Wildcats didn’t expect KU to be vulnerable

By Chuck Woodling Mar 12, 2005

Thad Allender/Journal-World Photo

Kansas State's Fred Peete, left, and Kansas' Wayne Simien pursue a rebound. Chances are, Simien came down with it. He finished with 14 boards, while Peete had just four.

Kansas City, Mo. ? Jeremiah Massey and Lance Harris made one thing perfectly clear: The two Kansas State University basketball players were not licking their chops about playing a Keith Langford-less Kansas.

“We didn’t feel they were vulnerable,” Massey said. “We knew they would come out and fight this thing without Langford.”

Echoed Harris: “We didn’t look at it with Keith Langford not being in the ballgame. We looked at it as Kansas, and they’re seventh in the country, and we were going to try to stop them.”

Actually, the Wildcats did more or less what they wanted to do on defense. They forced the Jayhawks to take more shots from three-point range (25) than they took from inside the arc (23).

“We wanted to make it a perimeter game,” KSU coach Jim Wooldridge said, “and we got that accomplished. But we didn’t get enough offense.”

K-State shot a piddling 35.3 percent, missed 12 of 35 free-throw attempts and had only three points off the bench. Moreover, Kansas owned a bulging 42-26 rebounding advantage.

“I knew we’d have to do a lot of good things,” Wooldridge said. “Rebounding and the free-throw line were problems.”

Nevertheless, Kansas was nursing a 60-57 lead with six minutes remaining after Massey’s conventional three-point play.

“I felt pretty good at that point,” Wooldridge said, “but every time we’d get to the threshold, they’d make a play or we couldn’t put the ball in the basket.”

Harris, who finished with 23 points, nailed two of his seven three-point goals down the stretch, but Massey managed only two free throws in the last six minutes and settled for 17 points. He was playing gingerly late with four fouls.

“Personally, I got too frustrated,” Massey said. “I just let the refs get the best of me. I feel if I wouldn’t have done that, we would have had a whole lot better chance of winning.”

With a 17-12 record, the Wildcats seem certain to receive a bid to participate in the NIT.

“I think we’re right there, and I hope you will see us in that tournament next week,” Wooldridge said, “but obviously there’s nothing cut in stone right now.”