We recap Kansas State's Wednesday night victory over Monmouth in The Final at K-StateOnline.

K-State's first-half offensive struggles certainly continued in this one.

The Wildcats got nothing - literally - from behind the arc in the first 20 minutes, going 0-of-10 from distance. Things weren't much better shooting inside the arc, either, as K-State went just 8-of-28 (28.6 percent) from the field and 4-of-8 from the charity stripe.

K-State's defense was good early, for the most part, eliminating an early seven-point deficit to grab a 16-13 edge midway through the first half, but Monmouth regained control down the stretch before the break, finishing the half with a lay-in at the buzzer to make it 29-20 in favor of the visitors at the end of 20 minutes.

Xavier Sneed, of course, knocked in the first 3-point attempt of the second half for the Wildcats. A steal then led to a dunk for Montavious Murphy, and Monmouth immediately called a timeout with the score sliced to 29-25 just 1:37 into the second half. Four straight free throw makes from Makol Mawien would then tie the game at 29 with 16:40 still left in the second half.

K-State would take the lead a possession later on a Murphy 3-pointer, and a Diarra steal and score had K-State up 34-30, and on a 14-1 run, over the first five minutes of the second half. Levi Stockard scored a basket with 12:27 remaining to give K-State its 20th point of the second half, matching its entire first-half total. He was fouled on the basket, too, and finished the 3-point play to make it 41-33 K-State.

A David Sloan triple, his second consecutive basket, put K-State up double digits at 46-35 with 10 minutes left to play, and a Mawien 3-point play truly put Monmouth in a hole at 49-35. A Murphy dunk on the ensuing possession made it 51-35 (a 31-6 second half margin at that point), and Monmouth would not threaten again.

By the time the final buzzer sounded the Wildcats moved to 3-0 with a 73-54 win on day in which the program also announced the signings of Nijel Pack, Davion Bradford, Selton Miguel and Luke Kasubke, the highest rated class of Bruce Weber's tenure in Mahattan.

Fan's Thoughts: K-State now is 1-of-32 from 3 in three non-conference games in the first half. That led to another dreadful efficiency of 0.59 points per possession. The Cats recovered to shoot 71.4 percent eFG%, 73.7 percent from two, and 44.4 percent from three in the second. Still, 1.03 is a pretty mediocre efficiency for the game against a poor defensive team, and this team must figure out the first-half offense.

No surprise, but the defense was impressive, especially forcing TOs on over one-third of the Hawks' possessions. Holding any team under 0.80 points per possession is suffocating defense, and the Cats ended up winning all four factors pretty soundly.

Fan's Thoughts: Sneed stepped up with a solid game, though the offensive rating was an average 0.99. Mawien continues to confound and only played 17 minutes, but his efficiency and per 100 numbers were all ridiculous. Diarra's scoring was down, and he wasn't real efficient, but he did offset that with a good assist game and some steals. Finally, it was nice to see Sloan recover from a poor performance at UNLV with a solid outing tonight.

It was tempting to go with Murphy, who had a plus-21, or even Mawien with a team-best plus-22 and near double-double, but I'll settle on Sneed. His shot to open the second half was big, and he led the Cats in points (15) and minutes played (33) while shooting 50 percent from the floor and adding six rebounds.

It was another slow start for K-State, as the Wildcats were already 0-of-5 from three by the first media timeout and 1-of-7 from the floor overall. For a team that has struggled to shoot the ball so far this season, one could argue that the Wildcats should have looked to attack the basket more out of the gate. However, the threes K-State did take were clean looks shot in rhythm. At some point, they are just going to have to knock down some first-half shots.

Something I would like to see K-State do more often in the half court is get Sneed the ball in the mid-range areas of the floor or even the post. Sneed does not have the complete offensive skill set that Dean Wade had, but he has proven in his career to be a good mid-range shooter. Two of K-State’s best offensive possessions in the first half against UNLV came from Sneed working the baseline and rubbing his man off Mawien for baseline jumpers.

Sneed did get two touches in the post and mid-post near the end of the first half tonight. One led to free throws, and on the other he missed a fade-away jumper. Early in the second half, the Wildcats cleared the right side of the floor and Mawien set a down screen for Sneed near the block. Sneed caught the ball at the elbow and due to his threat to shoot the ball, it opened up Mawien for an easy dump down pass. Even though Sneed is not technically playing at the four spot, I do think it would benefit K-State to have Sneed at that spot in their actions offensively with Murphy or A. Gordon at the three.

The Wildcats inability to create easy scoring opportunities for themselves hurt them again in the first half. Even though K-State caused 12 first half turnovers, the Cats were only able to score four fast break points. K-State got the basketball advanced up the floor by passing the ball across half court only three times in the first half. One of those led to a Sneed dunk, and the other led to D. Gordon getting fouled at the rim. Off of one of the turnovers, Diarra could have immediately passed the ball up the court to Sneed, which would have put pressure on the defense. Instead, he dribbled it up and tried to pass it to Sneed after getting into the half court, and the ball was deflected out of bounds.

K-State, and particularly Diarra, was better in this area in the second half. Off of two missed Monmouth shots, Diarra advanced the ball up the court via the pass, which led to a wide open three for Sneed and a dunk for Murphy. Again, those weren’t even off turnovers, but missed shots.

The three freshman were not perfect tonight, but they again did some nice things. Murphy continues to show he is a pretty good on ball defender, which allows K-State to switch some ball screens, particularly late in the shot clock. A. Gordon quickly got an offensive rebound and put back after entering the game for the first time and defensively recognized his man setting a flare screen and switched out to the shooter, causing him to travel. D. Gordon attacked the offensive glass and looked to attack the basket a little more aggressively.

On the flip side, Murphy did get caught trailing his man through the lane and got lost a couple of times in transition defense, and D. Gordon took a questionable three late in the first half. K-State will continue to need more scoring from all three of them as the year progresses, but it is good to see them this early in their careers be able to impact the game in other ways than just scoring.

This was a good experience for K-State in the non-conference from the standpoint that Monmouth gave the Wildcats quite a few different looks defensively. In addition to playing some zone, they showed multiple looks out of their man defense.On several possessions they trapped the dribbler as soon as he crossed half court, and on a few other they trapped the first pass across half court. K-State’s issues offensively in the first half were certainly more about them than anything Monmouth was doing; however, it was still good for this team to see those different looks.

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