Long Kansas State basketball scoring drought sets TCU up for Jameer Nelson game winner
MANHATTAN — In the end, all anyone will remember is TCU guard Jameer Nelson's off-balance 3-pointer with 1.1 second left that sent Kansas State basketball to a heartbreaking 75-72 loss Saturday at Bramlage Coliseum.
The Wildcats even defended the play according to plan, only to have Nelson, a senior transfer from Delaware, deliver the dagger with time running out.
"Big-time shot, big-time player," K-State coach Jerome Tang said. "Games like this, guys just have to make plays, and he did. So, credit to them."
With that one play, K-State lost for the sixth time in seven games, and worse fell at home for the second time in a Big 12 Conference where road victories are hard to come by. They are now 15-10 overall and 5-7 in the Big 12 with six games — split evenly between home and away — remaining.
And indeed, TCU (18-7, 7-5) produced the game-winning play after K-State had erased a 10-point deficit to get even on Cam Carter's two clutch free throws with 15.6 seconds to go. But the Wildcats' issues essentially boiled down to two fatal scoring droughts that put them in that position.
Related: Kansas State basketball fails to land knockout punch against BYU
K-State overcame a 5-minute, 45-second dry spell in the first half to lead 28-24 at the break, but it was after the Wildcats took a 49-41 lead on Tylor Perry's two free throws with 12:30 left in the game that things unraveled.
TCU scored the next 12 points to go in front, 53-49, and after two Carter free throws to end the drought at 3:43, the Horned Frogs reeled off eight more points and led 61-51.
"It began with the 18-2 run," said K-State forward Arthur Kaluma, who finished with 11 points, five rebounds and three assists. The spurt was actually 20-2, but point taken.
"If you just think back on a lot of that, if the run was 15-2, we go to overtime. If it was a 10-2 run, we win the game. It's just the little things."
Tang, who now must get the Wildcats ready to head to Texas for an 8 p.m. game on Monday, wasn't surprised by how the game unfolded.
Related: Kansas State basketball's furious rally comes up short in loss to BYU
"Pretty much every game they've played, they've either been up big and the other teams come back, or the other team has been up big and they've come back," Tang said of TCU. "They're just a team of runs. They play in spurts, and so we knew that that was going to happen.
"But we also knew that when we couldn't extend it, that they would make a comeback and when they extended that, they would give us the opportunity to come back."
But K-State's second-half stretch of over six minutes without a field goal was too much to overcome. The Wildcats never led after that.
Point guard Tylor Perry, who led K-State with 24 points but had three turnovers against two assists, blamed the droughts on himself, even if he was the Wildcats' most productive player on offense.
"It was just the offense getting stagnant," he said. "That's on the point guard. You can't blame it on nobody else.
"So, simply not executing like we were supposed to, and that's on me."
K-State limited its turnovers to 14, one below the season average, against a TCU team that lives off opponents' mistakes, and turned the Horned Frogs over 14 times as well. But the Wildcats' other recurring issue, denying offensive rebounds, were a problem.
"They're 22-8 on the offensive glass," said Tang, whose Wildcats were on the short end in second-chance points, 20-8. "We couldn't overcome that, and especially when we don't shoot the ball well."
K-State shot a respectable 47.9% to 42.9 for TCU but made just 1 of 15 3-pointers. The Wildcats did have a 44-30 scoring advantage in the paint.
Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on Twitter at @arnegreen.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Dry spells on offense too much for Kansas State basketbal to overcome
