Slate: K-State Continues to Roll, Beating Baylor 90-83 in Waco

Previously

The football team picked up a commitment from Butler County defensive tackle Tyquilo Moore. The 6-4, 295-pound prospect sounds excited to join his junior college teammate, fullback Luke Sowa (great name; absolutely love it) on Bill Snyder’s squad. JT VanGilder brought you the particulars.

AMS reported on Dean Wade being named Big 12 Player of the Week. Hard to believe it is his first ever weekly conference honor. Also hard to believe that attempts to nickname the Dean “DeanWolf” will ever gain traction.

Leading up to the big road test at Baylor, Jon Morse posted his pregame primer. Turns out the odds-makers in Vegas are full of beans, and the ones at OddShark are full of something fouler than that. All of which goes to show, again, that you should not wager your hard-earned money on sports, boys and girls.

During the game, we gathered the #Family for a comment fest in the Open Game Thread. 264 comments by midnight may be a record for a midweek, 8 p.m, Bruce-coached game against an opponent other than the mythical avian Civil War terrorists. That should be enough qualifiers to cover it, I’d think. It was fun from start to finish. The bandwagon is getting lively, but there’s still room for you.

Men’s Basketball

It might have been “Little Monday,” because it was on ESPNU and was not broadcast by the A-Team. But Bruce and the guys picked up a big 90-83 win against fellow NCAA tournament bubble-dweller Baylor in Waco. With TCU rebounding from Saturday’s loss to club West Virginia, 82-73, we wake this morning to find K-State tied with the Mountaineers for second place in the Big 12 at 5-3. Ten games to go, sure. Still, after the hand-wringing of a couple of weeks ago and the loss of key contributor Kamau Stokes, it’s pretty cool to be in this spot.

Dean Wade and Barry Brown scored 58 of the team's 90 points, on only a combined 28 shots from the field. While Wade won the conference player-of-the-week accolades yesterday, Brown’s 34 point, five rebound, five assist performance may make him the early front-runner for next Monday’s honors. Luke Thompson recapped, insisting it’s time to take K-State seriously as a Big 12 title contender (or at least a serious threat for runner-up; darn those faux birds).

The Capital-Journal noted that K-State controlled the game from start to finish. Kellis Robinett called it arguably K-State’s most meaningful win of the season. He also noted that the Wildcats have not trailed in a game since last Tuesday, a span of 101 minutes, 32 seconds of game time. Even the Reuters staff couldn’t help noticing that Barry Brown went off for 34 points in the contest.

John Werner at the Waco Tribune knows that, for Baylor, this was a costly loss. K-State's 90 points were the most scored against Baylor since the 2012-13 season.

The Athletic Department provided its recap, as well, noting that K-State has finally opened a two-game advantage in the all-time series with Baylor, 20-18.

Corbin McGuire spotlighted K-State big men Dean Wade and Makol Mawien for K-State Sports Extra. Though we’ve talked mostly about Dean and Barry, Makol backed up his 18-point performance against TCU on Saturday with 11 in the Baylor game. This is the first time the 6-9 sophomore has scored double figures in consecutive league games.

As if all of that weren’t enough, Dean Wade also learned Monday that he had been named the Naismith Citizen National Player of the Week, becoming the first Wildcat to win a national weekly award since 2014.

Women’s Basketball

The women’s team will play its last January home game Wednesday night against No. 24/RV TCU at 7:00. The game with be the team’s seventh of the season against a team ranked in the Associated Press Top-25.