TCU falls at home, 65-47 to No. 25 Kansas State

FORT WORTH, Texas – Plain and simple, Amric Fields knows TCU's problem right now is that the Horned Frogs aren't playing hard enough.

And that came out again Tuesday night against No. 25 Kansas State, where the Horned Frogs let a three-point deficit with less than 14 minutes to play balloon into a 65-47 loss.

"We're soft right now — we're really soft," said Fields, who played in his third straight game since returning from a broken left hand. "But we can play a lot better. We haven't shown that yet, but at heart, we're a really tough team. Just bringing it out at game time, we need to find some way to do that."

Fields had 14 points and Kyan Anderson added 12 for TCU (9-5, 0-2 Big 12). The 47 points are the fewest the Frogs have scored this season, and their 34.7 percent shooting was the second-worst of the season.

TCU, which is 6-1 this season when out-rebounding its opponent, was pounded on the glass with Kansas State finishing with a 37-21 advantage.

"We had shots," TCU coach Trent Johnson said. "When the ball doesn't go down it shouldn't affect the way you play on the other end. They had 18 turnovers but it didn't affect the way they played on the other end. What does that say? They're a mentally tough team."

Thomas Gipson scored 19 points, while Marcus Foster added 16 points for Kansas State.

The Wildcats (12-3, 2-0), who made their way into the Top 25 for the first time this season on Monday, played their first true road game of the season. But it didn't seem to faze them. Kansas State had its highest shooting percentage of the season both overall (52.5 percent) and from 3-point range (46.7 percent).

"When we were patient, we were able to exploit them and get it to Thomas (Gipson) and then Marcus Foster in the second half," Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said.

Gipson, playing about 30 miles from where he went to high school in Cedar Hill, Texas, added a game-high eight rebounds. Foster, the reigning Big 12 newcomer of the week, hit two 3-pointers in a one-minute span late in the second half that helped put the game out of reach.

"He's so consistent and he's so focused for a young guy," Weber said of Foster. "He made big shots for us where we were dying there in the second half."

The Horned Frogs used a 10-2 run to get within 36-33 with 13:45 to play, but Kansas State responded with a 9-3 run — keyed by a wide-open 3-pointer by Shane Southwell — and the Wildcats' lead wouldn't dip below seven points for the rest of the game.

Powerful dunks by Gipson and Wesley Iwundu gave Kansas State a 20-10 lead with less than 6 minutes to play in the first half. TCU's next possession ended with a layup by Jarvis Ray and that ended a span of just three points in nearly 11 minutes for the Horned Frogs.

The Wildcats went ahead 31-17 with 1:12 to play on a dunk by Gipson, but Anderson's layup made it 31-21 as time expired in the first half.