K-State No-Shows Against Bowling Green, 82-66

The Kansas State Wildcats never showed up, and as a result dropped an absolutely excuseless stinker to the Bowling Green Falcons, 82-66.

This recap is going to get all the effort the Wildcats (5-3) summed up against the visitors (6-2).

K-State never led. Bowling Green got out to a molasses-slow 7-2 lead, and the two teams more-or-less traded buckets for most of the first half. However, the Falcons closed the half on a 16-4 lead to take a 49-35 lead into the locker room at half.

The Cats committed 4 turnovers in the half and still coughed up 49 points.

It didn’t take long for Bowling Green to eventually stretch the lead out to 17 in the second half. Despite a couple of mini-runs bringing the gap down to as few as 8, K-State never truly threatened – the only thing undetermined would be just how many Bowling Green would win by. The Cats would continue to trip over themselves figuratively-speaking, and the Falcons cruised to a 16-point win.

The Cats committed 6 turnovers for the game and gave up 82 points.

Bowling Green has not defeated a Power 4 team since 2005. They are picked to finish seventh in the MAC this season.

David Castillo got a start over Elias Rapieque tonight, and turned it into a career-high 22 points. We’re not talking about anyone else tonight. No one deserves it.

BG’s Sam Towns had a great game, with a career-high 27 points, and 8 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals. Javontae Campbell and Javon Ruffin both tossed in 17 apiece.

Three One In The Key:

We’re talking about one thing tonight. We can lament defense (or lack therof), or rebounding (or lack thereof), or whatever specific aspect of the game we want (that we showed no aptitude for). This team showed no heart tonight. It was a repeat of the crap we saw last season. And the crap of the season before that. Zero heart. Zero on-floor leadership. There’s a lot of talent on the floor at any given point…but no heart. All the early 90+ point games were fools’ gold, and the Cal game should have been the canary in the coal mine.

This team has no identity. They can’t play defense, they can’t rebound, they don’t really hustle, they rarely play together in sync, and they don’t care enough about scoring the ball to truly rely on offense to win games. All this team has proven through 8 games is they can make shots against teams that are completely outclassed by the athleticism we can put on the floor.

We got outrebounded. We got out-assisted. We gave up 46% from beyond the arc, and 45% in all, to a team that is sub-200 (i.e. bottom third in NCAA) in offense this year. At home. If you went to this game, braving the first winter storm of the year to do so, I genuinely am sorry for you. The Cats played rec ball tonight. There was no plan, no execution, and most importantly, no heart.

This game wasn’t close. And that’s completely unacceptable.

Jerome Tang is not a basketball coach. He might be some sort of motivational speaker, or youth pastor, or hell, I don’t know. He sure knows how to warn us all about the dangers of fentanyl. But he’s shown absolutely no ability to lead a team from the sideline, and the entire assembly of success he’s riding on at K-State can be traced to several NBA talents that could run the team for him. He might be one heck of a recruiter. Or a bag man. Or a smooth talker. He can convince player’s parents that God loves them, and by golly he does, too. He can Wabash with the best of ‘em, and he’s overly personable.

But these teams keep making the same mistakes, year after year. Keep coming up short in the same fundamentally absent ways, year after year. Keep having issues where the players on the floor look like they just don’t really care if they win or not, year after year. And keep having to replace virtually the whole team, year after year.

He might be the nicest guy on the planet. But based on the results, he ain’t a basketball coach.

NEXT

K-State welcomes Seton Hall (I type Seaton Hall every damn time, for obvious reasons) to Manhattan on Saturday, 12/6.