Longhorns motivated to beat K-State in Manhattan for first time since 2002
Death, taxes and Kansas State beating Texas at home.
Since 2002, they have all been certainties of life.
The K-State Wildcats have won five straight home football games against the Texas Longhorns, a streak that began in 2006 under former coach Ron Prince and has continued under Bill Snyder.
K-State has won big (39-14 in 2010, 23-0 in 2014, 42-24 in 2012) and small (24-21 in 2016 and 45-42 in 2006) over the years, with fans chanting the words “We own Texas” after each win.
The streak never seemed to garner much attention from Texas players under former coaches Mack Brown and Charlie Strong, but the Longhorns are taking a different approach with Tom Herman in charge.
“It’s definitely been going around the locker room pretty hard, because most of us older guys know what it’s like playing out there at K-State,” Texas senior defensive lineman Chris Nelson said earlier this week. “They’ve been asking questions like, ‘What’s so difficult about it?’ And we’ve just been breaking it down to them.”
“We said, ‘You can’t let this game go by you, these guys are going to play until the clock hits zero, so we’ve got to play our hearts out.’”
Texas is right to be wary of a road game against the Wildcats. Forget about how different life was for their last win in Manhattan (the first iPhone was still five years away), the Longhorns haven’t won a road game this season.
Consecutive home wins over Tulsa, Southern California and TCU vaulted them to No. 18 in the national polls. But they opened the season with a head-scratching loss against Maryland on a neutral field.
“I really didn’t know that was a stat-line and that it’s been since 2002,” senior defensive back PJ Locke said. “I really didn’t know that. You have to give credit to Kansas State. It’s a well-coached team, have a legendary coach, been there for a long time, always well-coached. They do a great job of defending their land so now it’s another challenge for us. We had some good home game wins.
“Now we’ll see if we can go back and do it on the road. Last time we were on the road we lost, so we have to take that same mindset we had for the home games and take it on the road.”
Extending the streak won’t be easy for K-State this time around. The Wildcats (2-2, 0-1 Big 12) haven’t been competitive against against power-conference opponents and are switching quarterbacks to try and spark a sputtering offense.
Texas is favored by 8 1/2 points.
A K-State win would be a huge confidence booster.
“Absolutely,” K-State receiver Zach Reuter said. “Another ranked team coming in, this is definitely a game we need to come out and be at our best, because we have a lot to prove now. We’ve shown twice that we’ve taken steps back and we really need to take a big step forward to kind of push our season in the right direction.”
Both sides understand this is a big game. And it feels a little bigger with a streak involved.
“We haven’t beat them since 2002 on the road so I think it’s going to be a tough challenge,” Texas junior defensive back Brandon Jones said. “We have to prepare this week like we’ve been preparing since the season started.”