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Between the zillion turnovers on simple plays like entry passes, or standing up with the ball after diving on the floor, or missed layups, or shoving guys, or more bad general effort and attitudes, a hammer fell on the final nail to this Kansas State Wildcats season.
It's been a lot of things, this year, and we can now go ahead and call it lost as well.
Some will be quicker than a Jevon Thomas turnover to blame loss No. 14 on the embattled head coach, and they might be right. On that note, however, I'd at least offer that it's become obvious Bruce Weber, come hell or high water, isn't going to let bad attitudes be rewarded with playing time down the stretch. He proved it again in Fort Worth.*
*The bad news, of course, is that he had to spend another game fighting Marcus Foster, who just really doesn't seem like he's interested in changing his course, and now Wesley Iwundu, who played four minutes in the second half. Factor in that neither Thomas nor Foster started Wednesday's game against TCU, with Foster seeing three minutes in the second half, and, well ... it's just more of the same, unfortunately.
The final eight minutes of the first half, which saw a one-point deficit mushroom-cloud its way to a 20-point halftime spread, incinerated every last breath of hope for this year and leaves this Wildcats team (13-14, 6-8) smellin' like a rose 'cause it's dead and bloated.
It's hard to say where things need to go in the future because there still are a few weeks left in this season. Guys still have to go to practice. They still have to go on road trips. They still have to at least act like they want to be a part of this program. That's a really scary proposition considering Nino Williams' words regarding Foster.
Live and die by that, and your team, though half alive, feels mostly dead.
Before tonight, it was still worth holding on to something, anything, that could be marked as improvement. Consistency, effort, attitude - pick any one of those and hope for the best through the end of February into March and then into the offseason.
That's all gone now.
This group felt toxic back in early January, and it finally sludged its way into a completely meaningless season. It's now a group of players that feels ripe for change.