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BLOOMINGTON — When Indiana basketball added a home game against Kansas State to its nonconference schedule in late June, it felt almost like an afterthought.
Surely, neutral-site games against Marquette and Louisville, plus the long-awaited renewal of the Kentucky series, would take more serious billing. The Wildcats looked like a noteworthy name on an otherwise forgettable nonconference home slate.
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It turns out they might provide our most important measure of this Hoosiers team before the new year.
“Wow,” IU coach Darian DeVries said Monday when asked for his thoughts on Kansas State. “That’s what I say about the way they’re playing offense right now.”
There was no disrespect in overlooking Kansas State, when it joined the schedule mid-summer. Kentucky, Marquette and Louisville each enjoy historical connections to Indiana, to one degree or another.
Louisville and IU, not quite rivals, still enjoy a mutual, regional contention. Indiana played Marquette on its way to the 1976 national title, before Marquette won the same tournament a year later. Kentucky is Kentucky.
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The Hoosiers have faced Kansas State 31 times, but not since a one-point win the opening round of the 1998 Maui Invitational. Last season, Jerome Tang’s team finished underwater both in the Big 12 and overall, the Wildcats’ postseason lasting only through a brief stay in their conference tournament.
Tang did not waste the offseason though, pulling together a new starting lineup via the transfer portal and, in Elias Rapique’s case, Germany.
It’s working so far. Players who last season played their trade with Memphis, Akron, Monmouth, UNC Wilmington and ALBA Berlin now anchor one of the most explosive attacks in America.
A top-40 offense nationally per KenPom, through six games Kansas State has yet to score fewer than 84 points in a single 40 minutes. Four times in those six, the Wildcats have scored 93 or more, and they’re one of the 10 most accurate 3-point shooting…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/why-kansas-state-poses-revealing-193420026.html
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Publish date : 2025-11-24 19:34:00
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