The Kansas State Wildcats women’s basketball team salvaged their last regular-season road trip with a 68-65 win over the TCU Horned Frogs Saturday night in Fort Worth, Texas.
It was their first win since losing to the West Virginia Mountaineers Wednesday. They finished their final two-game road trip with one win and one loss on the trip.
Senior guard Kindred Wesemann led the team in scoring for the fourth time in four games, scoring 19 points on 7-17 shooting from the floor and 4-10 shooting from 3-point range. Wesemann leads the team in points-per-game this season with an average of 14.2, including a 17.75 average in the last four games.
Junior guard Kaylee Page played well off the bench, hitting 5-12 from the floor and 4-10 from 3-point range. Wesemann and Page each also made one free throw, with Page scoring 15 points total. Senior center Breanna Lewis had 10 points and four blocks, with her blocks matching the total blocks by all of TCU’s starters in Saturday’s game.
In another slow start for the Wildcats, the team fell behind by as many as 11 points in the first quarter and 13 in the first half. They trailed the Horned Frogs 23-14 after the first quarter.
Slowly, though, the Wildcats chipped away.
They cut the Horned Frogs’ lead from nine points to eight going into halftime, then down to three points going into the fourth quarter. Then, with less than two minutes left in regulation, Wesemann hit back-to-back 3-pointers to give the Wildcats their first lead. It didn’t hold. But after TCU made a pair of free throws, a Wesemann layup gave the Wildcats the lead for good.
The gritty performance by the Wildcats overcame a stellar night by Horned Frogs’ redshirt sophomore forward Amy Okonkwo.
Okonkwo had 24 points off the bench Saturday, which nearly matched the combined total of the Horned Frogs’ starters, which was 27. Okonkwo is averaging 10.3 points-per-game this season, good for third on her team, despite being seventh on the team in average playing-time.
Okonkwo will likely be one the Wildcats have to prepare for when they play the Horned Frogs in the future.
Next up, the No. 24 Wildcats play the No. 19 Oklahoma Sooners at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Bramlage Coliseum.
