‘We love to win ugly’: Takeaways from Kansas State’s narrow win over Oklahoma State
Kansas State entered the weekend in first place of the Big 12 standings.
Oklahoma State was on the opposite end of the table and hadn’t won a single conference game.
So when those two basketball teams faced off on Saturday it came as a major surprise that the Cowboys threw a scare into the Wildcats at Bramlage Coliseum. They led for much of the game and looked like the better team, too.
But good teams find ways to win even when they don’t play well, and that is exactly what K-State did on its way to a 70-66 victory.
“We love to win ugly,” K-State forward Will McNair said afterward.
Indeed, the Wildcats are becoming masters at winning games that can’t be classified as pretty. That was never more clear than this week when they needed to come from behind to beat both Baylor and Oklahoma State.
The Wildcats won both of those games despite only leading Baylor for 4 minutes, 9 seconds, and then Oklahoma State for 14 minutes, 26 seconds.
“I like the fact that we embrace winning,” K-State coach Jerome Tang said. “I’ve never really seen an ugly win. I’ve seen a lot of ugly losses. In this league, man, all you have to do is figure out how to win. If we’re all honest with ourselves and we look at our roster, we don’t have a team that is going to go out there and score 90 points and it’s going to look really pretty and all of that. We have to win games like this.”
Mission accomplished.
K-State battled back from a 10-point deficit in the second half, and the Wildcats were able to make big plays when they mattered most to eventually pull away for an important win behind 23 points from Arthur Kaluma and 15 points from Cam Carter.
There wasn’t a decisive bucket during the comeback, but Carter did bank in a 3-pointer that gave the Wildcats a lead with 3 minutes, 31 seconds remaining. Later, he converted an important layup on an inbounds play that maintained that advantage. Tylor Perry made some key shots of his own and Kaluma seemed to score every time he got a good look.
With the win, K-State improved to 14-4 overall and 4-1 in the conference. It remains on top of the Big 12 standings. It can now validate its early success in league play with a step up in competition next week with games at Iowa State and Houston.
Oklahoma State dropped to 8-10 and 0-5 in conference.
Here are some takeaways from Saturday’s action:
Call him Mr. Big Shot
The Wildcats tend to get the ball to point guard Tylor Perry whenever they are in need of a clutch bucket. That strategy has worked well for them this season, as the senior transfer from North Texas has lifted K-State to victory in many close games.
But Arthur Kaluma is starting to look like an equally strong option.
Kaluma has made some enormous shots for the Wildcats this week. First, he drained a deep 3-pointer while being fouled to give his team an overtime victory against No. 9 Baylor. If that wasn’t enough, he also nailed an important trey at the end of the first half against Oklahoma State.
K-State was in desperate need of a bucket on its final possession of the first period, and Kaluma delivered.
He is shooting nearly 40% from the outside this season. Tang gets upset when he passes up open shots, and it’s easy to understand why. The Wildcats should work to get him even more involved from downtown, especially when they need an important bucket. It is clear that he is one the most clutch players on the roster.
“He does that every day in practice,” McNair said. “There’s nothing that really surprises us about him because we see it every day in practice. The other day he was lighting it up against our scout team. He was going crazy. So we knew he was going to have a great game.”
Kaluma went on to drain three 3-pointers in the game on his way to 23 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Every time he got the ball in scoring position in the second half, he made a shot that cut away at Oklahoma State’s lead.
He is making a case as the team’s best player.
Oklahoma State was the better team ... until crunch time
An OSU upset in this game would not have been a fluke.
There was nothing strange or unusual about the way that Oklahoma State challenged K-State for its first conference victory of the season. The Cowboys looked like the better team from start to finish.
Well, almost.
Once the midway part of the second half arrived, K-State flipped a switch and became the much stronger team.
That is what good teams do in these situations.
In the grand scheme of things, it had to be frustrating for K-State to sweat for 40 minutes against the Cowboys. Then again, upsets happen all the time in college basketball and Oklahoma State has plenty of talent on its roster. The Cowboys were bound to beat someone at some point.
Tang said several K-State players were dealing with illnesses, which didn’t help matters.
But Mike Boynton’s team needed a last-second shot to knock off K-State, and it didn’t happen. Even with the Wildcats playing one of their worst games in a while they were able to escape with an important win.
That is a good sign for K-State.
One potential bad sign: K-State has been susceptible to the occasional bad game this season. It also went cold and lost to Nebraska and had a hard time staying close to USC in the season-opener.
One has to wonder if these Wildcats don’t yet know how to handle success. That Nebraska loss came a few days after K-State pounded LSU on the road by 15. This game came after an upset victory over Baylor.
Turnovers once again an issue
Tang said earlier this week that he would challenge the Wildcats to limit their turnovers to about 11 per game.
If they could do that, he said, his team would be almost impossible to beat.
It was a good goal to dangle in front of his players. But it didn’t have the intended result.
K-State committed 17 turnovers, and that was one of the main reasons why Oklahoma State was able to lead by as many as 10 in the second half. Taking better care of the ball remains a priority moving forward.
This story was originally published January 20, 2024 at 8:36 PM.