Kansas Adds Another Win Over Kansas State In Lawrence

This is the sort of game I would never have thought him capable of at the beginning of the year. By midway through the second half, I was annoying the KSU fans near us at the bar by shouting “There’s strong and then there’s Withey strong” after each time he got a block, pulled down a rebound, or forced a steal. It was obnoxious, but I felt I’d earned it after they made me sweat every basket in KSU’s comeback

Young obviously kept playing through the whole game, while the minutes for Wesley and Tharpe (and, to a lesser extent, Teahan) dropped off. I didn’t see what got Tharpe pulled (although I did notice him running under several screens insteading of fighting through them. Did anyone else catch it?

But even though it ended up going as a turnover and 2 points for them, I felt bad for criticizing him, not just because of the points Self has made this week (going to break at the under 8 TV timeout, they replayed one of those “bad shots” where it’s clear Tyshawn is just passing it to T-Rob off the backboard) but because Tyshawn was on the floor, legs splayed, struggling for the ball with his knee exposed at an awkward angle. I’d rather he let all of those go than risk re-injuring his knee.

2 other points on TT:

• You’d never know by watching tonight that he had an injured knee. There were several plays where he looked as explosive as any player in the country
• Whoever was guarding TT has pretty fast hands. He had two perfectly clean strips. The contrast between his fast hands and Spradling’s mugging-as-defense style was pretty dramatic.

I assumed we’d come out jacking up 3 pointers like crazy, in a repeat of the N. Dakota game, because K-State packs it in and plays such tight 2-pt FG defense. Instead we spread the court and force them to choose between aggressive man-to-man defense and the ability to double team T-Rob in the post. When KSU finally dropped back into a zone, we took advantage of the open looks from 3, but we were using the 2-point shot percentage to create the 3s rather than vice versa.

It was a surprise to me, and it worked very well. I hope to see us spreading the court again against undersized teams, even though it means a few more turnovers on long cross-court passes. For the most part, I trust our guys with the dribble in that situation.

ISU was up 10 at half, up 15 or so at one point, and are currently up 4 with 42.1 left in the game.

If TRob is a brick, Gipson is a block, but i loved when they were commenting on his high BB IQ – right before he got schooled! I think he was a big reason TRob was virtually a double-double in the 1st half.

I was ready to defend him for the strong (non-stat) D on McGruder (5-14 for 15 pts, but it’s a huge bonus if he is the leading scorer.

He seemed to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted.

Wow!

Bill’s gotta be tickled about that, especially after making such a point about it during and after the last game.

0-3 (2’s), 1-4 (3’s), 0 FT’s will do that.
Then surprised to see 8 R’s, 5 A’s, 3 Steals, 0 TO’s.

Glad to see that sort of contribution on an off shooting night. Didn’t Coach Self call him out earlier this year for not doing that? Ahhh, the sutble growth through the year. It certainly is nice to have the best coach/teacher this side of Larry Brown.

“I’ve never in 27 years, including coaching 13-year-olds, I’ve never been part of a game where our team got its tail whipped in the physical part of the game the way we did today,” Kansas State coach Frank Martin said. “It was a complete mismatch. They got 24 more possessions than us.”

about the continuing “clear-out” rant.

"I almost called a timeout when we were up 1-0," Martin said. "I was so excited we had a one-point lead in the first half."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/04/3353335/k-state-suffers-familiar-fate.html#storylink=cpy