The Kansas State women’s basketball season didn’t end seven minutes into the 16th-ranked Wildcats’ quarterfinal game in the Big 12 tournament. Not by a long shot.
But it definitely changed when leading scorer Kimberly Dietz fell to the Municipal Auditorium floor in Kansas City with 13:04 to play in the first half of that March 12 game. The all-conference guard clutched her left knee.
The 5-foot-9 senior’s ACL was torn, ending a collegiate career that included 63 consecutive starts and 230 3-pointers. She’s only the fourth player in Kansas State history to finish her career with at least 1,300 points and 300 assists.
The top seed in the Big 12 tournament after winning the regular-season title outright for the first time, Kansas State went on to lose to eighth-seeded Iowa State 66-65 in overtime.
Now the Wildcats (21-9), the No. 5 seed in the New Orleans Regional, head into Sunday’s NCAA tournament first-round game against the 12th-seeded University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with some uncertainties, and a big hole to fill.
“I think we’ll be very, very different,” KSU coach Deb Patterson said. “You don’t lose your leading scorer without it impacting your team.”
With Dietz, Kansas State went 13-3 in a conference that sent eight teams to the NCAA tournament and has five teams ranked among the top 16 in the country. Without her, the Wildcats and the Lady Mocs (29-3) will just have to wait and see at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport, Conn.
“That’s part of the challenge we’ll be confronting. We’re a team that will be making changes heading into the NCAA tournament,” said Patterson, the Big 12 coach of the year. “That’s a unique situation, but that’s the hand that we’re dealt.”
Dietz was averaging a team-high 15.4 points and 33.3 minutes per game. Her 73 3-pointers this season accounted for 40.5 percent of the team’s total heading into the Iowa State game, and she was second on the team with 40 steals.
All-conference point guard Shalee Lehning, perhaps the Wildcats’ best all-around player, said all the team can do is adjust and try to pick up the slack. There will be a change in personnel, she said, but not a change in character.
“We’re not going to change who we are,” said Lehning, a 5-9 junior who is averaging 11.3 points, 7.6 rebounds and 6.3 assists per game. “There’s no way you can ever replace a Kimberly Dietz, but we’ve got a lot of people that can come in and contribute.”
By Sunday the Wildcats will have had 11 days to digest the disappointment of losing a major player and reshape their lineup.
Unlike UTC, which has 10 players averaging at least 12.3 minutes per game, KSU goes with a shorter bench. Without Dietz, the Wildcats have just six players averaging double-digit minutes. Still, Patterson said she doesn’t think depth will be a problem.
“The responsibility to make up for what Kimberly was able to bring to the floor becomes more of a community challenge for our team,” she said. “(The time off) obviously has been important for us. We’ve had an opportunity to reload and reconfigure things, and we’ve got some players that are going to have to play much larger roles for us.
“It’s going to be a challenge, but I think they’re up to it.”
John Frierson is in his fifth year at the Times Free Press and fifth year covering University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletics. The bulk of his time is spent covering Mocs football, but he also writes about women’s basketball and the big-picture issues and news involving the athletic department. A native of Athens, Ga., John grew up a few hundred yards from the University of Georgia campus. Instead of becoming a Bulldog he attended Ole ...
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