Oklahoma State vs Kansas State Basketball Recap

What was in the drinking water in the state of Kansas this week? Two teams from the Sunflower State followed up huge early-week wins with deflating Saturday setbacks.

Earlier on Saturday, Wichita State followed a win over Northern Iowa with a discouraging 14-point loss at Drake. The desultory performance by the Shockers showed that in college basketball (even more than in the NBA), the attention span of a team doesn't last for very long. Certain contests are circled in red, while the less sexy games on the slate - often the ones that immediately come after the headliners - are given almost no care or concern. That's how one day's crowning moment becomes another day's crushing comedown from a very lofty position.

Well, if Wichita State began a Saturday of comedowns in the state of Kansas, the Kansas State Wildcats finished it.

It's one of the rare times when you'll ever see the verb "finish" used in a pejorative sense.

Just five days ago, on the familiar surface of Bramlage Coliseum's court, coach Frank Martin's KSU crew smothered the No. 1 Texas Longhorns with a relentless pressure defense that forced 18 turnovers and limited the 17-0 Longhorns to 37 percent field goal shooting. After 40 minutes, Texas left Manhattan, Kan., with a 17-1 record and a rare taste of its mortality. The win seemed to signal Kansas State's arrival as an upper-tier force, the kind of club who could make a run at a conference championship and perhaps a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. With four full days to rest after that mentally taxing evening against a formidable foe, KSU stayed at home and welcomed Oklahoma State to town. The Cowboys did make the second round of last year's Big Dance, but in 2010, they hadn't done all that much to announce their arrival on the college hoops landscape.

Coach Travis Ford's team entered this game 2-2 in the Big 12, and bereft of a signature scalp. The Cowboys' home wins in the league came against Texas Tech and Colorado, not the kinds of opponents who will fatten up an RPI rating. Out of conference, OSU lost to Tulsa and Rhode Island, thereby hurting a resume in major need of improvement. Kansas State might have been facing a hungry opponent on Saturday afternoon, but the Cats were also facing a foe that hadn't made much of a dent against elite opposition. Precisely because they were rested (unlike the Texas team they beat on Monday; Texas played that game 48 hours after beating Texas A&M in overtime), the Wildcats should not have had cause to let down their guard, pace themselves, or otherwise conserve energies in the pursuit of season-long sustainability.

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Yet, it's hard to escape the sense that KSU felt a little full of itself and got too comfortable on its home court.

With 8:41 left in regulation, the Wildcats began to be outworked by the Cowboys. With Oklahoma State applying more consistent defensive pressure and revealing a level of hunger KSU lacked, the visitors from Stillwater, Okla., did not concede a made field goal to the Cats until the 2:40 mark of the second half. By that time, the Cowboys had established a 63-60 lead. When KSU's Jacob Pullen missed a driving layup from the left side of the lane with nine seconds left, and OSU guard Nick Sidorakis plucked the defensive board, a desperate late rally - charged with the emotion that was absent for the game's first 37 minutes - fell short.

Kansas State had fallen into the same pit that swallowed up Wichita State earlier in the day.

By: Matt Zemek
Big 12 Fans Staff Writer