Kansas State coach Jerome Tang has noticed a trend this season.

It’s pretty simple: when the Wildcats are able to string long scoring runs, they win. When they are on the opposite end, they usually lose.

The Wildcats hope the ratio improves, beginning with Saturday’s game against Houston in Manhattan.

“We’ve talked about this,” Tang said. “We’ve had five, what they call kill shots, where you go on a 10-0 run. We’ve had five of those and we’ve won all five of those games. We’ve had five against us and we’ve lost four of five of those. There’s one game we’ve had a kill shot and they had kill shot.”

The Wildcats fell victim to a “kill” shot in a loss to Oklahoma State earlier this week. The Cowboys went on 20-2 run just before halftime that turned a one-point game into a 43-24 lead.

“For this team, it’s not just a kill shot,” Tang said. “It’s probably like 8-0 runs. We’ve charted those. We’ve been on the wrong end of 8-0 runs. We’ve had less 8-0 runs than our opponents than our opponents have, especially in the losses. You look at the personnel that was in [the game], you look at what you were running. For us, if it’s a 4 or 5-0 run, we need a time out. I might need to call a timeout earlier than I would on the normal just because of the makeup of this team where we’re at right now.”

Shandel Richardson is the publisher of Kansas State Wildcats On SI. He can be reached at shandelrich@gmail.com

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