Kansas State's dive into darkness continues. Another devastating loss plagued its season on Saturday night, as the Wildcats dropped to TCU for the second time this season.
Interim head coach Matthew Driscoll says the script was nothing new. The same mistakes and late-game blunders were once again the cause of the Wildcats' downfall.
"Do you have a record player? Have you ever seen the 33-inch vinyls? Have you ever had one that had a bad scratch on it? That's what we have," Driscoll said in his TCU postgame interview. "We put it on the record player, and it plays and plays and plays, and then it hits that scratch, and it just does this. We get there, and then for whatever reason, we just can't break through."
Kansas State turned the ball over 18 times to TCU's eight. The Horned Frogs scored 28 points off those turnovers, as opposed to Kansas State scoring just six on TCU's mistakes. Nate Johnson and PJ Haggerty led their team in scoring, but combined for 11 turnovers.
"They got 28 points off our turnovers and 12 steals," Driscoll said. "You can't guard a live ball. It's impossible. That's the most disappointing part. We have such good guards, yet it seems like we either over dribble or get too deep. You know the red zone in football? The reason why it's so hard to score is that the angles are so much tighter. Well, that's the same way in basketball. It's a red zone between the women's ash and the second hash."
Driscoll expressed his disappointment with a golden opportunity to shake up some of the Big 12 standings before the Tournament.
"I thought we had at least five that we lost in [that 'red zone'] alone," Driscoll said. "And if I'm not mistaken, there were like two in the second half that we got the rebound and they took it off us and scored. Those are the things where we have to shore that up. I felt very confident coming into the game, I felt great. It was a double-edged sword because we played well at home against Baylor, and we had a chance to stack it. We had a chance to knock [TCU] out of the NCAA Tournament and put a bad loss on their resume. That was something that we talked about to give some kind of encouragement or motivation to go out and play, that it's not just another game."
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