The women’s basketball team found themselves with plenty of good opportunities to pull off a solid win against Texas, but an onslaught of threes from the Longhorns overpowered the Wildcats. They fell 71-63, securing their second consecutive Big 12 Conference loss.
“You look at the stat sheet and you say we outscored them on turnovers, we outscored them in the paint, we outscored them on fastbreaks,” Kansas State head coach Jeff Mittie.
“These were things that you would think would be pretty good but at the end of the day, our turnovers and that eight different players hit threes for them today, so give them credit for knocking those down, but I think we were our own worst enemy with the turnovers.”
K-State (7-8, 1-3) started out the game shooting 0-7 from the field, giving Texas (11-6, 3-2) a great opportunity to jump out to a solid lead. The Wildcats rallied, shrinking the deficit to just one at the end of the first quarter thanks to seven points from sophomore guard Christianna Carr.
The game remained relatively close throughout the first five minutes of the second quarter, but a 7-0 run from Texas at the end of the first half gave the Longhorns a 35-26 lead going into the locker room, outscoring the Wildcats 17-9 in the second quarter.
Texas kept the momentum rolling in the third quarter, going up by 13 points with three minutes to play at 50-37. Just like in the first quarter, K-State rallied.
Thanks to three-pointers from sophomore guard Savannah Simmons and Carr, the Wildcats scored nine out of the next eleven points, bringing the score to 52-46 with the Wildcats just barely trailing going into the final quarter of play.
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The fourth quarter was full of ups and downs for the Wildcats. Texas built a 60-48 lead to start and K-State followed it up with a run, once again shrinking the Longhorn lead.
Even with the strong play by K-State at the start of the fourth, Texas had their way offensively in the final minutes of the game, proving to be too much for the Wildcats.
“We had a chance to win the game today when we didn’t do some things well,” Mittie said. “We have to shore those things up, and if we shore those things up we’ll have a lot of opportunities left, so that would be the encouraging part.”
K-State finished the night shooting 36.7 percent from the field and just 19.2 percent from behind the arc with 24 turnovers. Senior guard Angela Harris led Wildcat scorers with 16 points.
Texas finished shooting 38.7 percent from the field, with the big difference being their three-point shooting at 40.7 percent.
Next on the docket for K-State is a trip to Ames, Iowa, where the Wildcats will take on Iowa State at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The Wildcats will put their six-game Big 12 road win-streak on the line against the Cyclones. The game will be available on CyclonesTV and on the K-State Sports Network.
