How USC Trojans ‘very much exposed’ Kansas State in season-opening basketball game
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang was not happy as he walked off the floor following an 82-69 loss to USC on Monday at T-Mobile Arena.
He avoided eye contact with fans who were seated near the court, preferring to stare off into the distance with a scowl on his face.
That was understandable when you consider he had just watched the Wildcats make 22 of 71 shots while the Trojans scored a whopping 50 points in the paint. K-State appeared overmatched against the nation’s 21st ranked team, and no one was more disappointed about that than Tang.
He said his team got “exposed” on the first day of college basketball season.
But his emotions quickly changed after he analyzed the stat sheet and spoke with his players. If there was a silver lining to this result, he found it quickly.
“The great thing is that we don’t have to wait for a month or two weeks before the Big 12 to find out the things that we need to work on,” Tang said. “It was very much exposed. So we get to go back and work on those things. We did a couple of good things and a whole bunch of not-so-good things.”
A quick rundown of the good: The Wildcats played with admirable levels of energy. They grabbed 23 offensive rebounds against the Trojans and seemed a step quicker to most loose balls. K-State also refused to quit and fought back from a 19-point deficit to pull within eight in the final minutes. Newcomer Tylor Perry scored a team-high 22 points. Will McNair provided valuable minutes off the bench.
There were definitely some positives.
Just not enough to outweigh the negatives.
It will take more than one paragraph to go over everything that hurt the Wildcats. Their biggest problems came on offense, where they had a woeful day shooting the basketball. It’s hard to win a basketball game when you only make 31% of your shots.
Also, the Wildcats only went 8-of-33 from 3-point range. Perhaps the most revealing stat about their shooting: K-State grabbed all those offensive rebounds but only finished with 15 second-chance points. Even when it was getting the ball in ideal scoring range, it couldn’t take advantage.
Maybe K-State players were dealing with jitters on opening night. Three of their best shooters weren’t reliable against the Trojans. Cam Carter went 4-of-16, Perry went 5-of-17 and Arthur Kaluma went 1-of-11.
“I didn’t think we took bad shots or a lot of tough shots,” Tang said. “I thought we missed good shots. I have seen them shoot the ball really well. We shot the ball pretty well yesterday. So you gotta give USC credit. A lot of it was their defense. But I wasn’t standing on the sideline going, ‘Man, that’s a tough shot all night.’ I know we’re going to shoot the ball better moving forward.”
K-State did start to see some shots go through the net late in the game. Perry led the team with 22 points and Carter had 15. As a team, the Wildcats averaged 0.91 points per possession.
“We’re a new team,” Perry said. “We’re still figuring out how to jell together. There were some first-game jitters, of course, on a stage like this. I felt like we executed down the stretch. We have to get a whole lot better, but I feel really good about us. Now, I’m not too worried about it.”
On defense, the Wildcats had no answers for the backcourt trio of Kobe Johnson (16 points), Isaiah Collier (18) and Boogie Ellis (24), who combined for a total of 58 points. When Enfield’s team needed an important bucket, it gave the ball to one of those players and let him make a play. K-State could do little to stop them off the dribble, and that is why the Trojans amassed 50 points in the paint.
“The effort was there, the execution wasn’t,” Tang said. “We weren’t always on the same page. I would hear our bigs call one ball-screen coverage and our guards would do something different. Then the few times we were on the same page, we weren’t there. We have a lot of work to do there.”
Last season, K-State didn’t experience its first loss until the end of November, when it lost a road game against Butler. The Wildcats lost that game by 12 and left historic Hinkle Fieldhouse humbled. But they responded well.
K-State won its next nine games and didn’t lose again until January.
Tang is hopeful that this group can go on a similar winning streak. It learned a lot on the first day of the season.
“We have got a lot of work to do,” Carter said. “But that was just the first game. It was just beginning. There is a long road for us to go.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2023 at 1:12 AM with the headline "How USC Trojans ‘very much exposed’ Kansas State in season-opening basketball game."