What to Expect: IU basketball vs. Kansas State

Kansas State guard PJ Haggerty celebrates.

IU basketball is 5-0 and will host Kansas State on Tuesday night in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. The Wildcats are 5-1 and fell 86-85 to Nebraska in their most recent game in Kansas City on Friday night.

Indiana leads the all-time series against Kansas State, 19-12, and Tuesday’s game is set for an 8 p.m. ET tip on FS1:

Two high-powered offenses will lock horns on Tuesday night in Bloomington.

Indiana, led by the perimeter duo of Lamar Wilkerson and Tucker DeVries, and Kansas State, led by the nation’s leading scorer, PJ Haggerty, are among the nation’s best offensive teams.

The Hoosiers enter Tuesday’s contest with the 31st-best offense nationally, according to KenPom.com and the Wildcats aren’t far behind. Through its first six games, Kansas State is 37th in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.

It will be Kansas State’s first road game of the season, after already beating Cal at home and Mississippi State on a neutral floor.

MEET THE WILDCATS

Led by fourth-year coach Jerome Tang, who led Kansas State to an Elite Eight appearance in 2023, the Wildcats are looking to bounce back from two straight March Madness misses.

Kansas State survived two scares at home, a 96-93 win against Cal and an 84-83 win against Tulsa, before crushing Mississippi State on a neutral court and then narrowly losing to Nebraska a day later.

The Wildcats boast plenty of experience with two seniors and three juniors in a new-look starting lineup. All of K-State’s starters played elsewhere last season.

Tang landed one of the best players in the portal last spring in Haggerty, a 6-foot-4 guard. His 28 points per game lead the country and he’s shooting a sizzling 56 percent from the floor and 40.9 percent from 3. Haggerty has scored 23 or more in all of Kansas State’s games.

Kansas State is Haggerty’s fourth school in four seasons. He began his career at TCU, transferred to Tulsa for his sophomore season and played last season at Memphis. He was a consensus second-team All-American at Memphis, the AAC player of the year and a Wooden Award finalist.

Not only can Haggerty score, but he can also facilitate for his teammates. He’s averaging 6.3 assists and had 15 assists total over his last two games against Mississippi State and Nebraska.

He’s joined in the starting backcourt by Nate Johnson, another dynamic guard who can score and distribute. The 6-foot-3 Johnson, a transfer from Akron, is averaging 13.7 points, 6.2 rebounds and 4.5 assists in 32.7 minutes per game while shooting 56.1 percent from the floor and 50 percent from 3.

Last season at Akron, Johnson was the MAC player of the year and also the league’s defensive player of the year. He already has nine steals this season in six games.

Abdi Bashir, a 6-foot-7 wing transfer from Monmouth, is the second leading scorer on a Kansas State team with five players averaging in double figures. An All-CAA first team selection last season, Bashir is averaging 14.3 points and is making four 3-pointers per game (24-for-48). Last season at Monmouth, he made 127 triples in 33 games. He’s a career 39.5 percent 3-point shooter.

The other two starters in the Kansas State lineup are 6-foot-9 Khamari McGriff and 6-foot-9 Elias Rapieque.

McGriff transferred from UNC Wilmington, where he played on an NCAA tournament team last spring. He’s shooting 85.3 percent on 2s and is 12-for-13 from the free-throw line.

Rapieque is a native of Berlin who is listed as a wing and played professionally in Germany before he arrived in Manhattan. He’s just 6-for-21 from the field this season and is averaging three points and 2.5 rebounds in 17.8 minutes per game.

Tang is bringing 6-foot-1 sophomore guard David Castillo, a returnee, off the bench. He’s the team’s fourth leading scorer at 11.8 points per game and is 13-for-25 (52 percent) on 3s. That’s a significant jump from last season, when he shot 25.4 percent from deep on 67 attempts.

Senior guard CJ Jones, another returnee who began his career at Illinois-Chicago, provides guard and wing depth off the bench. The 6-foot-5 guard averages just 1.5 points in 16.2 minutes per game.

Junior wing Mobi Ikegwuruka, a native of Ireland, logged just seven minutes against Nebraska after playing double-figure minutes in four of the first five games, which included a start in the season opener. He hasn’t scored more than four points in a game this season.

Kansas State also has 7-foot-2, 254-pound junior Dorin Buca, a native of Italy, as frontcourt backup. He had four blocked shots in the win against Cal.

Freshman wing Andrej Kostic from Belgrade, Serbia, is 6-for-17 on 3s in six games, which included a 2-for-5 performance in 16 minutes against Mississippi State.

TEMPO-FREE PREVIEW

Kansas State is averaging 92.8 points per game and playing at the 28th-fastest tempo in the country, per KenPom.com.

The offensive numbers are impressive across the board for this group. The Wildcats are ninth nationally in 3-point field goal percentage (43.3), 62nd in 2-point field goal percentage (58.2) and 57th in free-throw shooting percentage (77.1). In Haggerty, Johnson and Bashir, the Kansas State has three scorers who must be accounted for at all times on the floor.

If there’s a weakness that could hurt Kansas State when conference play rolls around, it’s an inability to get to the free-throw line so far. In six games, the Wildcats rank just 273rd nationally in free-throw rate (FTA/FGA).

Defensively, Kansas State is 88th in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom.com. Opponents are shooting 57.4 percent from 2-point range, which ranks 301st in the country. Through its first five games, the Hoosiers are shooting 58.4 percent on 3s, good for 59th in the country.

WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO

Indiana is viewed as a favorite at home, but it may not be a typical juiced-up Assembly Hall crowd with students away for Thanksgiving break.

The KenPom projection is Indiana by six with a 73 percent chance of a Hoosier victory and Bart Torvik likes IU by 10 with an 81 percent chance of an IU win.

Given how the Hoosiers have played in their last two games, the Torvik number seems high. After impressive wins in each of its first three games, Indiana has been sluggish in its previous two home games and will need to be much sharper on both ends.

Indiana’s defense, which hasn’t allowed more than 77 points in a game, will be tested against the Wildcats. Haggerty and Johnson will be one of the best guard duos IU faces this season and Kansas State is an elite perimeter-shooting team.

The Hoosiers will need strong games from Tayton Conerway and Lamar Wilkerson to prevail, along with better play from Reed Bailey, who needs to do a better job on the glass than he has in the last two games.

(Photo credit: Kansas State Athletics)

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