Basket-brawl In Manhattan: Wear A Helmet

As I wrote Saturday night, the sloppy rumble with A&M was this year's reminder of the brutal banging that characterizes many Big 12 contests. It's often ugly, and the first brawl each season inevitably shocks your basketball senses. Judging by how we played for most of the game against the Aggies, it shocked most of our players, as well.

Now that it's passed, and we survived, it might well have been a good thing--whether or not our home contest with A&M turned into a basket-brawl, tonight's road tilt against Kansas State is guaranteed to. John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus been writing about the hack-tastic ways of the Wildcats for the past week as they continue a record-setting foul pace:

Last week I noted that: 1) this is the best Wildcat team in years; and 2) they are no stranger to free throws, for and against....

As seen in [Saturday’s game against Colorado], the ‘Cats get to the line a lot and certainly that can be an important part of any balanced offense. What’s amazing, though, is that this team is still operating at an overall FT deficit in Big 12 play, having attempted 115 freebies while watching opponents shoot 122. Even by the notably foul-happy standards of the Big 12, Kansas State is on-track to smash major-conference reality on both sides of that equation.