How Kansas State’s freshman trio compares to Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade
Bruce Weber has spent a great deal of time this season comparing Kansas State’s three youngest basketball players to Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade
For the first time since that trio arrived on campus five years ago as freshmen, Weber is asking current newcomers Antonio Gordon, Montavious Murphy and DaJuan Gordon to play big minutes, contribute on both ends of the court and occasionally lead in the locker room.
Fair or not, those comparisons aren’t going to end anytime soon.
That is one of reasons it was notable that K-State’s freshmen let the team down during a 64-59 loss to Oklahoma State earlier this week by scoring a combined total of three points on 1-for-10 shooting.
“They struggled,” Weber said. “It’s a fact of life. They have been pretty good. They have given us good energy all year. The season is long and hard and it happened to all three of them on the same day, they all struggled. If we get one of them playing a little better it could have really helped us.”
The Wildcats will hope for better efforts from their three freshmen when they face off against struggling TCU at 4 p.m. Saturday at Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
Brown, Stokes and Wade boosted K-State to some memorable victories when they were freshmen and the Wildcats won 17 games during that rebuilding year. Can this group do the same as the regular season winds down?
They will have to do more than they have recently for that to happen. For as much as Weber compares both freshman classes, their numbers are far from similar.
When Brown, Stokes and Wade were new to college basketball they combined to average 37.7 points, 16.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game. K-State’s current freshmen are averaging 16 points, 11.1 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game.
That’s a big difference, even when you consider that Brown, Stokes and Wade all played more than 25 minutes per game back then while Murphy leads all freshmen this season at 24.4 minutes per game.
Wade was the top-performing player of both groups. As a freshman, he averaged an encouraging 9.9 points and 5.1 rebounds. Those numbers were strong enough for some to compare him to former Big 12 stars Georges Niang and Perry Ellis when they were freshmen. But Stokes was also a key starter when healthy, averaging 9.4 points. And Brown mostly came off the bench, averaging 8.6 points.
None of K-State’s active freshmen have come close to that type of production.
DaJuan Gordon has had his moments, like the time he scored 15 during an upset victory over West Virginia, but he has rarely been more than energy player, averaging 6.5 points and 3.7 rebounds. Murphy has started in 13 games, but Weber likes to use the term “less is more” when it comes to his stat lines. He is averaging five points and 3.9 rebounds. Antonio Gordon hasn’t scored in double figures since early December, as he is averaging 4.5 points and 3.5 rebounds.
They all seemed to hit the proverbial “freshman wall” at the same time earlier this week and the Wildcats lost a home game they were favored to win.
None of them are as far along as Stokes, Brown and Wade were at this point in their college careers, but K-State is relying on each of them just the same.