JYC!
FT rate of 59.6%!
OR% of 46.7%!
Lots of things to see in this game, namely this was a "K-State plays harder than any team in America" game. We outplayed circles around Baylor the first 15 minutes, but once again wasted possessions and silly mistakes allowed BU to stick around. For about 8-9 minutes Baylor outplayed us and they led by one, then fueled by some threes we built the lead an held it.
I knew Baylor was long, but you really don't see it on TV, in person they are just ridiculously long. You could tell it bothered our bigs and in the first half we constantly got the ball down in their defense but didn't draw contact. We'd try to jump with them and then changed our shots often. Frustrating to watch, but I can see how it happens.
Their zone is unconventional, almost amoebic. B/c they are so long, it make it very tough to be quick with your passing, which you have to do to get the zone out of shape. Plus, like I said, their bigs really bother you when you get inside of it. They are actually pretty solid defensively when they play like they did tonight, but of course we don't have the best guards in the world.
Drew took a chance and went man pretty much the last 8 minutes. I thought we really did a nice job the first few possessions isolating our bigs and drawing fouls, we were very effective for about 3 to 4 possessions. Then Drew called timeout and actually made some really nice adjustments. They started fronting our bigs and switching on all big to big screens and it really messed us up offensively. So I'll give him some credit; it is pretty tough to go from their zone, to man where you dominate for a few possession, to an adjusted man where you mix things up. As much as I agree with the dogging of Drew, he did a nice job there with his use of man defense.
And both sides of the Sprads stuff just need to stop. He's a nice FR player, sort of this year's version of McGruder. He may have a nice future, and clearly this team needs him. But he is going to have bad match-ups where he struggles and he's going to go through at least one more FR funk. So lay off, both with the love and the hate and let him play.
Again, we need guys like Curt to quit playing dumb (its pretty clear Frank hates him, but knows he's got to be out there), hope McGrud's concussion isn't too severe, and we have to get more offense from Jamar.
Finally, this was our best perimeter defensive game of the season, and Pullen was simply lights out on Dunn defensively. McGruds in a tough match-up was very good, and both Southwell and Sprads gave some nice defensive minutes. Samuels also did nice especially in bad match-ups, then JHR and Kelly... well they had their moments.
Good win. Defense and rebounding like that can win 6 more games in this league, but how many games can we play with that effort. We're probably going to have a couple games where you just have to outscore/outshoot an opponent and its those I'm not sure we can win.
