KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ As Kansas State and Iowa State went back and forth in one of the most entertaining games of the Big 12 tournament at Sprint Center on Friday, it felt like it would take a monster play for either team to separate from the other.
For 39 minutes, no one managed to throw a knockout punch. But it finally came in the form of a Marial Shayok 3-pointer.
With the shot clock winding down and 53 seconds left on the clock, the Iowa State guard drained a fade-away 3 over K-State defender Mike McGuirl to give the Cyclones some breathing room. The large contingent of ISU fans in the building erupted in cheers, and Iowa State went on to win 63-59.
They will advance to the tournament final against the winner of Kansas and West Virginia on Saturday.
K-State bows out of the event after two games, unable to add a Big 12 tournament trophy to the one it recently claimed for sharing the conference's regular-season title with Texas Tech.
The Wildcats will now turn their attention to Sunday and the selection show for the NCAA Tournament.
No one can say they didn't put up a good fight in this event. The Wildcats were without star forward Dean Wade in both of their games, but it was hard to notice at times.
K-State played well enough on Friday to lead 55-50 in the final minutes, but fatigue set in and Shayok took over.
Shayok led all scorers with 21 points, and he saved his best for last.
Cartier Diarra responded with a team-high 15 points for K-State, while all five Wildcats starters reached double figures. It simply wasn't enough to win an entertaining game in front of a rowdy neutral-court crowd.
A bad first half was at least partially to blame. The first half went about as poorly as it possibly could have for K-State.
It was all Iowa State after the opening moments. The Wildcats took a 21-14 lead at the 10:07 mark and then had no answers for the Cyclones before halftime.
Iowa State closed the half on a 21-4 run behind, and it didn't even shoot the ball well from 3-point range. Talen Horton-Tucker missed all three of his outside shots and the team only went 2 for 9.
The Cyclones did their damage elsewhere, making 12 of 19 shots from 2-point range. Shayok led the way with 11 points, but Michael Jacobson was right behind him with eight. Steve Prohm used seven players in the first half, and all of them scored.
K-State, meanwhile, didn't get a single point from its bench.
Their lack of a scoring punch showed most during the final 10 minutes of the opening half when they missed 12 straight shots and went 8:43 without a field goal. Oddly, the Wildcats missed several of those shots from point-blank range. Even Barry Brown, usually a quality finisher, was missing layups.
K-State responded with strong play in the second half and tied the game with 15 minutes remaining on a 3-pointer from Diarra.
They went back and forth from there until Shayok won the game for the Cyclones.
