Kansas State University Athletics
Kansas State University
13-1
South Dakota
6-7
No. 12 Wildcats Run Win Streak to 10
Jan 03, 2010 | Men's Basketball
MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Jacob Pullen's six three-point field goals and 23 total points paced Kansas State and Dominique Sutton chipped in a double-double as the 12th-ranked Wildcats won their 10th straight game with a convincing 91-69 victory Sunday over South Dakota at Bramlage Coliseum.
With the win, the Wildcats wrapped up the non-conference portion of their schedule at 13-1 and are off to their best start since the 1958-59 squad also began 13-1. The last time a K-State team won 10 games in a row was back in 1993-94. South Dakota dropped to 6-7 on the year with the loss.
Pullen led the Wildcats in scoring for the 10th time this season and reached the 20-point plateau for the sixth time in 2009-10. Five total Wildcats scored in double figures on Sunday as Curtis Kelly added 15 points, Denis Clemente and Sutton each had 14 and Jamar Samuels pitched in 13.
K-State shot 43.2-percent on the day, while South Dakota hit on 48.3-percent of its field goals. But, rebounding and forcing turnovers were the difference in the game as the Wildcats forced 23 turnovers on the afternoon and turned them into a whopping 40 points. K-State also out-rebounded South Dakota, 52-33, on the day and collected 29 offensive boards.
K-State opened the game on a 13-4 run and got nine of those points from Pullen and extended the lead to 11 at 19-8 on a Clemente runner in transition. The Wildcats extended their lead to as many as 25 at 51-26 in the first half after closing on an 18-2 run over the final five minutes.
Four Wildcats finished the first half in double figures as K-State out-rebounded South Dakota, 26-15, over the first 20 minutes. Seventeen of those rebounds came on the offensive end, leading to 17 second-chance points.
K-State came out firing from 3-point range in the second half, going 3-of-3 from behind the arc in the first three minutes of the half, quickly upping its lead to 34 points at the 17:42 mark. Pullen hit a 3-pointer at the 19:33 mark to move past Wildcat legend Lon Kruger for 15th on the K-State career scoring list. The Wildcats led from start to finish, with much of the Wildcat bench notching valuable minutes as K-State closed out the 22-point victory.
K-State will open Big 12 Conference play on Saturday when it visits Missouri for a 1 p.m. matchup. The contest will be televised nationally on ESPN2 and can be heard over radio on the K-State Sports Network.
