Takeaways from Kansas State basketball’s stressful overtime win against Oral Roberts
This was a more difficult (and stressful) game than expected for the Kansas State men’s basketball team.
Oral Roberts entered Bramlage Coliseum as a big underdog on Tuesday. Fifteen points to be exact. But the Golden Eagles made the Wildcats work for a 88-78 victory that was very much in doubt until Tylor Perry and Arthur Kaluma made enough clutch plays to survive in overtime.
K-State (5-2) remained undefeated at home this season with the victory. Head coach Jerome Tang is also now 7-0 in overtime games with the Wildcats. But those accomplishments didn’t come easy against an Oral Roberts (2-4) team that has been struggling with a new coach and roster.
Perry and Kaluma led K-State with 20 points each and Cam Carter scored 19. The Wildcats needed every single bucket they could muster against a feisty opponent that got 25 points from former Kansas signee Isaac McBride.
“I am thankful for our fans. I thought in overtime they gave us an energy energy boost that we did not have during the game,” Tang said. “That Oral Roberts team is a very good team. They are picked second in their league, but after playing (South Dakota State) and them I don’t know. They’re really good. We knew that they would be locked in for this game. It’s hard to win, so I am very proud of the guys and the way they responded in overtime.”
The Wildcats are next in action on Saturday against North Alabama.
Until then, here are some takeaways from their victory over Oral Roberts:
K-State showed toughness in the second half (and overtime)
Even though it was discouraging for K-State fans to watch the Wildcats waste an early 11-point lead and head into halftime tied with the Golden Eagles at 41-41, a close game may end up benefiting Tang’s team in the long run.
K-State had to prove something in the second half to hold off Oral Roberts. Then it had to survive in overtime.
These are the types of moments where you learn about a team. They can be much more valuable than a blowout.
To that end, the Wildcats showed a winning mindset by starting the second half on a 7-0 run and withstanding ORU’s runs the rest of the way — as the Golden Eagles refused to go away.
Perry came through with clutch 3-pointers when the Wildcats needed him to make shots on the perimeter, despite failing to score a single point in the first half. None of his shots was bigger than the one he buried with 1 minute, 2 seconds remaining in the game.
Oral Roberts had just tied the score at 68, and K-State needed a bucket to seize control of the game. With time winding down on the shot clock, Perry stepped into a 3 at the top of the key and watched it swish through the net. As an added bonus, he was fouled on the play and made the free throw to put the Wildcats ahead by four.
Turned out, that was a sign of things to come. Perry went on to score seven points in overtime, including a clutch floater in the lane that gave the Wildcats an 83-78 lead. Seconds later, he stole the inbounds pass from Oral Roberts and got to the free-throw line for two more points.
Perry has only been on campus a short while after transferring in from North Texas, but he is already the team’s go-to player in clutch situations.
“You just have to stay the course in games like this,” Perry said. “ORU, you have to tip your hat off to them. They came in with a great game plan and they executed really well for 40 minutes. It took us 45 minutes to get it done. But I just stayed the course, being a vet. Shoutout to my teammates for continuing to look for me and to find me and uplifting me throughout the game. It makes my job a lot easier.”
Kaluma also came up with several important buckets. His best one came on an and-one layup moments after Oral Roberts had taken a 78-76 lead in overtime. That ignited a 12-0 run to end the game.
Carter was hot early. Will McNair grabbed a number of important rebounds and made key shots on his way to 11 points. Perry and Kaluma were the closers.
K-State got important contributions from all over.
It wasn’t the best of signs that the Wildcats needed to work that hard to beat a team like the Golden Eagles, but it sure beats the alternative.
The Wildcats need to improve their defense
Perhaps the biggest reason that K-State took so long to pull away from Oral Roberts was the way it played on defense.
The Wildcats allowed the Golden Eagles to make 8 of 10 shots from 3-point range in the first half.
“Some people can’t do that in the gym by themselves,” Tang said. “That just shows what a good shooting team they are.”
After watching that many shots go through the net, K-State adjusted its attention to the perimeter and Oral Roberts began scoring at will in the paint. In the second half, it made 13 of 20 shots within the arc.
No matter what K-State focused on stopping, Oral Roberts found other ways to score.
“We didn’t want to give up 3s at all,” Tang said. “They average nine and a half 3s per game. The recipe for an upset is 10 made 3s in a game. So our goal in the first half was not to give up 3s and make them make tough 2s. We felt like if they were making tough 2s they couldn’t beat us. In the second half, we made them shoot and take tough 2s, and they made some of them. But in overtime you saw they missed some of them.”
K-State was at its worst defensively on the final ORU possession of the second half.
Oral Roberts set up a play with 5.7 seconds left, down two, and effortlessly got the ball inside to Sir Issac Herron for a dunk that sent the game to overtime.
The Golden Eagles averaged 1.16 points per possession and found easy ways to score throughout the game.
Macaleab Rich is a bully with the basketball in his hands
It’s impossible to miss Macaleab Rich on the basketball court.
The 6-foot-7 and 240-pound freshman wing from East St. Louis, Illinois, looks more like a linebacker than a hooper. He also has a large afro that makes him appear even bigger than he already is.
Rich uses his size to his advantage. Every time he drives toward the basket it is nearly impossible for a defender to stand his ground and prevent him scoring. Twice on Tuesday, Rich was able to bully his way into the lane against Oral Roberts defenders and finish with ease.
He has already shown his ability to throw down jaw-dropping dunks in previous games. Now he is proving he can score in a few other ways.
It is rare to see a freshman as strong as Rich. He should be fun to watch as he spends more time in the weight room and matures as a college basketball player.
Quiet first half from Perry
Kansas State’s leading scorer walked away from Bramlage with 20 points on Tuesday, but Perry was held without a single point in the first half.
That continued an odd stretch of games for Perry in which he has been quiet for long stretches before figuring things out and scoring in bunches late.
Tang would love to get more consistency out of Perry, but neither coach nor player has figured out how to make that happen.
For now, Perry is fine with slow starts as long as his team is scoring.
“I’ve been doing it my whole life,” Perry said. “Go back and check. It has always been like that. It’s not a thing I’m doing on purpose. I think I just go at my own pace. Sometimes in the first half thing may not be clicking for me. In some games it does, but it’s not anything that I feel like anyone else is doing. I love getting my teammates involved. Cam had it going super early. Sometimes I just need to get out the way.”
Former KU signee Issac McBride put on a show for Oral Roberts
It is extremely rare for K-State basketball players to give flowers to an opposing player, especially one that isn’t well known like Oral Roberts guard Issac McBride. But the Wildcats felt like they had no choice but to compliment the way he played in this game.
Roberts, who originally signed with Kansas out of high school and spent one season at Vanderbilt before settling in at Oral Roberts, made 10 of 16 shots on his way to a game-high 25 points against the Wildcats.
“He played a great game and things were going good for him,” Carter said. “I’m a competitor. I kind of took offense to it. I kind of felt embarrassed because I have never had someone give me buckets like that.”
He scored the majority of his points around the basket but also drained one 3-pointer.
K-State could do little to stop him.
Playing against a scorer like that, and needing overtime to win, made for a stressful night of basketball at Bramlage Coliseum.
