LAWRENCE — Kansas State women’s basketball head coach Jeff Mittie kept returning to the word “poise” Sunday afternoon.
That was the trait he felt his team lacked in its 58-55 defeat at Kansas, its fourth consecutive road loss.
The 10th-ranked Wildcats made just one field goal in the game’s final 4 minutes, a 3-pointer from freshman guard Taryn Sides with 12 seconds remaining. Meanwhile, the Jayhawks hit five of their last six shots to flip a 4-point deficit into a 6-point lead.
“We’ve got to be better than that; that’s the bottom line,” Mittie said. “We’ve got to be better, and we’ve got to play with more poise. I didn’t like us today in that area.”
Mittie called timeout after K-State (23-5, 12-4 Big 12) fell behind 17-6 in the first quarter, and the Wildcats responded with a 22-5 run to take a 28-22 lead halfway through the second. The Jayhawks (16-11, 9-7 Big 12) cut their deficit to 2 at halftime, and K-State built up its largest cushion at 37-30 with 6 1/2 minutes left in the third.
Kansas tied the game at 39-39 with a 9-2 scoring spree and briefly led 42-41, but the Wildcats pulled ahead 51-47 with 6:37 to play in the fourth quarter.
That was when they stopped putting the ball through the net, allowing the Jayhawks to outscore them 11-4 the remainder of the game.
“We’ve been in a lot of tight ball games,” Mittie said. “We should have confidence. You don’t win them all, but we’ve won a lot of close ball games.”
K-State’s problem wasn’t defense. After all, it held Kansas without a field goal for nearly 8 1/2 minutes during the late third and early fourth quarters, which ought to have allowed it to create some separation.
However, when Jayhawks guard Holly Kersgieter broke the Jayhawks’ dry spell with a jumper, it cut their deficit to just 2 points at 49-47.
The Wildcats tallied their second-lowest point total in part because the majority of their first-wave players accounted for very little offensive production. Senior center Ayoka Lee put up 14 points — albeit on 7-of-21 shooting — but the rest of K-State’s starters combined for 18 points on 7-of-19 shooting.
Sides contributed a career-high 11 points to pace the Wildcats’ bench players, who chipped in 23.
Mittie said his players had a tendency to throw the ball to Lee down low and watch her try to score without offering much themselves.
“There’s being aggressive and always being a threat, and then there’s just participating in the game,” Mittie said. “There were points of this game where I felt like, offensively, it just looked like we were just moving the ball around the perimeter and not making things real hard for Kansas. We have to get our players more aggressive and more of a threat offensively.”
Statistically speaking, the game was nearly even, with each team shooting a percentage in the low 40s, giving up 11 turnovers and logging a rebounding total in the mid-30s.
The Jayhawks got an upper hand at the foul line, where they went 9 of 12 overall and 6 of 8 in the fourth period. K-State, meanwhile, made 3 of 5 free throws.
Mittie said there were a handful of occasions late in which his squad fouled when it wasn’t necessary.
“We’re not playing with the same poise as we were,” Mittie said, referring to his team’s 5-0 start to the year in road games. “We’re not playing with the same level of freedom. It feels like we’re maybe trying to do too much. … Trying to do too much, trying to overthink things a little bit.”
Despite the loss — which severely damaged the Wildcats’ chances of winning a Big 12 title — Mittie expects his team to respond well.
“We’ll get it figured out,” he said. “We’ve got a good group. This is a tough one to swallow because we had some good things going. But it’s hard. The league’s good. Kansas is good. They’ve played as good a schedule as anybody.”
Sides’ key role
Sides, who was the only K-State player in double figures aside from Lee, made three of the team’s four 3-pointers, including the one that trimmed the gap to 3 points with 12 seconds remaining.
After the Wildcats forced a jump-ball turnover to regain possession with 10 seconds left, Sides tossed up a potential game-tying heave, but it fell away as time expired.
Mittie said Sides has earned the opportunity to play extended minutes and in key situations as a result of her performances in practice and games.
“It looks good when she makes shots, but I can point to things in this game that she was doing well without the ball going in,” Mittie said. “I thought she had a good pace in transition. I thought she really moved the ball well to the right player. I thought it was a good performance by her.”
Up next
K-State will return home for a final time Wednesday when it hosts Iowa State.
The Cyclones (16-10, 10-6 Big 12) throttled BYU 74-49 on Saturday and beat the Wildcats 96-93 in double overtime in Ames, Iowa, on Feb. 14.
