Why Kansas State Wildcats think they can beat KU on road for first time since 2006
Few are expecting the Kansas State Wildcats to win one of their most difficult basketball games of the season when they take on the Kansas Jayhawks on Tuesday at Allen Fieldhouse.
The K-State men haven’t won in Lawrence since 2006, when Jim Wooldridge was coaching. And it seems unlikely this is the year the Wildcats will break their road Sunflower Showdown losing streak, as they are off to their worst start since 2002.
But none of that is stopping K-State players from heading into this game with upset hopes.
“Going into a hostile environment, we have to be ready,” K-State junior guard Cartier Diarra said, “and ready to do something that hasn’t been done in a lot of years.”
There are a few reasons why Diarra and his teammates feel optimistic right now. The biggest one is obvious. K-State is coming off its best performance of the season. The Wildcats have some genuine momentum behind them after they defeated West Virginia 84-68 over the weekend.
Everything came together for Bruce Weber’s team on Saturday. David Sloan and Levi Stockard were inserted into the starting lineup and played well. Freshmen DaJuan Gordon, Montavious Murphy and Antonio Gordon all provided a spark off the bench. Xavier Sneed hit some key shots and Diarra scored a career high 25 points.
K-State (8-9, 1-4 Big 12) still has a long way to go before it can dream about reaching a postseason tournament, but it has proven it can still win a big game.
Now the Wildcats want to prove it again.
“We definitely are capable of beating them,” Diarra said. “But it’s tough. Their crowd is different. You probably can’t hear plays. Our young guys need to understand that there are going to be signs and that we need to read that and execute and finish the game.”
If you’re the superstitious type, there are also a few good omens that could benefit K-State against the Jayhawks.
For starters, no one expected K-State to win in Lawrence 14 years ago when it pulled off that upset. The Wildcats had a better record (9-4) back then, but they were winless in conference play and they were coming off a pair of ugly losses to Iowa State and Nebraska.
That season ended with just 15 victories, but one of them came at KU. Perhaps the Wildcats are once again poised to pull off a rivalry win in a down season.
More recently, K-State also parlayed a home victory against West Virginia into bigger things last season. Thing looks bleak for the Wildcats when they began Big 12 play with a pair of losses and then fell behind the Mountaineers by 21 last year. But they rallied back against WVU and won nine straight conference games on their way to a shared Big 12 championship.
Maybe Saturday’s victory will also be a turning point for this team.
“We thought about all the other games we played,” DaJuan Gordon said. “Most of our games were (close) like that, and when it came down to it we coughed the ball up or made a bad play. But this time we played smart basketball.”
Weber hopes the Wildcats are ready to build off what they accomplished against West Virginia. But he knows it won’t be easy.
K-State used up lots of energy winning its last game. Five different players saw 28 minutes or more against the Mountaineers, and two were on the court for at least 36 minutes. This will be a quick, difficult turnaround for a young roster.
“Preparation is so important,” Weber said. “We have got to be mentally cut in.”