Instant Recap: Oklahoma State Falls to Kansas State 85-57

The Cowboys showed up in Manhattan looking for their first conference road win and their first regular season sweep. They ended up getting thumped and sent back to Stillwater with a taste of their own medicine and their worst loss of the year.

Oklahoma State fell to Kansas State 85-57 after committing a season-high in turnovers and digging themselves a first-half hole that was much too deep to escape from.

The Cowboys defeated the Wildcats in Stillwater earlier this year thanks to a dominant first half by the home team. This time the Cats had their turn.

The first three minutes couldn’t have gone much worse for the Pokes. Before the Cowboys scored their first two points at the 16:55 mark, OSU was in a 10-0 hole. Over those first three minutes and change, the Cowboys were 0-for-3 from the field to Kansas State’s 4-for-4 start. What’s worse, the Cowboys had three turnovers that accounted for eight of those 10 points. The Wildcats had none.

Despite a few short bursts of momentum that went OSU’s way, the game pretty much continued that was over the next 37 minutes.

The Wildcats are fresh off an upset win over No. 23 West Virginia. In that game, they started off 19-2. They were up 15-4 before the Cowboys finally started to make up some ground. K-State went on another 7-0 run midway through the half to push its lead to 25-11 before OSU rattled off its own 7-0 run to pull within 25-18. But then K-State put the game in a choke slam with an 11-0 run to double the Cowboys at 36-18. By that point, the Cowboys were buried too deep to be able to crawl back out. To add more dirt on top, K-State ended the first half on a 9-0 run.

In OSU’s win over K-State on Jan. 7, the Cowboys held a 19-point lead at halftime and went into the break on a 15-0 run. This time around, the Cats outscored the Pokes by 22 at the break, ending the period on that 9-0 run.

The Cowboys found themselves down 32 just about four minutes into the second half. Credit that ballooned lead to another run, a 12-0 surge which was a continuation of a 23-2 run. The closest OSU got the rest of the way was 24, and the Cowboys were back down 32 when the clock passed five minutes to go.

The Cowboys’ record for turnovers in a game is 31, coming all the way back in 1993 — strangely also against Kansas State. They had over half that at intermission.

Oklahoma State came in averaging 14.8 turnovers per game, and K-State only forced 11.9 per outing. But the Cowboys committed 16 turnovers for 22 Wildcat points just in the first half alone. That just so happened to match the 22-point deficit the Cowboys dragged into the visitors’ locker room. In the loss to Texas Tech on Sunday, the Cowboys set a new season-high with 20 turnovers committed, which led to 20 enemy points. They upped that mark to 21 on Wednesday which accounted for 28 points for the Wildcats. That just so happened to be their margin of loss.

If there was one bright spot for the Cowboys, it was Chi Chi Avery who continues to perform off the bench. He led all scorers with 22 points, one off his season-high, while shooting 7-of-8 from the field and 2-for-3 from deep. Avery also had four rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal. Bryce Thompson added 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting.

Abou Ousmane had a season-high 27 points in the first meeting between these teams, so he was absolutely at the top of Jerome Tang’s scouting report. But that script was also completely flipped, in head-scratching fashion. Credit the Cats’ ability to deny Ousmane defensively — he was 0-for-4 on the night in 17 minutes — but also point to a completely disjointed offense replete with those 21 coughed-up possessions.

Also, credit the Cowboys’ perimeter defense, or lack thereof for a lights-out night for K-State. The Wildcats went 12-for-23 from 3-point range. That 52% is the worst given up by OSU all year. A lot of those were wide open shots due to slow rotations or just plain shooters being left wide-open. Four Wildcats scored in double figures, led by Brendan Hausen with 18 (on just six shots!). He drained all five of his 3s.

With their third-straight loss, the Cowboys fall to 10-10 and 2-7 in Big 12 play. Next up, they’ll return home this weekend to host Utah at 2 p.m. Saturday at Gallagher-Iba Arena. The Utes are 12-8 and 4-5 in conference after defeating Cincinnati on Tuesday night.