A tale of two halves: No. 10 Texas sizzles in second half, nips Kansas State in Manhattan

MANHATTAN, Kan. — Christian Bishop was as frustrated as anyone in a Texas jersey in the first half Saturday. He’d been held without a point by Kansas State, and, not surprisingly, the No. 10 Longhorns were facing a double-digit deficit on the road.

Maybe that’s why Bishop punctuated every bucket in the second half with a fist pump.

Bishop poured in 14 points after the break to lead the Longhorns’ comeback, including the go-ahead lay-in with 37 seconds to go, and the Big 12-leading Longhorns held on for a 69-66 victory over the No. 7 Wildcats.

“Christian’s been working really hard over the last couple of games to get him back to the level he was playing four or five games ago,” interim Texas coach Rodney Terry said. “He really came out and rebounded and gave our team an incredible lift the way he played the second half.”

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Red-hot guard Jabari Rice also had 14 points as well as 10 rebounds for the Longhorns, and his two free throws with nine seconds left forced the Wildcats into hunting for a 3-pointer to send the game to overtime.

After a quick timeout, Kansas State's Ismael Massoud got an open look from the wing but came up well short of the basket, allowing the Longhorns to hold on for their fifth win over a Top 25 team this season.

Tyrese Hunter and Marcus Carr added 10 points apiece for Texas (19-4, 8-2), which took over sole possession of first place in the rough-and-tumble Big 12 by avenging its overtime loss to the Wildcats (18-5, 6-4) early last month.

“Our league, we don’t have any bad teams,” Terry said. “To come in on a home court against a top-10 team and have this kind of performance, I’ll stack it up with one of the best wins I’ve been part of in 30 years of coaching.”

Keyontae Johnson struggled through foul trouble but still had 16 points to lead the Wildcats, who have lost back-to-back games for the first time this season. Desi Sills scored 11 points and Markquis Nowell had 10, but he also had six turnovers, including one with less than a minute to go and Kansas State down by one.

“I don’t want to wash this one. I want to live with this one for 36 hours,” Wildcats coach Jerome Tang said. “Everybody in our arena did our job except the coaches and players on the floor.”

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The Longhorns and Wildcats played one of the most entertaining games of the season in Austin, where they went bucket-for-bucket through regulation and into overtime. Kansas State eventually wrapped up a 116-103 victory.

Early Saturday, Texas looked as if it would struggle to score half as much.

With the Wildcats clamping down on the perimeter, the Longhorns kept throwing the ball away and at one point had seven turnovers against just five made shots. They also went a stretch of more than seven minutes with just one field goal.

Kansas State took advantage of their offensive malaise.

Despite the sure-handed Nowell’s turnover trouble and leading scorer Johnson picking up his third foul with 5½ minutes left in the half, the Wildcats steadily built a lead. It reached as many as 14 points before Texas made three free throws in the final second to get within 36-25 heading to the locker room.

It was the spark the Longhorns needed. They made their first six shots of the second half, and their run spanning the break eventually reached 17-4 while getting them within 40-39 with 15 minutes left in the game.

“There were points in the second half we did get rushed,” Nowell said, “and it led to turnovers and fast-break points.”

Rice’s 3-pointer a few minutes later gave Texas its first lead since the opening minutes. And when the Wildcats suffered a nearly five-minute scoring drought, Bishop began to assert control. The Creighton transfer scored 11 points over a six-minute stretch and punctuating each basket with a roar and a fist pump.

Texas could do nothing right in the first half and nothing wrong in the second, shooting 57% from the floor over the final 20 minutes. Most of the success came in the paint; the Longhorns were just 4 of 16 from beyond the 3-point arc. Kansas State couldn’t overcome 19 turnovers, including six by Nowell, who had 36 points, nine assists and eight rebounds when the teams met in Austin. He had just six rebounds and three assists Saturday.

Texas will head down Interstate 70 to face No. 8 Kansas on Monday night. Kansas State will wrap its homestand against No. 15 TCU on Tuesday night.

Just like the first meeting Jan. 3, though, this rematch was destined to go down to the wire.

“There’s no blowouts in our league,” Tang said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas men's basketball holds off Kansas State to stay atop the Big 12