Basketball Thoughts through Monday Evening

What a weekend it was for Washburn mens and womens basketball. WU played Emporia State on Saturday and won both games. The men won 76-58 and the women won 78-52. Both are playing well coming down the stretch of the season and playing when it is the best time to be playing well so they can go strong into the post season.

The Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday afternoon did not perform well. They never got things going in the game against going in a 60-61 loss to Oklahoma State at OSU. This is the third loss on the season for the Jayhawks and about the forth or fifth time this season that they did not appear to be playing as a team. Nothing was clicking early on in the game and they certainly did not get their typical half where the team clicked. Nothing seemed to go well for them on Saturday. There was discussion that I heard about on Monday that it was caused by the death of cousins (or relatives) of two Kansas players; according to Coach Self, this took away from the focus of these two players on the game. If this it in fact the reason, perhaps those two players should have been left behind to deal with their grief.

Saturday night found the Kansas State Wildcats losing to Baylor. Beasley and Walker combined for seventy plus points and lost the game. I did not see any of this game, but looking at the stats afterwards it would appear that no one else showed up for the game except for Beasley and Walker. Scoring that many points between two players and not able to pull out the win; something seems wrong with this picture.

Tonight found Kansas State playing the Texas Longhorns on Big Monday at 8 pm on ESPN. It was overall a good game, but once again K-State could not close the deal. They let it get away from them late in the game while leading some of the first half and starting the second half tied. Beasley had a double-double in the first half to keep that streak alive. Meanwhile, Walker only had one point in the game. So I go back to ask what happened in the KSU vs. Baylor game? Seven-five points combined and then Beasley/Walker only combined for 31 points in this game which was another loss. What is wrong with this picture?

The next game for Kansas is Wednesday night and then next Saturday it is Kansas State vs. Kansas in Lawrence, KS. After the way these two teams have been playing, it is going to be a interesting weekend!

I have to point out that there are no undefeated teams left in the NCAA. Memphis finally lost on Saturday night to Tennessee. So, as we are a week away from March it is only going to get more interesting.