As far as blogs go...

[kougar24]

...this one is pretty tasty.

[Thundercat]

 

[WillieWatanabe]

Jake does amazing interviews.

[tdaver]

copy/paste? 

[kitten_mittons]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Is Duke the best team in the country? Well, is it?

After one night at the CBE Classic -- a night that included a Duke win, remember -- Kansas State made questioning Duke's celebrated status seem, well, reasonable. Just after the nation's No. 1 team struggled to fend off an undersized and overwhelmed Marquette bunch, the fourth-ranked Wildcats thoroughly destroyed an 18th-ranked Gonzaga team some experts picked to make the Final Four before the season started.

It was hard not to watch KSU's comprehensive attack as it so thoroughly dismantled a quality opponent and wonder: Doesn't this team look better than the one I just saw?

The good news? We won't have to wonder for long.

Kansas State's 81-64 win in the second CBE Classic semifinal here Monday night means the Wildcats get a chance to settle the argument in a matchup with Duke in the Tuesday night final on ESPN2. It's a dream early-season matchup and a dream result for the thousands of Kansas State fans that flocked to the Sprint Center this week in the hopes of seeing K-State take on -- and take down -- the No. 1-ranked Blue Devils.


"It's a little tough when it's a neutral-court situation, and you walk out and the entire crowd is filled with purple," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said.

He wasn't exaggerating. Kansas State fans stuffed the arena with loud chants of "K-S-U" Monday night, and what they saw when they weren't screaming their heads off -- or, sometimes, when they were -- had to make the late-night drive home or to the hotel immensely pleasurable. The Wildcats were unstoppable on offense and tenacious on defense. They forced turnovers, made Gonzaga uncomfortable throughout, and capitalized on the other end with open shots and layups in the secondary break.

In other words, they played like Kansas State: uptempo, high-pressure, physical, and downright frightening.

"We live in transition," Pullen said. "We really don't want to have to set up an offense if we don't have to."

For much of the night, Kansas State didn't have to. That was primarily thanks to the Wildcats' hot hands. K-State shot 46.2 percent from beyond the arc, rebounded many of its misses (30.6 percent of their misses, to be exact) and ended up scoring around 1.56 points per trip. KSU had scored 49 points by the time the first half was over, and with the exception of a quick Gonzaga run at the beginning of the second half, the Wildcats never looked back.

Nearly as impressive as K-State's offensive ability was its depth. Frank Martin played nine players 14 or more minutes Monday night, subbing in big man after big man (including, but not limited to, Freddy Asprilla, Wally Judge, Jamar Samuels, Curtis Kelly, Victor Ojeleye) and guard after guard (Jacob Pullen, Will Spradling, Martavious Irving, Rodney McGruder, Nick Russell). The overall effect -- even for a schlub hovered over his laptop on press row -- was dizzying. Imagine how Gonzaga must have felt.

"They just keep coming at you in droves," Few said. "There is no drop-off when they sub."

That depth allows Kansas State to keep up its furious pace, and even when that doesn't translate into lots of possessions, it allows the Wildcats to furiously pressure the ball in the half-court and sprint into their offense when a steal or a long rebound presents the opportunity.


"We want to attack, we want to run, and we want you to get into your bench because we're comfortable with ours," Pullen said.

Part of that depth comes in the form of Spradling, the freshman guard who has managed to seamlessly take over much of the point guard duties that once belonged to the graduated Denis Clemente. Spradling isn't flashy and he isn't going to fill up the box score, but he's proved capable enough to allow Pullen to play off the ball when opponents force Kansas State to run a little half-court offense. Spradling added 13 points on 4-of-6 shooting against the Zags.

"He's a heady player," Pullen said. "I love Will because every day in practice I try to expose him. Every little drill, I try to embarrass him. And every day he steps up to the challenge. He continues to learn."

The Wildcats have plenty of time to accomplish their dreams of a national title this season. It is, after all, only Nov. 23. But this Nov. 23 is a bit bigger than most. On Tuesday night, Kansas State will take on the top team in the country, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who watched both CBE Classic semifinals -- whether they're wearing purple or not -- who would say the Wildcats don't have what it takes to beat the Blue Devils.

Add in a raucous environment, and, well, maybe K-State's time has come. Maybe, just maybe, this is the best team in the country.

It certainly looked the part Monday night.

"This is a great measuring stick for us," Pullen said. "Duke is the defending national champs. They have a great team. ... It's a great opportunity for us."

That's one understatement. Here's another:

Tuesday night's game is going to be pretty fun, huh?

[Benja]

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/18587/video-previewing-the-duke-ksu-showdown

[Poster formerly known as jthutch]

Pullen looked like he just stole something the way he is looking around hoping Frank doesn't hear what he is saying.

[kougar24]

http://goEMAW.com/forum/index.php?topic=8523.0

[my troll name ... Koppe22]

God why.

[Doberman_CATS!!!]

My nipples got hard reading this:
Rarely do those tests come in front of an insanely partisan "neutral" crowd, a crowd that will empty the Kansas City bars and descend on the Sprint Center in manic droves Tuesday night

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sometimes, everything goes according to plan.

Sure, Gonzaga and Marquette fans -- who watched their teams lose to Kansas State and Duke, respectively, Monday night -- might not be feeling the pre-ordained big-game love. (Gonzaga fans in particular are likely feeling a dearth of enthusiasm at this point. Tough start for the Zags, huh?) But pretty much everyone else will, because the Wildcats' and Blue Devils' wins in the CBE Classic semifinals set up the best early-season tournament matchup in recent memory.

When you looked at the holiday tournament schedules -- and if you're like us, you scoured those things like a "Lost" fan hunting for dead-end clues to whatever silly plot twist that show threw at you next -- it was the prospective match up that stuck out most, and now it's here: Tuesday night, we get to watch No. 1 Duke and No. 4 Kansas State, two of college hoops' most serious national title contenders, play in front of a raucous Kansas State crowd in a gleaming new arena in downtown Kansas City. Short of March Madness, college hoops doesn't get much better than this.

You know what that means. Preview time! Let's go the tape:

• EnlargeAP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Marquette didn't have an answer for Mason Plumlee Monday night.CBE Championship: No. 1 Duke vs. No. 4 Kansas State, 10 p.m. ET

Pullen no stranger to Blue Devils, Coach K

Monday night, Kansas State coach Frank Martin said he'd always admired Duke's program from afar, but that he didn't know Coach K as well as some of his contemporaries. (Like, for example, former Kansas State coach Bob Huggins, who Martin almost always refers to as merely "Huggs.")

That's not the case for Jacob Pullen. For a Big 12 player who's never faced a Duke team in his career, the Kansas State guard is plenty familiar with these Duke Blue Devils. That's because he played alongside two of them -- Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler -- when the USA Select Team, a batch of the best college players in the nation, visited Las Vegas to help prepare the Mike Krzyzewski-coached USA Basketball program for the FIBA World Championships this summer.

After the Duke coach found out that Pullen also hailed from Chicago -- Coach K is nothing if not proud of his hometown -- Pullen struck up an unlikely relationship with Krzyzewski.

"After that, he was always keeping an eye on me," Pullen said. "Even though he was busy coaching the NBA players, he was always talking to me, Kyle, and Nolan. I kind of felt like a Dukie at one point.

"I just hope he doesn't have Nolan guard me," Pullen said, laughing. "I'm tired of guarding Nolan, and I'm sure he's tired of guarding me."

Good luck with that, Jake. Whether he likes the idea or not, Smith is likely to guard Pullen for much of the game Tuesday night, which is just one of the many intriguing matchups on hand in the CBE final.

What to watch for: Backcourt freshmen, frontcourt depth

By this point, you know what you're going to get from Pullen and Smith. Less obvious are the contributions each team's freshmen -- Duke's highly touted Kyrie Irving, KSU's pleasantly surprising Will Spradling -- will bring at the point guard spot. Irving is a difficult matchup for anyone, but Spradling has earned big minutes early in his career with heady offensive play and solid defense, and he'll need to play a major role if Kansas State's plan to rush Irving into bad decisions is going to work out.

• EnlargeJeff Moffett/Icon SMI

The play of freshman Will Spradling has been a pleasant surprise for Kansas State.These teams' backcourts get the majority of the attention -- and for good reason, because they're two of the best in the country -- but if there's one key to Tuesday night's title game, it's likely to come in the frontcourt. Mason Plumlee was monstrous for Duke Monday night -- 25 points, 12 rebounds (including six offensive boards) and five blocks; that kind of monstrous -- flashing signs of the potential he showed as a highly touted recruit and future NBA lottery pick. Plumlee also answered, at least for one night, the biggest question about this Duke team: Without Brian Zoubek, could it grab enough of its own misses to mask mediocre shooting efforts? That's what won Duke its title last March; no stat was more important to Coach K's fourth NCAA title team.

But Plumlee's breakout game came against an overmatched Marquette interior that doesn't have the personnel to keep up with athletic big men in the post. That's not the case with Kansas State. Martin has a bevy of post players -- five of which saw significant time in Monday night's win -- and none of them represent much of a drop-off in skill or athleticism. All of them can defend, all of them can rebound and all of them are efficient scorers around the basket when Pullen and company create easy looks in their uptempo transition offense.

Here again, then, is another test for Duke's frontcourt. Can Mason (and Miles) Plumlee, Ryan Kelly and Singler do enough against such a deep and talented front line? Or does Kansas State simply have too much? Conversely, can Kansas State get stops against Singler, the best off-ball shot-creator in the college game? Or is the loss of defensive stopper Dominique Sutton in the offseason still a glaring weakness for an otherwise loaded Wildcats team?

At this point in the season, everyone loves to say they're "learning about their team." Rarely are those lessons so applicable to the national title picture. Rarely do two teams this good, with hopes this high, get to test themselves so early in the season. Rarely do those tests come in front of an insanely partisan "neutral" crowd, a crowd that will empty the Kansas City bars and descend on the Sprint Center in manic droves Tuesday night.

In other words, it's going to be a good one. Best of all -- and true to clichéd form -- we're going to learn a lot

[Benja]

Hell yes boys