Kansas State men’s basketball concluded a two-game road trip in the Utah mountains with a 74-69 loss to Utah on Monday, following Saturday’s loss at BYU. The losses hurt the Wildcats’ postseason chances after a six-game winning streak.

K-State (13-13, 7-8 Big 12) rallied from a 57-50 deficit to tie the game at 59 with 3 minutes remaining but fell after a late 5-0 Utah run.

“They’re hurt in the locker room right now, and you love when guys care so much,” head coach Jerome Tang told K-State Athletics. “And we have been through a lot, but we’ve turned a corner and we’re close to being really, really good. And this road trip was great for us because we learned some things, and now we get to go back and work on it.”

Utah (15-11, 7-8 Big 12) came off a home win over Kansas and played with a lot of momentum. The Utes didn’t shoot the ball well but found other ways to win. One of the main other ways was the boards and especially the offensive glass as they had 21 offensive rebounds.

“It’s pretty frustrating. We work on it every day in practice, but then we get to the game and aren’t rebounding. We’ve got to do better,” guard Max Jones said.

K-State was led by Brendan Hausen who scored 17 points and made five 3-pointers including one from the logo late. However, Hausen, who had a good look, missed a deep triple with five seconds remaining, nearly sending K-State to overtime.

“That [three] was open, I just got to step up and make a shot, that was on me,” Hausen said. 

For Utah, Lawson Lovering had 15 points and 10 rebounds, with most of his scoring coming from the foul line. Lovering, who on the season is shooting 35% from the free throw line, went 7-12 from the strike on the night. 

As a team, Utah ranks 362nd out of 364 in free-throw percentage this season at around 62%.. On the night, Utah went 23-30 from the charity stripe, which was needed for the Utes as they didn’t shoot the ball well from the floor. 

“[Ezra] Asaro was shooting 50 percent [from the line] in the last five games, and he went 7-of-7, head coach Jerome Tang said. “Lovering had made just 20 percent in that span, and he went to the line and made 7 of 12, they all stepped to the line and made free throws.”

The first half was a back-and-forth affair, as both teams got small leads but neither could pull away. Offensively neither team could find much rhythm and that could be due to the early effects of playing two games in three days. At the half the game was tied at 32-32.

Jones led the Wildcats in the first half, scoring 10 points and finding success attacking the rim. For Utah, it was Lovering leading the way with nine points with five of those points coming from the line. 

In the second half, Utah was able to get out to a fast start going on a 7-0 run and forcing K-State to call a timeout to slow them down. Utah was able to extend its lead to nine before K-State started to work its way back.

Helping get back into the game was Hausen and his ability to hit tough 3-point shots. Hausen was able to bail out the Wildcats offense a few times by hitting a circus 3-pointer right before the shot clock buzzer. 

“The plays were called for me, I did what I always do and just tried to get it up and trust the work that I put in,” Hausen said. 

K-State tied the game at 57 with under four minutes to go. In the last four minutes, Utah executed well to get good shots or get to the line where they converted. K-State made it close but could never quite get the lead or tie it up late again resulting in them losing the game. 

“At the end, we had an opportunity and we missed it, but I was proud of our execution at the end to give us that opportunity,” Tang said. 

Two of K-State’s best players forwards David N’Guessan and Coleman Hawkins, were relatively quiet on the night. During the ‘Cats winning streak both guys were playing well, but in the last two losses, they have struggled a little bit. Both Hawkins and N’Guessan were in foul trouble as well, forcing them to play limited minutes. 

K-State will likely need to win out and win a few games in the Big 12 tournament to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

“We obviously got to win out and I think we can do that with our team, we just always have hope,” Jones said. 

The Wildcats will be glad to return home to face Arizona State on Sunday, February 23. The game will tip off at 3 p.m.