Fort Hays State 81, K-State 68 | December 8, 2020

K-STATE HEAD COACH BRUCE WEBER

Opening Statement...

“Obviously I’m proud of some of the things we’ve done here at K-State with K-State basketball, winning the first championship in 13 in 36 years, winning another one in 19, getting to the Elite 8. This was very, very disappointing and sad for our program. I knew this season wasn’t going to be easy. Obviously I didn’t think it was going to be this tough. We’ve had to go through COVID, injuries and all that. There’s no way this should happen, but sometimes you gotta learn the hard way and go through adversity to make any progress and get people's’ attention. Hats off to Fort Hays State. They played unbelievable, hit shots they’ve maybe never made in their career. It’s unbelievable, and that’s the special thing about college basketball. Every game is different. You play well, make some shots and get on a magic level and you have amazing things. Credit to them and their guys. Disappointed for our guys. Obviously we’re young, but at the same time, we’ve gotta be better than that. We gotta go back to the drawing board. We’ve got some young big guys that haven’t played college basketball trying to play, and they probably weren’t good matchups. We were hoping to get them more minutes. Because of the game and trying to win, we couldn’t do that and ended up going small ball. I thought that was the best we played at the end, and we’ve probably gotta look at that for the future. It starts with defense. I told the coaches today, we’ve had three teams shoot 50 percent and now a fourth team in our gym. That has not happened in my career. There’s no excuses. It’s us. We gotta go back to the drawing board. We probably have to go more compact with our defense. They beat us in every way tonight, straight line drives, 3’s, penetration and kick, all the different things. We had six stops to start the game, but then we turned it over I think six or seven times in that early stretch which gave them some early layups and gave them some early confidence. Then they just started feeling it. We have to come back and go back to the drawing board. We have to have great attitudes, gotta listen, no more drama, no more questioning. We gotta come together and see if we can make some progress by Friday.”

On the team chemistry and things behind the scenes..

“I think once we got into practice and hit some adversity, everyone trying to figure out what they are and what their role is. I think that’s the biggest thing. Again, it’s my job to make sure they know their role. I always say there’s an old biology term, osmosis. I hope they learn their role by osmosis. That’s a seeping of a substance through a membrane. You hope it kind of goes into their brain and they learn their role, but if they don’t then you’ve gotta drill it into them. That’s what we’re going to have to figure out. Obviously, I hope they’re humbled. I hope they’re ready to listen. I hope they want to buy in. The good thing in basketball is that we play three days from now. I am positive that we’ll play a lot better and make sure we stop some people also.”

On how humbling tonight’s game was...

“Anytime I lose, I’m humbled. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed for the program. I love K-State. I’m also proud of what we’ve done. Again, we got some young guys. We’re figuring it out. COVID is not easy. Injuries are not easy. We’ve got a great staff. We’ve won a lot of games in our career. Now we have to figure out a different way. Obviously what we were trying to do did not work. Now everyone has to buy in and we need to figure some things out.”

On the message to the fans...

“I apologize. I’m disappointed. No excuses. I’m the boss. I’ve been here. I’ve done really good things. Right now, this is not a special thing. I just hope they stick with us. We have a young group. I’m very, very sure on Friday it’s going to be different and hopefully moving forward in the season.”

SENIOR GUARD MIKE MCGUIRL

On the emotions after losing at home...

“Disappointment, more than anything, disappointment. Every game you want to play to win, but tonight hurt. Tonight was a game that hurt.”

On what went wrong …

“Defense. We couldn’t keep anyone in fron to us the whole night. They made shots, they kept it pretty simple. They ran the same stuff that was beating us and we couldn’t stop it. As a leader, I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to lead better on defense and be better myself.”

On where the team goes from here and how they bounce back …

“Just staying positive after a day like this. Continuing to enjoy the game, enjoy playing. Coming back and practicing hard and getting ready for Milwaukee.”

On if it felt like no matter what happened, Fort Hays State just continued to make shots …

“It did feel like that, but at the end of the day that’s on us. They were doing the same stuff and scoring in the same ways. We’ve got to stop that and we’ve got to make it so they can’t continue to do the same stuff. We didn’t. I wasn’t good enough on defense, my team wasn’t good enough on defense and that’s on us.

On if there was any point in the game if something went differently things could have changed ...

“It was from the start of the game, it’s not one play. It was the intensity from the start of the game on defense. We didn’t guard them on the first play to the last play. We didn’t guard them how we should’ve. That’s on us.”

***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.