Sides Gaining Confidence Entering Sophomore Campaign

By: D. Scott Fritchen

"Man, that was crazy."

It's noticeably cool outside shortly after noon on October 1, cooler than previous days in Manhattan. Inside the Ice Family Basketball Center on the edge of the Kansas State campus, the forecast calls for raining basketballs from the reigning roundball workaholic, sophomore point guard Taryn Sides, who recently picked up the hobby of painting, but on the court turns the hardwood into her own personal canvas.

Sides sits on a long, black leather couch in the second-level lobby, a chest pass away from the K-State women's basketball offices, as she reminisces about the time the Wildcats defeated Caitlin Clark and No. 2 Iowa, 65-58, in Iowa City, Iowa. With K-State leading 61-58 and 13 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Clark missed a 3-pointer, and Sides rebounded the ball before she was fouled by Kate Martin. That sent Sides to the free-throw line for two shots with 10 seconds to go.

First free-throw: Swish.

Second free-throw: Swish.

Iowa called a timeout, Clark missed another 3-pointer, and Zyanna Walker made a final layup right before the final buzzer sounded on one of the greatest wins in K-State women's basketball history. Silence filled Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The stunned, sellout crowd of 14,998 headed toward the exits. The Hawkeyes had been favored by 16.5 points.

Sides came off the bench to score eight points, grab six rebounds and dish out three assists in 24 minutes against one of the top teams in America.

"Man, that was crazy," Sides repeats. "We played at 7:30 p.m., and I just remember the whole day I was so nervous. Butterflies. But, yeah, that game gave me so much confidence. It was the No. 2 team in the country and Caitlin Clark? And in front of a sellout crowd? It was crazy.

"Hard to put into words."

Sides prefers to speak with actions.

It's a fluid motion as the basketball comes off her hands. Sides, a native of Phillipsburg, Kansas, believes that shooting the basketball is an art. When it comes to shooting in this era of K-State women's basketball, Sides is the modern-day Picasso. Now, she isn't yet to be confused with the K-State Athletics Hall-of-Fame inductee Laurie Koehn (2002-05), a native of Moundridge, Kansas, whose 392 career 3-pointers made her the NCAA Division I record-holder for made 3-point attempts until somebody broke the record in 2015. But Sides resides in the practice gym, her personal laboratory, getting up 600 shots a day. That includes 400 3-pointers. She shoots 15 3-pointers at seven different stations around the 3-point arc. Over the course of an hour, she goes around the arc four times.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

"That'll get me around 400 shots," Sides says. "Hitting 70% is my goal. If I go below 70%, that's not a good day shooting."

One time, she made 168 free throws in a row.

The 5-foot-6 Sides logged 458 minutes, tallied 115 points, shot 31.3% from the floor, including 33.3% on 3-pointers, while hitting 81.0% of her free throws last season as a freshman. She also hauled in 72 rebounds, handed out 92 assists, and finished with a 2.79 assist-to-turnover ratio, which was the best assist-to-turnover ratio by a K-State player ever in a single season.

During one stretch in particular, Sides became an assist machine — eight assists against McNeese State, six against Missouri, a career-high nine against North Florida, and nine more against Oral Roberts — while committing just five turnovers over that stretch. She had 56 assists and 12 turnovers in the first 12 games of her career. After 11 games, she led all of Division I with a 6.71 assist-to-turnover ratio. It was amazing to see, really, her poise on the floor, along with her awareness and anticipation. It's a hard thing to master. Especially in the infant stages of a career.

As K-State head coach Jeff Mittie put it: "There's a lot of areas that she can get better at, and there are a lot of areas where she is beyond her years."

And now? A more matured Sides is eager to really shine for the Wildcats, who are potentially a top-15 team heading into the 2024-25 season.

"I want to have a breakout year this year," she says. "I just need to be more aggressive. I have more confidence now. I've learned a lot in the past year. Yeah, I'm excited to get out there and do good things."

She's off to a great start.

A week before Sides sat inside the Ice Family Basketball Center recounting the Iowa win and discussing her shooting routine with a visitor, Mittie sat in the team meeting room on the first floor of the complex and told a throng of reporters that Sides "has had as good of a shooting summer as I've ever had a player have."

"(Sides) is making a lot of shots, and I want her to be aggressive there," Mittie continued. "She's had those 'wow' moments where she can draw all the attention to her. Taryn has that ability."

Swish. Swish. Swish.

She committed to K-State on August 15, 2021. This was before she was rated the 64^th best player in the nation by Blue Star Basketball, before she was a 2023 McDonald's All-American nominee, before she was a four-time Kansas Basketball Coaches Association All-State recipient, and before she scored 40 points to lead Phillipsburg High School against Concordia in perhaps the best performance of her high school career.

The town of Phillipsburg harbors around 2,400 residents and is home to the Majestic Theatre, Fort Bissell Museum, and the C&R Railroad. Down the street, sits her original childhood home and the basketball goal where she and her older brothers, Trey and Ty, played games of 21 or one-on-one until dark.

"Trey was a little more chill," Sides says. "I was four years younger than him, so he'd take it a little bit easier on me. Ty didn't think that way at all. He was like, 'I'm going to dominate you.' Ty used to tell me all the time, 'I'm going to be the reason you even make it to Division I, because I didn't take it easy on you.' I hated it at the moment, but he definitely helped get me to where I am today."

Keith Sides grew up in Norton County in the rural community of Almena, graduated from Northern Valley High School, played basketball at Cloud County, and earned a degree in business education at K-State in 1996. Robin is from Paxico and attended Wabaunsee High School. She played volleyball at Hutchinson Community College and then studied journalism and marketing at K-State. She also graduated in 1996.

Keith served as the Phillipsburg High boys' varsity head coach. Robin served as the Phillipsburg High girls' basketball head coach.

"It was so cool," Sides says. "When your parents are right there following along in your journey, it's special. I definitely enjoyed it. My mom was my coach all the way from third grade to high school. She'd go hard on me, but she's my mother at the end of the day."

Trey (now 24) played basketball at Jacksonville University and Central Missouri. Ty (now 22) went to K-State to get a degree.

"Purple was in my blood," Taryn says.

Keith says that Taryn was one year old the first time she picked up a basketball. When Taryn was 2, Keith bought their first basketball goal, one that would lower to 5 feet, so she could begin shooting basketballs. By age 3, she became a gym rat. She accompanied Keith to boys' basketball practice. She was shooting left-handed layups before she was 5 years old. As a preschooler, she beat all the first- and second-grade boys up and down the court and scored more points than them. Keith took her daughter golfing. He marveled at her hand-eye coordination at such a young age.

Third grade, Sides began form shooting.

Then in the fourth grade, it happened: She sank the first 3-pointer of her life.

"We were playing at Southern Valley in Nebraska," she says. "We always went to Nebraska and played games because it was so close. We had little league games there. Anyhow, in this game, I made my first-ever 3. It was one of those where you had to chuck it up there. I thought, 'I'm going to shoot it and make it."

And she did.

She didn't track her number of shots back then. She didn't have a shot tracker. But she went to the gym every morning before school. She was a three-sport athlete, so she'd have volleyball or track practice. Afterward, she'd eat dinner and shoot in the gym. Of course, she had the keys to the gym.

"Had to get some shots up," she says.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

Her seventh-grade year they began moving her basketball games to a bigger gym because the crowds grew too big. Word got out: Come watch this girl. She was the point guard and had the speed and people started seeing how well she played — her court vision, being able to dribble with both hands as fast as she could go, dribbling behind the back and between the legs, her anticipation, and her ability to make her teammates better. She saw coaches at her games. She thought about the fact they were investing their time in her. She thought it was special.

"When she was going into her freshman year, she was competing against the top girls in the country in that Nike circuit," Keith says. "She knew she could compete at that level. Even with her smaller stature, she knew she was strong enough and quick enough to play with some of the best in the nation. Over the summer, we went with her to the east coast and Chicago and Dallas and all the places they played at. It was nice to do that with her."

She didn't keep track of the number of scholarship offers or the amount of interest that she received because she always knew where she was hopefully headed: K-State.

"It was my dream school since I was a little, little kid," says Sides, who attended her first K-State summer basketball camp in the seventh grade.

As a freshman, Sides led Phillipsburg to its first-ever appearance in the state tournament. Her career steadily took off — six 3-pointers in a row against Smith Center, a bunch of 40-point games, she hit the 2,000-point mark at Hoxie. She helped Phillipsburg to a third-place finish at the 2023 Kansas 3A State Tournament.

"My early memory is she could do all the stuff," Mittie says. "You could see the headiness of her as a point guard. She understood it and saw it, all those things weren't a question mark at a very young age."

Rated the 64^th-best player in the nation by Blue Star Basketball, Sides was a 2023 McDonald's All-American nominee, a four-time Kansas Basketball Coaches Association All-State honoree, a two-time Kansas 3A Player of the Year winner, and she set Phillipsburg girls' basketball school records in points (2,166), assists (394), steals (502) and 3-pointers (263). As a senior, she averaged 23.5 points and shot 44.0% from beyond the arc.

But before the bevy of accolades began pouring in, Sides received her most prized honor her freshman year.

That's when she received a scholarship offer from K-State.

"Pure joy," she says. "Simple as that. It was just so surreal. I had confidence in myself, but I was like, 'Dang, that's really hard to do, to get to this level.' I was like, 'Wow, I made it.'"

And now she's here, and she's more than made it. She's likely to be a go-to player when she's on the floor this season. Mittie wants players besides two-time All-American center Ayoka Lee to be able to draw attention. He believes that Sides can draw the attention of opponents. She can kill them with the 3, or she can find the open teammate. Either way, it's a win-win.

"I think you're going to see her in time," Mittie says, "become a player who can put up big scoring numbers."

She gets up early. She loves hitting the gym in the morning. Even on her days off.

"There's just something about getting up and doing something," she says.

Then she'll return to the gym at 8 or 9 p.m. More shots.

"The key is confidence," she says. "You have to believe the shot is going to go in. Then consistency. You have to get the shots up. Getting game-type shots up is another key to being successful. Our managers play defense on me."

Doesn't matter.

The result is the same.

Swish. Swish. Swish.

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Ayoka Lee

Taryn Sides

Zyanna Walker

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