It took a fourth-quarter comeback, but the K-State women’s basketball team beat the Fort Hays State Tigers Thursday night in Bramlage Coliseum in an exhibition game, with a score of 48-46.
Senior guard Kayla Goth missed tonight’s game with an undisclosed injury, and freshman guard Christianna Carr, a former five-star recruit, got the start at point guard in her spot.
Neither team came out of the gates firing on all cylinders, in fact, it took until almost two minutes for a basket to be scored. That first bucket of the season came at the hands of sophomore guard Rachel Ranke.
“Not a good offensive performance tonight,” head coach Jeff Mittie said. “We do not play very well together as a team right now. We have not had a lot of continuity in practice.”
Ranke would finish the game with 12 points and six rebounds, she was the leading scorer.
A back and forth first quarter ultimately saw the Tigers take a 13-10 lead into the quarter. That quarter gave way to a nearly disastrous second quarter for the Wildcats.
At one point, the Tigers were on a 9-0 run that lasted over two minutes of game time. That stretch was punctuated three turnovers by K-State and poor shot selection across the board.
Despite the Wildcats’ cold spell in the second quarter, it would be the Tigers who would ultimately finish the quarter scoreless in the last three-and-a-half minutes and allow K-State to cut their deficit to 23-20 by half.
K-State shot 0-14 from three and only 9-35 from the floor in the first half. They also lost seven turnovers. Sophomore center Maary Lakes led the team with six points in the half.
Early in the fourth quarter, Ranke powered the Wildcats back to a 25-24 deficit with a pair of early buckets.
Turnovers again squashed a Wildcat opportunity to seize momentum in the third quarter. They turned it over six times in six minutes to give the Tigers an 11-0 run in that time span.
K-State finished the game with 19 total turnovers.
“I just go back to the continuity of us passing the ball and being confident that the player to the left of me is making the cut I expect her to make and the player to the right of me is playing with that player as well,” Mittie said.
The Tigers had a stretch where they shot one-for-nine in the third quarter, but K-State went one for 11 and could not take advantage of the poor shooting. K-State trailed 36-33 at the end of the third quarter.
K-State showed some life early in the fourth quarter and finally took a 39-38 lead with six-and-a-half minutes to play.
Fort Hays State fought back in the final minutes to make the game close. They tied it up at 46 with 45 seconds left after a foul by junior forward Peyton Williams.
Williams would redeem the foul by putting a post move on her defender and scoring a basket to take a two-point lead with just 19 seconds left.
She would turn around and stuff a shot at the buzzer to seal the Wildcat win.
“It was just like what any of us were trying to do, I just tried to do my job the best as I could,” Williams said.
