From The Couch – Cats Lose To Oklahoma in Big 12 Opener Despite Career Game By Mark Smith
K-State lost their Big 12 basketball opener 71-69 to Oklahoma in Norman on Saturday night. The Wildcats got off to a slow start, falling behind 8-0 and trailing by as many as 15 points in the first half before trimming the lead to 33-22 by halftime.
Fifth-year senior transfer guard Mark Smith had a huge game, scoring 25 points and grabbing 16 rebounds in the losing effort. Nijel Pack scored 17 points and Ismael Massoud added 13 points, but the rest of the Wildcats couldn’t get much going. Guard Markquis Nowell did not play due to Covid protocols. He’s been the engine running the team so far this season and not having him was a huge loss. Oklahoma was missing three players…Bijan Cortes, Jacob Groves, and Tanner Groves. Oklahoma missing Tanner Groves hurt them because he leads the Sooners in scoring and rebounding. Despite that, they were still able to do enough to win the game. Here are some of my thoughts regarding the game…
“Obviously it’s disappointing. At the start they were very, very physical with us. They took us out of our stuff. It took us a while to react.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: Weber is being brutally honest here, but why does this happen over and over again? Should he use his timeouts earlier instead of allowing the team to get so far behind so early? I don’t know the answers, but I know it’s a trend that I wish would be fixed.
JM: Jeff put it pretty succinctly here. I agree. We’ve seen the story play out over and over again.
“Mark (Smith) was, what can you say, spectacular. I don’t know if I’ve ever had somebody get whatever it was, 26 (points) and 16 (rebounds) and five assists and no turnovers. He’s told us over and over how thankful he is. He didn’t even get to go home for Christmas because his family had COVID. He had the maturity to still deal with it and stay here and stay focused.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: I texted a friend of mine, who is a Missouri fan, near the end of the game and told him about how well Mark Smith played. He told me that Smith never did that at Missouri. He was right. Smith had a career-high in points (25), rebounds (16), and assists (5). It was the first 25-point/15 rebound game by a K-State player since Michael Beasley in 2008.
“Obviously, Ish (Massoud) hits the bomb to tie it. We couldn’t get a stop and then Nijel (Pack), we actually executed what we were trying to do. I know it was a long shot, but we’ve seen him make them before.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: K-State was down two points with about 30 seconds left in the game and the best they could come up with was a 25 foot three-point shot by Nijel Pack? When he shot it, my first thought was “that was a HORRIBLE shot in that situation!” Oklahoma rebounded the miss and went on to win the game. It was just an awful sequence at the end of the game.
“The big message is obviously we gotta be tougher.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: I believe I’ve heard this one before from Bruce Weber.
“A few weeks go we’re happy with the bigs. Not much from our bigs today, catching, finishing, rebounding, whatever. So we gotta get more out of them if we’re gonna move forward as a group.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: Bradford and Ezeagu combined for one point and one rebound in the game. And three turnovers.
“We had some layups too. We’re at the hoop. We had a couple of easy ones that we missed. We had a couple of tougher ones that we missed. That’s the story of our season if you study our stats. We go 10-for-22 from three but not very good in the paint.”…Bruce Weber, January 1, 2022
JM: I’m not sure I’ve seen a team miss more layups than this one. On second thought, maybe last year’s team missed more, but I’m not sure anyone keeps stats on something like that.
The Texas Longhorns are up next for the Wildcats at 6:00 Tuesday in Bramlage Coliseum. Texas is 11-2 and ranked number 17 in the AP Top 25. They beat West Virginia 74-59 yesterday and have won five in a row. This will be a tough game for K-State.
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