Big 12 Basketball

Big 12 / Pac-10 Hardwood Series Tally: Friday Edition

By Mizzou Hoops Dec 4, 2010, 12:40am CST

Big 12 - 5
Pac-10 - 0

Kansas St. Wildcats - 63
Washington St. Cougars - 58

Well it definitely was not pretty but K-State gets out of the Pacific Northwest with a W. The Wildcats did a masterful job of keeping the Cougars in the ballgame with a myriad of unforced turnovers that surely kept every K-State fan cursing at the television. The good news for Frank Martin is his team gets a win and he gets ALOT of material to show his team on areas they need to be smarter and improve upon.

K-State was led in scoring by Rodney McGruder and Curtis Kelly both of whom had 15 points with all of McGruders points coming via the three point line. Jacob Pullen once again performed a disappearing act from the offensive end of the court finishing up with only 8 points on 2-12 shooting. In Pullen's defense he did not let his lackluster offensive game affect his defensive effort.

The Wildcats held an 8 point lead at the half and kept the Cougars at arms length through much of the second half until Washington State went on a run late to take a lead of 54-53 with 2:39 left to go in the game. KSU responded with a quick 5-0 run though to once again jump to a 4 point lead. With K-State clinging to a 2 point lead with 17 seconds left in the game true freshman Will Spradling stepped to the line and hit 2 key free throws to extend the lead back to four points.

While you can't win every game in dominating fashion this one was ugly to watch. If K-State hopes to stay ranked highly in the polls better performances will be needed sooner rather than later.

A complete schedule of the entire Big 12 / Pac-10 Hardwood Series, including scores of completed games is available after The Jump.