THE FINAL: No. 2 Baylor 85, Kansas State 66

Kansas State entered Tuesday night's game Baylor losers of seven straight, and a trip to face the No. 2 ranked Bears in Waco certainly was not what the doctor ordered for this struggling K-State squad.

The Wildcats would get down big early and eventually fall, 85-66, to Scott Drew's thriving program, and we recap it all in The Final at K-StateOnline.

1. Another slow start

Like K-State's overall results as of late, you could pretty much copy-and-paste comments about the Wildcats digging themselves a quick, large hole in Big 12 play.

Just five minutes into the game Xavier Sneed had already picked up two fouls and the Wildcats found themselves down 11-2 with Bruce Weber compelled to call an early timeout. K-State did not make a field goal until Cartier Diarra scored on a drive with 13:38 left in the first half.

The same thing happened the first time the Wildcats faced the Bears, and spotting opponents large early advantages has probably been the biggest contributing factor in the Cats' eight-game conference losing streak.

2. Still no Murphy

Freshman forward Montavious Murphy missed his second consecutive game with a knee injury, one Weber told me after the Texas game last Saturday he didn't expect to be season ending.

Either way, the Wildcats are (wisely, in my opinion) taking it slow with Murphy with the season nearing its finish

Fellow freshman Antonio Gordon started in place of Murphy for the second consecutive contest.

3. Diarra continues responding

Weber praised Diarra for his play (six assists against two turnovers) last week against Texas, just a few days after the junior and K-State's head coach and some (much publicized) words on the sideline in Lubbock last Wednesday night.

Diarra made his first three field goal attempts and scored seven of the Cats first 11 points and 13 of the first 20.

Unfortunately Diarra's production came in a game in which the Wildcats had no shot, but Diarra did finish with 19 points on a very efficient 7-of-11 shooting to go along with six rebounds.

I think you likely have to credit Diarra for what he's done the last two games, as he's one of the few Wildcats currently trending upwards.

4. Flurry of fouls + Sneed's struggles

Weber was reprimanded by the Big 12 for comments about officiating last week, and those comments certainly didn't do anything to make officials any more slow to blow the whistle on the Wildcats.

Sneed had three fouls - THREE - half way through the first half. Mike McGuirl also got three in in the first half, and Makol Mawien picked up a pair in the opening half. Diarra also spent the majority of the first half playing with a pair of fouls called on him.

Already down Murphy, K-State certainly didn't need to lose three more starters to foul trouble well before the end of the first half against one of the better teams in college basketball.

However, that's exactly what took place.

Sneed's struggles extended well beyond the fouls, although it may be fair to wonder how they impacted his game as a whole. Either way, the senior forward continued to be ice cold from the field, missing his first 10 field goal attempts after initially opening K-State's scoring with a pair of free throws.

The St. Louis product did get to finally see a 3-pointer splash through with roughly 11 minutes left to play. He also, though, would foul out on a charge call with four minutes to play.

5. No shot

On point one I discussed K-State's penchant for getting down big early in games. For a while this year the Wildcats typically battled back - sometimes even to take the lead - after those kinds of starts.

That has not been the case, however, as of late.

The Wildcats have been beaten, comfortably, recently by Iowa State, Oklahoma State, TCU and Texas, then the Bears buried K-State before the teams even headed to the locker room for the end of the first half on Tuesday.

K-State was down 28 points, its largest margin of the season, with 57.1 seconds left in the opening half.

Yes, Baylor is good. Yes, the Wildcats were decimated by foul trouble early. All that said, the Wildcats simply were not competitive in this one, and that's not the first time that can be said.

TRADITIONAL STATS PROVIDED BY UNIVERSITY OF BAYLOR

In its last two games Baylor has struggled to defend the high ball screen in the middle of the court. Even though K-State is not as good as Kansas - or even probably Oklahoma - in the pick and roll game, I was surprised the Wildcats did not try to attack Baylor more in that manner. If there were a game to put the ball in Cartier Diarra’s hands a lot and let him try to create off a screen, this one was it, because Baylor’s half-court man defense is much better than the Wildcats' offensive executive in the half-court. And I know the results of letting Diarra dominate the ball haven’t always been good, but it at least is attacking Baylor’s weakness right now.

All of K-State’s six points in the first nine minutes of the game came from the use of a ball screen, though none of them were a high screen and roll. Makol Mawien set a screen for Xavier Sneed near the elbow area, and Sneed was able to get to the free throw line after driving to the basket. Diarra rejected a side ball screen and got all the way to the rim for an and-one opportunity. After rebounding his own missed free throw, the Wildcats ran a very similar play with Mawien and Sneed from the other side of the floor, and this one resulted in a layup for Mawien.

In a game where there were stretches where K-State couldn’t even get a shot off, getting back to back layups felt like a scoring spree.

I wrote about K-State’s lack of court awareness after the Texas game, and that showed up again tonight.

On one possession during the second half K-State got caught in a couple of mismatches with Pierson McAtee on Davion Mitchell and Diarra on Mark Vital. Mitchell was initially cut off and pitched the ball to Vital in the left corner. Vital showed good awareness by recognizing the mismatch Mitchell had and quickly passed it right back to him. Mitchell drove by McAtee down the left side of the lane. On that drive, Diarra should have recognized that Vital is not a threat outside the 3-point line and slid into the lane to cut off the drive. He did not, which forced Mawien to slide over from the middle of the lane, leaving Freddie Gillespie open at the rim for an easy basket.

On K-State’s next offensive possession the man defending Diarra fell down, but Diarra did not have his feet underneath him for a shot. He made a pass to Mawien on the wing, and - recognizing his man had fell down - made a quick cut. Mawien did not show awareness of what was unfolding and instead shot a quick three.

I don’t mean to single out Mawien and Diarra, as obviously when you lose as bad as the Wildcats did there are plenty of negatives across the board, but those two plays in sequence were a good example of those little plays, or plays not made, in a game that add up.

In the searching for positives category, DaJuan Gordon made several nice plays in the game.

On the offensive end he made a nice back cut to the basket for a layup, made a good cut down the lane as David Sloan was driving baseline, and recognized Mawien had a mismatch in the post and made a nice pass over the top to him.

Defensively, Gordon anticipated a pass to Gillespie in the lane, and even though he did not get there in time to pick off the pas, he was there before Gillespie could make a move and knocked the ball out of his hands for a steal.

***Subscribe to K-StateOnline by clicking here***

Talk K-State football and basketball in the largest, most active K-State message board community anywhere, The Foundation.