I had a flight out of Bozeman early Wednesday afternoon to get to Greensboro for Montana State’s first-round NCAA Tournament game – so naturally, instead of doing things like “packing” or “sleeping” on Tuesday night, I fired up the ESPN+ subscription to scout Kansas State, the Bobcats’ first-round opponent.
I watched two full K-State games (ironically, both losses – to Oklahoma on Valentine’s Day and to TCU in the conference tournament – the Big 12 is so nasty) and came up with a couple of first impressions.
Then, I asked my good friend and Idaho State Journal star Greg Woods – a degenerate Kansas State alumnus and fan who, in his words, has watched “almost every game” – to react to my takes with his own, much more heavily-supported analysis. Here it is.
Markquis Nowell is Kansas State’s most important player, so Darius Brown II will be Montana State’s
It’s not exactly shocking – Nowell was a third-team All-American and averages 16.8 points per game – but given he’s not their leading scorer (Keyontae Johnson is at 17.7), it’s a little surprising just how much of Kansas State’s offense runs through the diminutive 5-foot-8 point guard.
They will run ball screens with him – and he can make every read and pass coming off the pick – but a ton of Kansas State’s offense is predicated on Nowell beating his man and getting downhill at the point of attack without the benefit of a pick. The senior is almost always on the ball to initiate their offense – even on actions that start with him passing to the wing, it’ll often come back to him quickly because they’re using that initial action as a way of moving his defender and getting him another angle to attack.
Nowell hands it off to start this possession but the ball is always coming back to him. K-State just wants to see if it can crack open a little advantage before the possession really starts by forcing a lazy switch. And they do.
Brown is the Big Sky’s Defensive Player of the Year, but this will be by far his toughest matchup. Nowell, after all, is an All-American. If he can get into the lane at will against Brown – beat him one-on-one consistently – Montana State is done. Nowell is too good of an interior passer if he’s slicing into the lane full speed with everything open in front of him.
Brown needs to slow him down one-on-one and force K-State to bring their bigs up to screen for him, making everything a little bit more deliberate and allowing Montana State to throw different coverages at him. It’s a sweet matchup – two point guards cut from the same cloth, LA vs. NY (Brown is from Pasadena, Nowell is from Harlem). Brown will have a big height advantage at 6-foot-2 but Nowell is damn strong even at 160 pounds. Brown needs to play his best game of the year to keep this matchup at even – and because of how much Nowell runs things for K-State, the Bobcats need him to do that to have a chance.
Nowell led the Big 12 – by a lot – in assists with 7.6 per game, but he also averaged well over three turnovers per game. He had five against TCU and six against West Virginia in the Wildcats’ last two games, both losses.
(Johnson, by the way, reminds me a lot of a more efficient RaeQuan Battle – he kind of floats in the halfcourt but gets his points with a mix of being unstoppable in transition, living at the free-throw line on his drives, cutting in from the weak-side corner for sneaky lobs and hitting his fair share of inadvisable mid-rangers because he’s a great tough shot-maker. I just think he’ll get to his 18 points a game based on whether he’s hitting those shots or not, not because of anything Montana State does, which makes it sort of pointless to analyze.)
Greg’s take: K-State tends to run more pick-and-rolls with Nowell and posts David N’Guessan and Nae’Quan Tomlin than might be noticeable on highlights. I think that spells trouble for Montana State. The Bobcats have two nice posts in Jubrile Belo and Great Osobor, but neither of those guys have the foot speed of N’Guessan and Tomlin, so asking them to move laterally in space is asking a lot. K-State will use wings like Keyontae Johnson and Ish Massoud to screen for Nowell too. When the Wildcats run double-drag actions with those guys involved, it’s usually to spring Massoud open for a 3 or get Johnson going downhill, and with Nowell’s passing, they almost always get looks they like. That’s a lot of athleticism for MSU to match.
Andrew is right, though. Nowell does like to take his guys off the dribble in 1-on-1 situations. Brown is a really sturdy defender, and he might give Nowell a challenge he hasn’t seen this year: a strong point guard with good hands. But Nowell is one of the quickest guards in the Big 12 (and the country), and with the way the Wildcats have learned to get him open off the ball, it might not always be Brown guarding him anyway.
Montana State’s bigs have to be something they haven’t been all season
I think this is sort of an obvious, evergreen point about Jubrile Belo and Great Osobor against any Power 5 team that’s good enough to make the NCAA Tournament, but…it’s going to be very difficult for them to get the same shots against Kansas State as they’ve been getting the entire conference season. Working the ball around, throwing it to a big on the block so that they can go to work with two or three back-down dribbles…no no no.
For one thing, it’s going to be much more difficult for Montana State’s guards to make those entry passes. For another, it’s going to be much more difficult for Belo and Osobor to get that position on the block. For a third, if they do catch it, the doubles are going to come quicker. The floor is going to be smaller. I watched old friend Tanner Groves get 16 against the Wildcats in an Oklahoma win, but that involved very few legit post-up touches – he hit a couple 3s and lived at the free-throw line off quick interior catches. Montana State can try to get Nowell switched onto a big, but from what I saw Kansas State is very good at scrambling in that situation and getting him switched back out on the perimeter.
There are places to attack – Kansas State had the worst statistical defense in the Big 12 in conference play. The Wildcats play an aggressive, reaching, switching defense in the half-court, and they miss a lot of rotations, which creates gaps.
To exploit them, Belo and Osobor will have to do different things than they’ve done all season. They won’t be stepping out and hitting 3s like Groves. But can they make the catch off the short roll and find the open shooter in the corner? Can they find the open gaps in the lane for short catch-and-shoot jumpers and floaters – and then hit those shots?
Greg’s take: It wouldn’t surprise me to see K-State double Belo and Osobor, especially since Tomlin’s post defense has always been shaky — he’s more of a lanky stretch 4 and less of an interior presence. I’ll admit that does worry me as a Wildcats fan (none of the team’s bigs are the hulking behemoths Belo and Osobor are) but I’ve also watched enough games to know those guys have athleticism the Bobcats don’t. That means K-State will make it exceedingly hard for MSU to make those entry passes, particularly since K-State understands that so much of Montana State’s offense hinges on those passes hitting their marks.
K-State does switch pretty often on defense, but the truth is that doesn’t always leave the Wildcats vulnerable. Johnson, Massoud, Tomlin and even sixth man Desi Sills can guard multiple positions, and like Andrew mentioned, they almost always take care to get Nowell switched back onto a more favorable matchup.
Andrew’s one other thing: I really like Kansas State’s out-of-bounds stuff, which is not a huge difference-maker – but on the other hand, if Jerome Tang is scheming up free points twice a game…it kind of is.
I saw Nowell get this shot off an in-bounds multiple times, and other players get free looks at the rim off an under-the-rim in-bounds multiple times as well. In this clip, for example, if the under-the-hoop defender cheats too early to contest Nowell’s shot, the screener is diving right to the rim for a dunk.
Greg’s one other thing: I’ll be fascinated to see how K-State’s four-guard starting lineup fares against Montana State’s lineup. The Wildcats will likely roll out Nowell, Johnson, Cam Carter, Sills and Tomlin, which means they’ll be giving up some size, particularly at the wing and forward positions — not to mention the 5-foot-8 Nowell against the 6-foot-2 Brown. That might favor the Bobcats, especially if they can work it inside to Belo and Osobor. The Wildcats have struggled against bigs of that ilk, like TCU’s Eddie Lampkin and Texas’ Christian Bishop.
But in this case, I think K-State’s floor spacing will make up for those disadvantages. The Bobcats can’t leave anyone in that lineup open, especially not Nowell and Johnson, the latter of whom is shooting 42% from deep on three attempts per game. Add their athleticism into the mix and I think it’s advantage K-State.
