Three weeks ago, Saturday’s game against Kansas State for the NCAA Tournament bubble-squatting BYU Cougars looked like a much-needed breather between the longest road trip of the season and a showdown with one of the blue bloods of college basketball, Kansas.
Well, as the great Bob Dylan sings: Things have changed.
After edging Cincinnati in their Big 12 opener and then dropping six straight games, the Wildcats have reeled off six straight wins and are now tied with the Cougars (16-8, 7-6) in the conference standings with seven league games remaining.
But that’s not all. Kansas State (13-11, 7-6) has defeated three nationally ranked teams during that stretch — Iowa State, Kansas and Arizona, including a jaw-dropping 80-61 win over the Cyclones in Ames. BYU is coming off a much-needed road split, bouncing back with a 73-69 win over West Virginia on Tuesday after a demoralizing 84-66 loss at Cincinnati.
Tipoff is at 7 p.m. MST at the Marriott Center.
“We know we still have work that we gotta continue to do, with the hottest team in the league coming in here, Kansas State,” BYU coach Kevin Young said on his coaches show Thursday night. “We are just hoping we can build off that (West Virginia win) and go take care of the next one.”
Young said Kansas State’s staff — led by third-year head coach Jerome Tang — should be credited for reviving a team that also had some struggles in nonconference play. Kansas State went hard to the transfer portal after the 2023-24 season, bringing in eight transfers, and it has taken awhile to develop chemistry and cohesion.
Illinois graduate forward Coleman Hawkins, who reportedly received a $2 million NIL deal, has helped engineer the turnaround, along with former Michigan point guard Dug McDaniel.
Only three players are back off K-State’s 2023-24 team that went 19-15 and lost in the first round of the NIT.
That came after KSU made the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in 2022-23.
“To be down 1-6 in the league, and to have that big of a turnaround, that’s pretty remarkable. In studying their team, it is a testament to shotmaking. Their 3-point shooting in that stretch has been much better than it was early on,” Young said. “They have found some confidence. They got multiple guys playing well. And we look forward to that challenge.”
The 18,000-seat Marriott Center will be new to Hawkins, McDaniel, sharpshooting junior guard Brendan Hausen (Villanova) and 7-footer Ugonna Onyenso, who started 14 games last year for Kentucky. But Tang knows all about it, after BYU downed K-State 72-66 there last February behind 14 points and eight rebounds from post player Fouss Traore and 10 points from senior wing Trevin Knell.
Knell is 5 points away from becoming the 54th player in BYU history to score 1,000 points in his career.
“To be able to play against one of the hottest teams in the country is a resume win (opportunity) for us,” Knell said Friday morning on BYUtv.
David N’Guessan, a 6-foot-9 senior, leads KSU with a 13.1 scoring average, while Hausen chips in 11.8 points per game and Hawkins is at 11.0, along with 6.8 rebounds per game.
“They got a big guy (N’Guessan, who is from The Netherlands) who can kinda hurt you all over the floor, which makes them unique as well,” Young said. “So we will have our hands full. Any team that has won six straight is clearly confident. It will be a good chance for our guys to build on what we did on the road.”
It won’t be a Quad 1 opportunity for BYU, but could become that if the Cats continue to rise in the NET Rankings. They are currently at No. 69 in the NET, 57 in Kenpom.com.
BYU is No. 39 in the NET and No. 34 in Kenpom.com, so it will be another Quad 1 opportunity for Kansas State, which is clearly better now than its profile indicates. Kenpom.com gives BYU a 73% chance of winning, which seems high.
“Arizona is one of the best teams in the country, so clearly Kansas State has found something. We will have to be at our best,” Young said.
In that Battle of Wildcats, Kansas State won despite going 1 of 19 from 3-point range. On the flip side, K-State held Arizona to 2 of 22 shooting from beyond the arc.
Obviously, the Cougars can’t afford to look ahead to Tuesday’s visit from Kansas (7 p.m. MST, ESPN), which was upset 81-73 by the Wildcats last Saturday in Manhattan, Kansas.
“We got some big opportunities coming up. This place will be rocking, for sure, for that game, and obviously the Kansas game before we go back out on the road (to face the Arizona schools),” Young said. “But that’s a testament to this league. Every game is a chance to play a good opponent, which helps us build up that resume.”
