Sunflower Showdown
Kansas State's main rivalry is with the Kansas Jayhawks. The rivalry peaked in the 1950s when both teams were annually national title contenders. The 1987-88 season also proved to be momentous in the rivalry. In the first matchup of the season, on January 30, 1988, Mitch Richmond scored 35 points to lead Kansas State to a 72-61 win to halt KU's then-record 55-game home winning streak. On February 18, KU turned the tables, prevailing 64-63 at Ahearn Field House in Manhattan to deny K-State a victory over KU in the old field house's last year. In what was supposed to be the rubber game, in the 1988 Big Eight Conference Men's Basketball Tournament, Kansas State won a decisive victory by a 69-54 score. However, the biggest was yet to come. Both teams qualified for the NCAA tournament, and after three wins each in the tournament they faced each other on March 27 in Pontiac, Michigan, for the right to advance to the Final Four. Led by Danny Manning's 20 points, KU turned a tight game into a runaway and prevailed 71-58. Kansas would go on to win the National Championship.
The rivalry slipped in significance after the 1988 season, and from 1994 to 2005, KU won 31 straight games against K-State, the longest streak for either school in the series. KU also posted a 24-game win streak against the Wildcats in Manhattan, which ended on January 30, 2008, when #22 Kansas State upset #2 Kansas 84-75. The Wildcats were 2-7 against Kansas under the previous head coach Frank Martin, including a 84-68 win over #1-ranked Kansas on Valentine's Day 2011.
Read more about this topic: Kansas State Wildcats Men's Basketball
Famous quotes containing the word sunflower:
“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)