K-State must use momentum December 25, 2006

After Friday’s 68-55 win over USC, the K-State players seemed to have a little more swagger in their step. After Saturday’s 16-point victory over New Mexico, they looked downright intimidating.

Is this the same K-State team that took two OTs to beat Washburn, beat William and Mary by 10, got humiliated and embarrassed by New Mexico and Cal, and had Huggins questioning the toughness of his players? Absolutely not. In all honesty, the past two games weren’t the most well-played NCAA match-ups this year. While K-State shot well overall, their 3-point percentage could only be described as profane. J.R. Giddens and New Mexico had their own problems getting the ball in the bucket, and USC’s Loderick Stewart (identical twin of KU’s Rod Stewart) was not as impressive as he has been in the past. But in a tournament that saw an undefeated and top-10 ranked Wichita State team lose TWICE, K-State seemed to stand out as the class of the bunch. A far cry from the 24-point beat-down the cats suffered against New Mexico at The Pit earlier this season.

What was most interesting about these two wins was that Huggins had his centers in the game a combined total of four minutes. That includes a whopping one minute of playing time for the 7′ 3″ shot-blocking machine Jason Bennett. K-State’s small lineup, more than anything, was too quick on defense for either team to get open shots. Gone, as well, were the days of repeated fast-break points against the Cats that had Huggins frustrated much of the first part of the season.

K-State needs to carry their new-found momentum into the game against Xavier next week. A 7-game winning streak would be nice to take into their Big 12 opener at Texas A&M. With the Cats opening conference play with two road games and a Big Monday home match-up against Texas Tech sandwiched in between, they’ll need that confidence to get off to a good start. This team still has a lot of games to win before they can start talking about the big dance. But for the first time this season, talk of an NCAA tourney bid has been started not because of who K-State’s coach is, but how the team is playing.