The men’s basketball team suffered its seventh straight loss in Big 12 Conference play, falling 70-59 against the Longhorns at home Saturday. It was a rough loss on full display in front of a national television audience.
The Wildcats are playing at a near 20 year low. The losing streak is the lowest it’s been since the 2000-2001 season.
“Teams will just make shots against us, but the easy ones in the first half were just killers,” head coach Bruce Weber said.
By halftime, the Wildcats were already down by 19 points.
“It’s tough to fight uphill and keep fighting uphill,” senior forward Xavier Sneed said. “We need to come off and start the game a whole lot better than we did.”
Kansas State managed to turn the ball over 17 times, giving up 19 points off of turnovers alone. The Wildcats scored only 11 points off of Texas’ 18 turnovers.
“We let them get easy transition buckets off the bounce passes, and it turned into the easy layups that they got,” Sneed said.
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Men’s basketball drops seventh straight in 70-59 loss to Texas
This low-water mark for the season comes right before the toughest stretch of the year for K-State. They will head to Waco, Texas, to play 24-2 Baylor and then come back home to host 24-3 Kansas.
“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Weber said.” “You have nothing to lose, no one expects you to win. Come and play.”
The Wildcats’ opportunities to shock the world against Baylor and Kansas are followed up by battles with the two other conference bottom-feeders — Oklahoma State and Iowa State. Those games are opportunities to move out of last-place in the Big 12.
“Right now, just worrying about the game plan for the next game,” Sneed said of his mindset going into the final stretch. “Come out here and keep the team encouraged for the next game and keep playing my basketball game that I know I can play.”
A win in any of the these four games would keep the Wildcats from reaching the lows of Tom Asbury’s final season. In the 1999-2000 season, the Wildcats saw an 11 game losing streak.
