'Something to build on.' Butler basketball, Manny Bates hand Kansas State its first loss.

More than four years removed from their last trip to the NCAA tournament in 2018, the Butler men’s basketball team hardly ever loses nonconference games inside their famed Hinkle Fieldhouse. Having won 67 of their past 69, the Bulldogs weren’t about to lay down for 6-0 Kansas State, one of the nation’s last 18 undefeated men’s Division I teams in the country.

With the help of an early burst and a gritty second half response, Butler (5-3) withstood multiple second-half barrages from the Wildcats to move on from their tough trip to The Bahamas with a 76-64 victory Wednesday night.

Still hamstrung by significant injuries that kept Butler’s rotation to six players for the bulk of Wednesday’s Big East-Big 12 matchup, the Bulldogs burst out the gate toward an early double-digit on the shoulders of Manny Bates, who neared career-high with 22 points after starting a perfect 8-for-8 from the field (he finished 9-of-12).

Watch:Butler's Manny Bates has monster performance vs. K-State

Jayden Taylor rising, starters tiring:What we learned from Butler's Bahamas trip

Manny Bates' big night

Plagued by early foul trouble in each of Butler’s first two games in The Bahamas at the Battle 4 Atlantis, Bates emerged undeterred and aggressive. The grad transfer scored six of Butler’s first 10 points during an early run that saw Butler take a lead with 17:58 left in the first half that they’d never surrender.

Whether it be rocking in the paint, cleaning up a miss on the offensive end for a second-chance bucket or hitting crucial shots at the free-throw line, Bates was not only key in Butler’s early burst – the team started 9-for-12 from the field – but the 6-11 big man kept the wheels going as his teammates cooled off at time.

Outside a turnover as he tried to pass out of a double-team with just under 14 minutes to go and Kansas State back within 5 points, Bates hardly put a foot wrong all night. Not long after that miscue that looked as if it might fuel the Wildcats to try and claw their way back to a tie, he committed what at the time looked as it might be a defensive foul. With the refs holding their whistles, Bates sprinted back the other way and slammed down a dunk that brought the nervous Hinkle crowd to its feet and pushed his team back up nine, 54-45.

That brief moment of risk before his game-changing dunk, Bates, said, was one of just a few spots Wednesday he'd chosen to unleash his full aggression on defense. Having watched hours of film since returning from The Bahamas, the big man noticed with Butler's short bench for the time being, he'd have to begin to pick his spots.

"In The Bahamas, I feel like I was going in there and focusing on trying to block shots, and that gets you in foul trouble a lot of times," he said. "Watching film, I was able to see the certain times every game where I can go try and block a shot and when I need to keep my feet on the ground."

Energized by the effectiveness of his more measured play, Bates' transition dunk three minutes later nearly capped what would be a 17-2 Butler run that gave the home squad its largest lead of the game of 20 points (65-45).

Bates finished just three points shy of his career-high set in this season's opener (25 against New Orleans) and eclipsed 20 points for just the third time in his career.

Withstanding a 2nd-half charge

Bates’ long jumper to start the second half, handing Butler what then was its largest lead of the night (14), looked as if it might be the start of an entire runaway game, but across a five-minute stretch, the Wildcats would mount one serious charge that began to put Butler’s bounce-back win in jeopardy.

Desi Sills, Kansas State’s leader off the bench, dropped in a bucket to get his team back within single digits with 16:42 left in the game – something the Wildcats tasted only three times in the first half after the early minutes. With a pair of buckets to quickly follow, the Wildcats’ team leader Keyontae Johnson cut Butler’s lead to seven (48-41), and a fast-break layup from Cam Carter trimmed it even further to just five (48-43).

It was then, Butler coach Thad Matta said, he began to see the leaps his team had taken after taking lumps in The Bahamas in the form of double-digit losses to Tennessee (71-45) and NC State (76-61).

"We got better in two days coming out of Atlantis," Matta said. "We we were down there, we couldn't stop the bleeding, and tonight, we did that. It shows me something about these guys. It wasn't anything revolutionary, but it was just that we got back to playing the defense we'd been playing that gave us the lead.

"When things started not to go well for us, and we missed some shots and they got into transition, we got that stop."

Kansas State would get no closer than five. Instead, with Butler up seven (52-45) with 12:47 to go, the Bulldogs began a 13-0 run that took just over four minutes to balloon its advantage to 20.

Even after six quick points from the Wildcats in response, followed by a solo 9-0 run by Sills himself (split up by a 3-pointer from Eric Hunter Jr. with 6:02 to go), Kansas State would only work back as close as eight points down the stretch with 4:08 to go (68-60) . And when they did, Butler recovered and held the Wildcats scoreless for more than three minutes until K-State's hopes at remaining undefeated were gone.

A group effort from Butler's starting five

Kansas State entered Wednesday night's contest boasting the second-most productive scoring duo in the Big 12 in senior starters Johnson and Markquis Nowell, who averaged 33 points between them in the Wildcats' undefeated start to the year.

In knocking K-State from the list of the unbeaten, Butler's defense did nothing to quell that. Johnson and Nowell still managed their 33 - exactly, in fact, with a team-high 20 and 13 more between them, respectively. What the duo didn't have, as they balanced each other between Johnson's perfect night (9-for-9 from the field) and Nowell's struggle (5-for-15) was the measured, consistent help otherwise. Outside Sills' 17 points off the bench on 8-for-15 shooting, the Wildcats saw 14 points from the rest of its rotation that ran nine deep.

Keen to take advantage of Butler's injury woes, Kansas State coach Jermone Tang said after the game he hoped his players might pin Butler to the ropes with early foul trouble. Still with three players out with injury and a fourth, Myles Wilmoth, dressing but not playing, such a mess likely would've interrupted Butler's early rhythm massively.

"(Staying out of foul trouble) is something we're trying to pride ourselves in," Matta said post-game. "We want to be in position but get out of 'reaching'. That's sort of who we've got to be right now. We can't commit foolish fouls, and we did that tonight."

Instead, with all five starters managing at least 34 minutes and totaling just eight fouls -- and the player with the most fouls, grad transfer Eric Hunter Jr. (three fouls) playing all 40 minutes Wednesday -- Butler landed double-figure scoring nights from all its starting five. Junior guard Chuck Harris followed Bates' 22 with 15 on 5-of-8 shooting that included a pair of threes to go with 13 from Hunter Jr., 11 from Simas Lukosius (including a team-leading trio of triples) and Jayden Taylor's 12.

On a night where Butler as a team finished 54.9% from the field (28-for 51), it was actually Taylor, the team's leading scorer who arguably struggled the most. Entering averaging 16.4 points per game on the season and with a four-game streak of scoring at least 18 points, Taylor finished 4-for-11, including 2-for-6 from beyond the arc.

That his team could pull off its biggest win of the year while walking such a razor-thin edge of aggressiveness and patience with a thin lineup with its leading scorer off his game was a skill, Matta said, his Bulldogs have to master moving forward.

"I think it's a good thing from our schedule we've played so far. We've seen a lot of different stuff, and when you can have different guys do different things, I like that as a coach," he said. "It gives us something to build on. We've run into some of the best defenses in the country early-on, and I think we're better because of that."

Matta would go on to say that Wilmoth, who's missed every game since Butler's exhibition opener with a hand injury, would begin to "work his way back" into the team's lineup after he dressed Wednesday but never made his way onto the court. The rest of his injured group -- DJ Hughes (concussion), Jalen Thomas (pulmonary embolism), Ali Ali (concussion) and John-Michael Mulloy (foot injury) -- don't yet have firm target dates to return. Mulloy, Matta said, will move out of his walking boot on Friday and into a carbon fiber brace for his injured foot.

Butler 76, Kansas St. 64

KANSAS ST. (6-1) -- Johnson 9-9 0-0 20, N'Guessan 4-4 0-0 8, Tomlin 0-5 0-0 0, Carter 1-7 0-0 2, Nowell 5-15 2-2 13, Sills 8-15 0-1 17, Massoud 1-5 0-0 2, Greene 1-3 0-0 2, Finister 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 29-63 2-3 64.

BUTLER (5-3) -- Bates 9-11 4-4 22, Harris 5-8 3-3 15, Hunter 5-11 2-3 13, Taylor 4-11 2-2 12, Lukosius 4-9 0-0 11, P.Thomas 1-1 0-1 2, Turnbull 0-0 1-2 1. Totals 28-51 12-15 76.

Halftime—Butler 37-25. 3-Point Goals_Kansas St. 4-20 (Johnson 2-2, Sills 1-4, Nowell 1-6, Carter 0-2, Greene 0-2, Massoud 0-2, Tomlin 0-2), Butler 8-20 (Lukosius 3-7, Harris 2-3, Taylor 2-6, Hunter 1-4). Rebounds_Kansas St. 26 (Johnson 12), Butler 27 (Bates 10). Assists_Kansas St. 12 (Nowell 8), Butler 18 (Lukosius 7). Total Fouls_Kansas St. 15, Butler 8.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Butler basketball vs. Kansas State: Manny Bates explodes in Dawgs win