Breaking down the good and (mostly) bad from Kansas State’s opening loss to Drake
Dozens of thoughts bounced around inside Bruce Weber’s head as he prepared to address the Kansas State men’s basketball players following an 80-70 loss to Drake in the opening game of the season on Wednesday at Bramlage Coliseum.
Should he praise Mike McGuirl for leading all scorers with 22 points? Should he chastise the entire team for allowing 80 points to a nonconference opponent at home for the first time since he took over as coach? Should he share some positive words for the nine new scholarship players on his roster? Or should he go the opposite route and demand more from them?
Eventually, he settled on something simple that seemed appropriate for a room filled mostly with newcomers.
Welcome to college basketball.
“It’s a young team,” Weber said. “I have got to be really patient. It’s a long, long season and a lot can happen.”
This was an eye-opening experience for both Weber and his young roster. They fell behind 38-36 at halftime, surged ahead 47-40 early in the second half and then completely wilted against a more experienced, albeit less talented, opponent.
For now, they have no choice but to shrug it off and try to learn from it.
Weber said he was scared about this matchup and he had to abandon much of the game plan he came up with for it when Drake surprisingly switched between zone defenses and deployed a two-thirds court press that made it difficult for the Wildcats to run their normal offense.
K-State hasn’t practiced with a full assortment of players often over the past few weeks, because of injuries and COVID-19. That meant the Wildcats entered this game making adjustments on the fly. And it showed.
They looked every bit like a team that was replacing all but four returning scholarship players from a squad that won 11 games and finished last in the Big 12 a season ago.
This could be a long, frustrating season. Losing at home to a middling team from the Missouri Valley is not an encouraging sign. Then again, K-State has nowhere to go but up, and it did flash some encouraging signs, particularly on the offensive end, against the Bulldogs.
McGuirl led the list of positives. For the first time in his college career, the senior guard looked like an alpha for the Wildcats. He poured in a career high 22 points on 15 shots to go along with six rebounds, showing aggression from the outside and on his way to the basket as a slasher.
He even stepped up as a leader after the game, saying the Wildcats should have been better prepared for Drake regardless of circumstances.
“That is no excuse,” he said. “We are a new team. We got out there and we played an older, more experienced team. But it doesn’t matter. They outplayed us today. We didn’t guard well enough. I didn’t guard well enough.”
DaJuan Gordon scored 15 points. It seems like he will slide in alongside McGuirl as a primary leader.
Add on some nifty plays from freshman point guard Nijel Pack and transfer forward Kaosi Ezeagu, and it’s not a stretch to say this team is better on offense than its precessor.
Alas, it also appears much worse on defense.
“We really just need to come together as a team,” McGuirl said. “It’s not about one player. Defense is all about team. It’s not about one player on defense. We need to get some defensive chemistry. That is where we need to improve.”
Indeed, the Wildcats looked slow and disorganized trying to stop the smaller Bulldogs in their first game together. Ezeagu went after too many blocks, which allowed Drake to come up with easy points, even though he did finish with three swats.
Drake’s guards were also patient and waited until K-State broke down on defense late in possessions to get easy shots. The result was seven three-pointers and a whopping 42 points in the paint. Many of those buckets were easy and often uncontested.
“They probed us,” Weber said. “They are an older team. We usually pride ourselves in our play-hard chart but they had bigger numbers there, and steals and even blocked shots. That is something you would think we would have.”
For years, Weber has prided himself as a defensive coach. The Wildcats have rarely looked like a finished product on offense in recent years, but they have just about always been strong on defense. Winning low-scoring games is their forte.
He may need to tweak that formula this season.
An optimist may assume K-State’s defense will improve as the season goes on. After all, this was the first time newcomers like Nijel Pack, Selton Miguel and Davion Bradford have played against a real, life opponent at the college level. Still, this was not a good start.
“If we are going to beat people we can’t give up 80 points,” Weber said. “We have to be better defensively. Hopefully that comes over time.”