Cats Stampede Passed Bison in Season Opener.
Your Kansas State Men's Basketball Team opened the season at home last night by hosting the Bison of North Dakota State. If that school sounds familiar to you it should as our Athletic Director Gene Taylor and Head Football Coach Chris Klieman were previously employed in those same positions at NDSU. This article is not however about taking a phenomenal Coach or A.D from them, it is about taking a win from them last night in The Octagon of Doom.
KSU did struggle throughout this game, including being down by 1 after the first 20 minutes, before they were able to pull away in the second half. The Cats were led in the scoring column by Junior Cartier Diarra, who shot a little over 33% and scored 23 points. The Bison managed to come away with an equal amount of rebounds on the night as both teams had 39. Makol Mawien had the highest individual mark with 10 and tacking on 15 points for a double-double. True-freshman Montavious Murphy led the team with 33 minutes of game time but failed to put up much on the stat sheet. I had high expectations in this game for Antonio Gordon, however he only played 8 minutes and failed to score.
As a team the Cats didn't really do anything outstanding. They shot an average 42.6% from the field and a sub-par 28% from the newly extended 3-point line. They also missed 5 of 14 free throw attempts which has always been an achilles heel for Kansas State Basketball. The next game will be this upcoming Saturday against a UNLV team that has been tough in the past. The game will be played in Las Vegas and you can watch it at 3pm Manhattan time on ESPN3.
Keith is a KSU graduate who bleeds purple. He lived in Manhattan for a year after graduation before moving to Missouri, where he now resides.