After Kansas State basketball’s loss to Bowling Green, is it already time to panic?

MANHATTAN — A frustrated Jerome Tang called out his players’ effort and toughness after their embarrassing loss to Bowling Green, sounding the alarm eight games into the Kansas State basketball season.

The Wildcats won their first five games and have now lost their last three, with difficult matchups on the horizon. There is a real possibility that the Wildcats could be 6-5 by the end of next week.

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“We didn’t deserve to win,” Tang said on Monday night. “We didn’t deserve to wear the K-State uniform tonight.”

Kansas State’s last three games have been worrisome, but none worse than what transpired in its 82-66 loss to Bowling Green, a program that hadn’t beaten a Power 4 opponent in 20 years entering Monday, Dec. 1.

Defensive struggles, which have been under a microscope through the first month, continued. The offense that looked explosive and capable of scoring in the 80s and 90s each night was also absent, while K-State was held below 70 for the second consecutive game.

Against Bowling Green, Tang had to go deep in his bench to find a spark that never ignited, all while limiting star guard PJ Haggerty to just 32 minutes, including a stretch in the second half, with Abdi Bashir Jr. only playing 22. Perhaps it was a message from Tang to two of his top scorers, while a rotation featuring CJ Jones and Taj Manning was on the floor, playing better defense.

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That doesn’t even mention that Marcus Johnson made his season debut in the first half, appearing in two minutes, while true freshman Andrej Kostic, who is reportedly on a $2.5 million NIL deal, didn’t play a second.

“It boiled down to a focus and effort thing,” Tang said. “There’s no X’s and O’s for that. There’s no sub for it. We didn’t play hard enough.”

Maybe there were indications of this level of play throughout the Wildcats’ 5-0 start, and even dating back to the exhibition games, while much of the focus was on an entertaining offense that looked like one of the nation’s best in the early…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/kansas-state-basketballs-loss-bowling-090622264.html

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Publish date : 2025-12-03 09:06:00

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