By Wendell Barnhouse | wendell@big12sports.com
Big12Sports.com Correspondent
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – On a day when Sunflower State rival and NCAA top seed Kansas found itself on the wrong end of a March Madness upset, Jacob Pullen made certain that Kansas State would not suffer a similar fate.
Pullen scored a career-high 34 points and helped defend BYU scorer Jimmer Fredette as the second-seeded Wildcats outlasted the seventh-seeded Cougars, 84-72, in the second round of the West Regional. Kansas advances to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1988. Kansas State (28-7) will face the winner of Sunday’s Pittsburgh-Xavier game in Thursday’s regional semifinals in Salt Lake City.
About half an hour after the Jayhawks were stunned by No. 9 seed Northern Iowa, Kansas State took the Ford Center court against a BYU team coming off its first NCAA victory since 1993. The Cougars also had Fredette, who had singed Florida for 37 points in his team’s first-round, double-overtime victory.
Pullen said that he and his teammates received a dose of reality after Kansas lost.
“But we understood how good BYU was,” he said. “We didn’t want to overlook them.”
Mission accomplished. The Cougars (30-6) jumped to a quick 10-0 lead. The Wildcats were “staring at the basketball” according to coach Frank Martin (who knows a thing or two about staring). But once Kansas State became active and started flying around with its usual defensive intensity, the scoreboard started to even up.
Pullen gave the Wildcats their first lead (28-27) with a 3-pointer 4:22 before halftime. That was the first a 14-point spurt by the junior guard. Other than two Curtis Kelly free throws, Pullen had all of Kansas State’s points during a run that built a 41-31 halftime lead.
Throughout the game, BYU switched from zone to man-to-man defenses but none of the strategies could slow Pullen.
“We knew they would double our post players when they were playing man-to-man,” said Pullen, who made seven of 12 3-pointers. “In the zone, we got the ball to the high post and the bigs did a great job of kicking it out to me. And in the first half, Denis (Clemente) did a great job of feeding me in the first half when I was hot.”
Conversely, Pullen made sure that Fredette never got hot. Kansas State started with Dominique Sutton guarding the BYU guard but that created a match up disadvantage for Clemente. Switching Pullen to Fredette helped solidify the Kansas State defense. Fredette scored 21 but 10 of those came from the free throw line. He was 5-of-13 shooting and attempted just four 3-pointers.
“Fredette likes to drive the middle of the floor,” Martin said. “For the most part we did a decent job of staying between him and the rim. We tried to get the ball out of his hands. We did a good job for the most part but in the second half we reached and grabbed too much.”
After the Cougars cut the Kansas State lead to 55-50, the Cougars went without a field goal for nearly nine minutes. All their points came from the free throw line during that stretch as the Wildcats deliberately put the game away. The Wildcats made 13 of its last 14 free throw attempts; for the game, they were 27-of-30 from the line.
“They’re an aggressive team defensively,” said Fredette, who was averaging 22.1 points per game. “They had a good game plan and executed it pretty well.”
Pullen, who took a hard fall late in Kansas State’s first-round victory, was slow to get up after taking another tumble with about six minutes remaining in the first half. As he rolled around the court, Clemente signaled to the bench to keep the trainers away.
“The adrenaline was rushing, my teammates were telling, ‘C’mon, c’mon, man, get up,” Pullen said. “Unless something was broken, I was gonna play.
“I just wanna win, man. This is an amazing feeling, a childhood dream. I’ve watched basketball my whole life, the NCAA Tournament. I'm glad that we're here together as a team, and I'm glad that we get a chance to go to the Sweet 16 together.”
