When Kentucky’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed a 3-pointer that allowed Kansas State to go crazy after its 61-58 upset Thursday night at Philips Arena, one thought immediately came to mind.
Loyola wins again.
The Ramblers won Thursday’s early game in the NCAA tournament South region semifinals, a 69-68 thriller over Nevada, and match up better against Kansas State than Kentucky, one of America’s tallest teams, which can blame the unpredictability of youth for falling short. The Loyola-Kansas State game at 5:09 p.m. Saturday in the Elite Eight was supposed to be the consolation game of the so-called Kentucky Invitational, but now the winner goes to the Final Four.
When Bruce Weber took Illinois to the Final Four in 2005, he did it with a core predecessor Bill Self recruited and he never received full credit for that coaching job. In his sixth season with Kansas State after Illinois fired him in 2012, this group is all his, and Weber looks all-in emotionally.
Beating a favored Kentucky team overwhelmed Weber, who walked across the court to thank his family and Kansas State fans for cheering the school to its first Elite Eight appearance since 2010. Barry Brown Jr., whose layup with 18.5 seconds left gave Kansas State its most clutch basket of the game, went even farther than Weber, running 10 rows into the Kansas State section as a bunch of people in purple T-shirts mobbed him. Kansas State’s first victory over Kentucky in its history, a moment framed by some in Manhattan, Kan., as payback for the 1951 national championship game, set off a wild celebration.
Weber savored every second but was looking at his watch.
“We get to have fun for about 15 minutes tonight, but then we have to get refocused and ready for a chance of a lifetime,” Weber said. “It will not be easy because Loyola is a very, very good team.”
So is Kansas State, which jumped out to a 13-1 lead against Kentucky. To hear Weber’s players afterward, they derived motivation out of ESPN unofficially reseeding the Sweet 16 after the first two rounds and ranking Kansas State 16th. The bottom four teams ESPN ranked — Florida State, Loyola, Michigan and Kansas State — all won Thursday, by the way.
“We've been picked eighth in the Big 12, finished fourth, and we saw (those) seedings come out, 16th in the Sweet 16, so we felt disrespected all year,” said Kansas State’s Xavier Sneed, who scored a team-high 22 points with nine rebounds. “We just came out here and proved people wrong, and we're going to do that game by game.”
It wasn’t pretty. Three Kansas State players fouled out, including Sneed in the final minute, and Kentucky went to the line 37 times. Without injured star Dean Wade in the second half, Kansas State scored just two field goals over the final 9:52, and it shot 35 percent from the field for the game.
And survived to advance.
“It just shows our resilience, the character of our guys,” Weber said. “We've been through a lot this season, and we've been able to keep fighting and battling and making the plays when it matters. We just kept saying, grind, grind, grind. Keep fighting. Don't leave anything out on the court.”
An opponent that practiced the same principles awaits Kansas State on Saturday. Loyola believes it belongs, but so does Weber’s bunch. Porter Moser will have the Ramblers ready, but you know Weber, whose first head-coaching job was at Southern Illinois, won’t take his Missouri Valley Conference foe lightly.
An Elite Eight matchup nobody expected promises a game everyone will remember.
Twitter @DavidHaugh
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