Kansas State vs Monmouth: Open Game Thread

Your Kansas State Wildcats have had an interesting, yet still successful, start to the 2019-20 season.

After looking sluggish out of the gate in the opener against North Dakota State, the Wildcats turned up the energy and ended up winning comfortably against a potential NCAA Tournament team. They followed that up with a trip out to Las Vegas where the Cats needed five extra minutes to put away the host Runnin’ Rebels. So it hasn’t been the pretty two games, but the Wildcats are still 2-0 to start the season.

Next up is the start of the Fort Myers Tipoff. Like most of these non-conference tournaments, the first couple games will be played on the campuses of the schools on the “A” side of the tournament, with the “B” participants as the visitors. For the Wildcats, that means that “B” participants Monmouth, tonight’s opponent, and Arkansas-Pine Bluff, slated for next Tuesday, will be visiting Manhattan before their eventual trip out to Fort Myers, FL.

This should be a fairly easy game for the Wildcats, so we won’t dive too deeply into this contest. Monmouth returns 11 lettermen, including four starters, from a team that finished the 2018-19 season at 14-21 and 6th in the MAAC with a 10-8. Today’s game is one of seven-straight road games to open the season for the Hawks, who beat Lehigh 66-62 a week ago before falling to Hofstra 94-74 this past Saturday. Like K-State’s last two opponents, they like to shoot a lot of deep shots, and are hitting at 32.6% from beyond the arc so far this season.

So, let’s hope the Wildcats’ defense stays solid, and the offense can open up just a little (and please, let’s not go 4-23 from behind the arc again), and the Cats cruise to another victory.

Tonight’s game, scheduled for a 7:02pm CST tip, can be see on Big 12 Now on ESPN+ with Ben Boyle (play-by-play), Stan Weber (analyst), and Bridget Howard (sidelines) on the call. If you haven’t signed up for ESPN+ yet (and you can do so right here), you can listen to Wyatt Thompson (play-by-play) and Matt Walters (analyst) call the game on much of the K-State Sports Radio Network, and also available online via the TuneIn App and at K-StateSports.com.

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP

Kansas State Wildcats (2-0)

G: #00 Mike McGuirl
G: #2 Cartier Diarra
G/F: #20 Xavier Sneed
F: #23 Montavious Murphy
F: #14 Makol Mawien

Monmouth Hawks (1-1)

G: #3 Deion Hammond
G: #13 Marcus McClary
G: #25 Samuel Chaput
F: #4 Mustapha Traore
F: #21 Nikkei Rutty

Go Cats!

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