Still chewing things over on a rather lousy sports night for me (State losing and the Canes suddenly deciding they weren't interested in trying to make the playoffs anymore).
The big thing was that our guys down low never really adjusted to the game that was being called. I'll try not to sound like I'm complaining about the officiating, but the basic gist was that the Kansas bigs pretty much had the run of the joint down low, so there wasn't going to be much in the way of physical fouls called. State players never really adjusted to that and kept fruitlessly attacking the rim and getting stuffed. Leslie was able to figure out how to beat his man after a while, but Howell and Painter never did. It would help if we had a remote outside threat besides Wood that could potentially drag the defense out a bit more, but we didn't. Even so, Kansas played great defense all night and it was only some timely baskets on our part and occasional lapses by KU on offense that kept the game from being a runaway at times.
Regardless, I'm happy that we got this far and we fought and fought and almost pulled it out at the end. I haven't felt that lousy after a loss in quite a long time, but it's a good feeling to have, I suppose. Better that than resignation in watching the futile basketball program that we've had for most of the past two decades. I almost don't want to think about next year at the moment because I'm not ready to put high expectations on them. It's unfair to the new guys coming in, even if they are McD AAs. Twenty years of disappointment will take some time to expunge before I can feel safe about thinking of State as an annually contending program again. I just want to get back to this point again next year. That's not too much to ask, is it?
