, and flopped hard against Tulsa.

Perhaps this game will provide a sign of things to come.

“You can’t worry about the past,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “We have got to worry about today, right now, and Washington State. It’s a great experience.”

Washington State (7-3) is one of the best nonconference teams K-State will play this season. Though the Cougars have some ugly losses to Idaho, UC-Davis and UTEP they also have some nice wins over San Diego State and St. Mary’s. They will improve the Wildcats’ strength of schedule, which currently ranks 321st out of 351 teams.

At the least, they should provide K-State with a final tune up before conference play, which appears as difficult as ever. The Big 12 was supposed to take a step back this season, with Iowa State and Oklahoma projected to struggle, but things have not gone according to script.

Add up the records of every Big 12 team and the league boasts an overall mark of 88-16.

Texas currently sits at the bottom of the standings at 8-3. West Virginia (10), Kansas (14), TCU (15), Oklahoma (17), Baylor (18) and Texas Tech (21) are all ranked. The Horned Frogs are undefeated, Oklahoma freshman Trae Young just led the Sooners to a win over Wichita State and Oklahoma State is coming off an upset at Florida State.

College basketball statistical guru Ken Pomeroy ranks all 10 teams in the top 50 of his rankings database.

The Wildcats could play poorly and still beat Northern Arizona or USC Upstate. By contrast, they could play well and still lose to some Big 12 teams.

Weber has tried to prepare K-State for the difficult portion of its schedule by scheduling nonconference games away from home. The Wildcats played two games at the Las Vegas Invitational, one at Vanderbilt and now comes a game against Washington State.

The hard games are about to begin.

“Obviously, our league is good and you have got to be ready to play,” Weber said. “Every experience is valuable. All I care about is getting better. We are going to lose some games in the (Big 12), but we have got to keep maturing and moving on to the next game.”

This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 3:18 PM with the headline "Kansas State has played its final easy basketball game."