Kansas State had won back-to-back Big 12 Conference home games against West Virginia and Oklahoma, but an entirely different challenge made its way to Bramlage Coliseum Monday night in the form of the No. 1 ranked Baylor Bears.

The Wildcats would compete - outside of a couple of costly sequences - but K-State would have needed an efficient, special effort to knock off the top team in college basketball.

That did not happen, and K-State ultimately fell to Baylor, 73-67.

K-State turned it over three times in the first two minutes to find itself in a quick 5-0 hole with 18:16 still left in the opening half of play. K-State turned it over again with 17:38 left on a Makol Mawien moving screen foul, and the Bears knocked in a 3-pointer in response to go up 8-0 and force a quick Bruce Weber timeout.

The Wildcats finally scored with 16:41 left before halftime on a pair of Montavious Murphy free throws. It would get to 12-2 by the time the first media timeout arrived with just under 14 minutes remaining in the first half, and at that point the Wildcats were 0-of-6 from the field and still looking for their first basket.

A tough stretch for Cartier Diarra then took place. The junior gambled for a steal and missed, leading to the man he was guarding hitting a wide open three. Diarra then missed a lay-up at the other end on the ensuing trip and was given a technical foul from the officials for comments he made after the miss. Baylor made the two technical free throws and a triple on the possession to go up 20-4. Diarra headed back to the K-State bench with a turnover, two fouls and a technical in four minutes on the floor.

It was 12-4 in favor of the Bears before that sequence took place, and Baylor would maintain that 16-point edge out to 22-6 before the Wildcats drew any closer.

Back-to-back hoops from Mawien - including one in which he had forced his defender to fall to the ground with a nifty move - made it 22-11 with just less than 10 minutes until the break. Mawien then drove to the hoop for a third straight make to slice the deficit to nine points, forcing a Baylor timeout from Scott Drew. Sneed would knock in a jumper out of that break, though, leaving K-State down just 22-15 at the under-eight media timeout.

Mawien continued drawing K-State closer with a pair of free throws to make it 22-17, and it wasn't until Baylor got a possession with multiple offensive rebounds - capped off by another timely triple - to stretch its lead back to eight at 25-17. A turnover and run-out lay-up for the Bears pushed the margin back to 10 and forced Weber to call another first-half timeout, as he was upset at the officials for what he perceived to be a foul against DaJuan Gordon at the rim he felt helped create the Bears' opportunity.

Diarra, worth noting, was inserted back into the game with 5:17 left in the opening half and K-State down 10. He soon knocked in a triple before the intermission to get it back under ten for K-State at 29-20, then he had a nice, driving hockey assist (through Mike McGuirl) for a Murphy 3-pointer that made it a six-point game.

Xavier Sneed finally knocked in a three of his own - leaving his pose for seconds after struggling to make a shot - and the Wildcats were only down three at that point in what had become a frenzied Bramlage Coliseum. A thunderous Sneed jam with about 10 seconds left kept the crowd riled up, but Baylor would score right before the buzzer, too, to take a 33-28 lead into the half.

Baylor got a great look at a three, knocking it in, to open the second half and immediately re-establish and eight-point advantage. K-State had back-to-back looks at open threes from D. Gordon and Sneed looking to respond on its next two trips, but both missed, and then Diarra turned it over with the Cats still down eight. Mawien was then called for an offensive foul, wiping two points off the board and representing another missed opportunity for K-State.

Still, the score was just 36-28, Baylor, at the under-16 media timeout.

Sneed would score on a dish from Sloan out of the timeout to slice it to six, but Baylor answered right back with its second triple of the second half to make it 39-30. The Bears then answered another Murphy hoop with a three-point play to go back up 10 with 14 minutes left to play.

K-State, to its credit, continued to fight back against the nation's best team.

Stockard scored inside to cut it to eight, then Sneed knocked in another shot from long range to bring the score back to the five-point halftime margin, but by the 10:55 mark - a media timeout - Baylor was headed, again, to the foul line and back up eight points. They'd make both after the timeout to go up double digits again, and a corner three at the 10-minute mark put the Bears up a commanding 13 points.

By the time Weber called a timeout with 8:46 remaining Baylor had built a 15-point lead, but back-to-back threes from Diarra and Sneed did get K-State back within nine going into the final media timeout with 3:50 remaining. Sneed had a chance to cut it to seven at the foul line with 3:31 left but made just one to make it 61-53, Baylor.

Baylor would essentially put K-State away, though, on a three-point play from Mark Vital with just more than two-and-half minutes left and an 11-point lead.

The Wildcats didn't put any more true scares into Baylor, but K-State did get it down to seven with 30 seconds to play, and six with 8.4 seconds left, before the Bears earned their 19th straight win.

Now, let's break down what caused the outcome Monday night in Manhattan with help from K-StateOnline analysts Jimmy Goheen and Chris Nelson.

K-State started each half with 6-plus and 4-plus minute spans with no made baskets. Going 25% of the game without a made shot is no way to upset the No. 1 team in the country. The Cats did make a couple of runs to make the game respectable, but that's a close as they would get, and Baylor answered every significant run with a better one of their own.

In the end, K-State made it seem close but never really threatened or pushed the game to two possessions until it was way too late.

Three Takeaways

Turnovers were key: The margin only ended up at -2.9% in turnover rate, but it was significant early in the game. The Bears outscored K-State 16-13, and that gap narrowed considerably late in the game.

Shooting: K-State actually did well shooting the ball with a nice 51.9% on twos and 38.1% on threes, but the Bears were simply better at 57.7% and 40.9%. K-State's defense simply wasn't good enough, even though K-State had it's 4th best eFG% night of the year.

Rebounding: The Cats battled on the boards, had a small gap in offensive rebounding percentage and only lost second-chance points 7-5.

Xavier Sneed provided one of his better offensive games of the year with a nice efficiency of 1.21 to go with his 23 points and 8 rebounds. Mawien and Diarra were both up and down and provided a spark at times, but again neither had an efficient game, particularly with their combined eight turnovers.

Murphy had an extremely efficient, low-usage game offensively but only finished with one rebound. Antonio Gordon was similar in his time on the floor. Stockard and McGuirl had nice efficiency numbers, but pretty low impact.

Sloan really struggled, as his up and down season continues.

***Traditional statistics provided by Kansas State University***

ANTONIO GORDON (off the bench)

A. Gordon made his return from a three-game suspension with 13:52 left in the first half. He would make the first Wildcat field goal of the game, a finish inside with 13 minutes to play that snapped an 8-0 Baylor scoring run. He also added a free throw in the final 70 seconds that brought K-State within seven points.

The Oklahoma product didn't make a major impact in this game, but the Wildcats were certainly happy to add the increased depth back into its lineup.

DaJUAN GORDON (started)

D. Gordon did not score his first basket until he finished knifing to the hoop with just more than 10 minutes to play in the second half, a basket that did stop a brief Baylor spurt and get K-State back to within eight points. Outside of that, though, the guard didn't do much to make his presence felt.

There were few noticeable mistakes, but also few impactful plays from D. Gordon.

MONTAVIOUS MURPHY (started)

Murphy scored K-State's first points of the night with a pair of free throws just more than three minutes into the game. Murphy's first field goal came on wide-open look at a three to get K-State within six points at 29-23, not long after the Wildcats trailed by as many as 16. Murphy scored again less than six minutes into the second half, a tough finish inside, to make it 39-32 Baylor. His last hoop would come on a three-point play with 1:14 left to try and keep K-State alive, as the Cats then trailed 66-58.

Murphy seemed to hold his own on both ends of the floor, despite being used to guard a number of different positions on the evening.

Scott Drew has always been a better coach than he has gotten credit for, but Baylor has never really hung its hat on tough man-to-man defense until this season. In the past, the Bears relied mostly on their length and athleticism in their zone to bother their opponents.

That man defense was on full display tonight.

Without a doubt Baylor’s guards are really good on ball defenders, but in my opinion, Mark Vital’s toughness and versatility sets the tone for his team. Twice in the early going K-State got Vital to switch onto a guard through the use of back screens. On the first, Xavier Sneed could not get by him and eventually turned it over. And, on the second, Sloan could not get by him, either, and the possession ultimately ended in a turnover. By the time Bruce Weber was forced to call a timeout not even three minutes into the game, the Wildcats had already turned it over four times and had only attempted two shots. Those two shots were less than a second apart, as DaJuan Gordon tried to get a tip dunk off a Sloan miss at the rim.

Against really good defensive teams screening and spacing become very important. K-State struggled at times with both. On one possession Cartier Diarra had the ball on the left wing, and Levi Stockard came to set a ball screen. Both Sloan and Montavious Murphy were standing near the left corner, meaning K-State had four guys within ten feet of each other. As a result, there was nowhere to go with the basketball.

On another play, Sneed set a diagonal - or waterfall - screen for Makol Mawien and then was supposed to get a down screen, but Sneed did not wait for his screen. Being a good screening team takes both the guy setting the screen and the player getting the screen setting up his defender, waiting on the screen, and using the screen. To Sneed’s credit, he made a nice one-on-one play and hit a fade away jumper in the lane.

I praised Vital throughout the game for quickly moving the basketball when he got a touch, while on the other end the ball stuck too many times. However, on two possessions a row near the end of the first half, K-State made the quick, next pass, and it led to back to back made threes. After a drive and kick by Diarra to D. Gordon, Gordon quickly swung the ball to Murphy. On the second, Murphy caught the ball on the left block and quickly threw a skip pass to Sneed. And it was nice to see both Murphy and Sneed shoot the ball in rhythm.

K-State could use more scoring out of the three freshmen, but all three had flashes tonight.

Antonio Gordon followed up a nice left handed finish with a good box out and rebound on the other end. Later, he made a nice pass to Sloan cutting through the lane. D. Gordon struggled at times to keep the ball in front of him, but his awareness off the ball continues to show signs of improvement. In transition he recognized his man was trailing the play, so he slid over to help contain the dribbler. Murphy made two really good cuts in the game. He could not finish the play in the first half after cutting back door. In the second half he recognized his defender helped off on a down screen and quickly showed himself to the basketball. This time, he was able to finish with a reverse layup.

It is a shame the Wildcats make so many mental mistakes through the course of a game that undo all of the great effort they give.

K-State played hard, and its defense gave them a chance to get back in the game after falling behind by 16 early in the game, but the Wildcats' mistakes never allowed them to fully close the gap.

At times, K-State took the wrong shot at the wrong time, but also committed a turnover after turning down an open layup. They did not finish a two on one break. On a big possession down eight with three minutes to play, there was little offense ran, and the possession ended with a forced shot and a run-out for Baylor.

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