The Kansas State basketball team is bringing a new trophy to Manhattan.
K-State defeated the Missouri Tigers 82-67 to win the Paradise Jam on Monday in the Virgin Islands. It's the first time the Wildcats have won a tournament since 2011, before Bruce Weber was hired as coach.
That is a major accomplishment for seniors like Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade. The K-State trio has experienced much success together, including more than 60 victories and a March run to the Elite Eight, but they had never won a trophy. Until now. The Wildcats entered this tournament with a championship-or-bust mentality, and it paid off.
The No. 12 Wildcats (5-0) took their play to a higher level with a tournament championship at stake against Missouri (3-2) after failing to impress in their first four games. They wanted this one. It showed.
Wade, a senior forward, led the way with his best game of the season. The Big 12 preseason player of the year drained four of six 3-pointers on his way to 21 points. He also had five rebounds and four assists. Best of all, he was efficient. He led all scorers despite only taking 10 shots.
But he got lots of help.
K-State scored the first seven points of the game and delivered a knockout blow at the end of the first half after Missouri rallied to tie the things up at 27. The Wildcats ended the first half on a 13-0 run, taking advantage of open shots and clamping down on defense. Missouri never took the lead.
Jordan Geist led Mizzou with 24 points.
The Wildcats' most impressive play of the 13-0 stretch to close the opening half came on a corner three from Xavier Sneed. K-State swung the ball around the perimeter, drawing Missouri defenders away from the rim, and eventually worked it to Sneed. He made the jumper and the Wildcats were pulling away.
This is what happens when K-State hits shots.
The Wildcats were began the season ice cold from the perimeter, but heated up in a big way in this game. They made a season-high 12 shots from 3-point range and shot 54.5 percent from the field.
Missouri struggled to score early on, missing its first four shots as the Wildcats jumped out to an early 7-0 lead. The Tigers were also held back by turnovers, as they had four in the first 4:30.
Sneed, a St. Louis native MU passed on, hit a three with 14:23 to extend the K-State lead to 10-2. The Tigers started to dig themselves out of the eight point deficit from an unlikely source: freshman Xavier Pinson. The 6-foot-2 point guard has struggled with his outside shot and ball security early on in MU's season. That wasn't an issue on Monday. Pinson hit a three to cut the KSU lead in half and then a floater to make the deficit 13-7.
Missouri climbed back into the game off putbacks from Javon Pickett and Jordan Geist to cut KSU's lead to 19-17 with 12:14 left in the first half as part of a 10-4 MU run. For the second straight game, Missouri lost sophomore center Jeremiah Tilmon early to foul trouble. Tilmon picked up his second foul with 8:08 left in the second half, sending him to the bench. Reed Nikko took his place.
Nikko kept up his strong play from Sunday, tying the game at 19 with a thunderous dunk shortly after checking in for Tilmon. Pinson fed Nikko for a layup to tie the game at 27 with 4:11 left, which is where Wade became a problem for Missouri
K-State was too strong from that point on.
The Wildcats pulled ahead by as many as 22 in the second half. The Tigers fought back to pull within 13, but K-State didn't let Missouri get any closer. A 3-pointer from Cartier Diarra and a dunk from Sneed put the Wildcats ahead 70-51. That seemed to clinch things.
It was a memorable win for K-State. After seven years without a trophy or tournament championship of any kind, they finally had some hardware to celebrate.
