Why Bruce Weber thinks Kansas State is due some good luck after latest Big 12 loss
A scary thought raced through Bruce Weber’s mind as he watched the TCU Horned Frogs make one three-pointer after another during a 68-57 victory over the Kansas State Wildcats on Saturday at Schollmaier Arena.
Are we cursed?
The answer, of course, is no. It takes a lot more than bad luck to properly explain K-State’s recent struggles and tumble to the bottom of the Big 12 standings, even if Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton said the Cowboys “exorcised some demons” after they beat the Wildcats earlier in the week and Ken Pomeroy ranks K-State ahead of just four teams nationally when it comes to luck. Weber knows it.
Still, he’s ready for the Wildcats to benefit from some good fortune. He thinks he knows how that can happen, and that was the main message he shared with his team when this game was over.
“You make your own luck,” Weber said. “That’s the game and how you treat it and how you love it and how you play it and how you practice it. That is how you make your own luck. That is all we can do, just keep trying and battling and getting better and seeing if we can make some strides.”
There is little else to play for at this point of the season. The Wildcats (9-16, 2-10 Big 12) have lost five straight games and are on pace for their worst season in 19 years.
But one victory could have a positive impact on the locker room as the year winds down. TCU (14-11, 5-7) entered Saturday on a six-game losing streak, but its players smiled and joked afterwards like they were a lock for the NCAA Tournament. That’s what happens when your team makes 15 off 33 shots from three-point range and ends a home game on a 17-5 run.
Were the Horned Frogs lucky to make some of those shots? Perhaps. They normally make 33.6 percent of their three-pointers, and they were at 45.5 percent on Saturday. Desmond Bande got hot and made five three-pointers on his way to a game-high 17 points. Jaire Grayer hit a dagger three from the corner that more or less clinched the game late, and Francisco Farabello connected on two shots that were so far away from the basket that Weber described them as “bombs.”
Some of those looks were wide open, the result of a poor defensive shift from K-State. A handful of those shots came at the end of possessions with the shot-clock winding down. Even when the Wildcats played good defense, the Horned Frogs found ways to score anyway.
K-State was unable to respond, missing all five of its outside shots in the first half and connecting on 2 of 7 in the second.
The Wildcats did enough things right to lead 52-51 with 6 minutes, 47 seconds remaining, but they crumbled with the game on the line. A questionable blocking foul on Antonio Gordon went against K-State during that stretch, with the officials originally ruling that TCU guard TJ Fuller committed a charge on an and-one layup. That moment might have been bad luck, but the final minutes of this game were not.
“It might have been one of the hardest games we have played in a while, to be honest,” Weber said. “I thought they fought hard and competed. They didn’t quit.”
“I feel like the effort is always going to be there,” K-State guard David Sloan said after scoring 11 points. “We are going to fight every game, we just need to execute better.”
One thing K-State can improve starting in its next game against Texas Tech: defending until the final second of every possession. TCU, and other teams, have made enough buzzer-beating threes with the shot clock winding down to suggest it’s a trend. The Wildcats could benefit from more defensive energy at the bitter end of possessions instead of conceding low-percentage shots, simply because they are taken from distance.
That would help cut down on some of the bad luck K-State can’t seem to avoid this season.
“More sense of urgency right when they are about to shoot it,” Weber said. “I know there were a couple times we could have gotten out there and made it even a little tougher. That is the only thing I can see. But it’s crazy. It happened in both games against them. I know they had five last time and a couple bombs. But credit to them. They kept making another pass and another pass and jumped up and made them.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2020 at 7:49 PM.