‘This isn’t rocket science’: Why K-State missed so many 3-pointers against BYU
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- BYU focused on stopping PJ Haggerty and running K‑State shooters off the 3‑line.
- K‑State made a season‑low 3-of-21 from deep, with only Abdi Bashir connecting.
- Coach Tang warned poor shot selection and urged K‑State to create cleaner perimeter looks.
When BYU basketball coach Kevin Young was asked to explain how his team kept Kansas State’s offense in check during an 83-73 victory on Saturday at Bramlage Coliseum, he grinned and responded with four telling words.
“This isn’t rocket science,” he said.
In his mind, the No. 10 Cougars (13-1) only had to focus on two things when the Wildcats (9-5) possessed the ball on the opening day of Big 12 action.
The first: stopping K-State’s leading scorer, PJ Haggerty. The second: running K-State shooters off the 3-point line.
BYU didn’t succeed when it came to defending Haggerty, as the Memphis transfer scored 24 points to go along with seven rebounds and six assists. But the Cougars came up aces against the Wildcats on the perimeter. K-State has been one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country this season, but the Wildcats shot a season-low 3-of-21 from beyond the arc against BYU.
“Our guys did a good job of toeing the line with mixing up our coverages and not helping too much,” Young said. “(Haggerty) did good. He’s a great player, and he did a good job of drawing fouls. But to only let one guy hit a 3, that is what impressed me. We had really good attention to detail.”
Abdi Bashir was the lone K-State player to hit a 3-pointer against BYU. He went 3-of-8 from the perimeter. The rest of his teammates combined to go 0-for-13, with David Castillo missing all five of his attempts and Nate Johnson missing all three of his attempts.
The Wildcats are built to win from the 3-point line. They have made as many as 19 shots from beyond the arc in a game this season. Even after their struggles against BYU, they are shooting 38.5% from deep. That number ranks 22nd nationally.
When they make a boatload of 3-pointers, they tend to win. When they go cold, they tend to lose.
This game followed that formula.
“We just missed shots,” Haggerty said. “It happens in games. I didn’t think we played our best.”
K-State coach Jerome Tang was more concerned than his star player.
Sure, it was a bad shooting day for the Wildcats. But it was forced upon them. He tipped his hat to BYU for the poor shooting performance. The way BYU was playing on defense left K-State players hesitant to shoot even when they had open looks.
“I thought we turned down some,” Tang said. “There were probably four or five that we should have been ready to shoot that we weren’t ready to shoot. Some of that is a credit to their length and their closeouts. But some of it is — I don’t know why we didn’t take certain shots that we would have normally taken.”
At one point, Tang grew so frustrated with his team’s shot selection that he told his players “we can’t make 3s if we don’t shoot them.”
Tang went on to say that K-State attempting 21 shots from beyond the arc and 46 from within the arc was not a good ratio for this roster.
The Wildcats will need to search for new ways to get open on the perimeter as Big 12 play continues.