Why Chris Klieman wouldn’t let K-State players sulk after Oklahoma State defeat

Anyone looking for reasons to doubt Chris Klieman and the Kansas State football team found them during a 26-13 loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium.

Sure, the Wildcats looked fantastic winning their first three games and leaping into the national rankings. But that impressive start lost some of its luster when Big 12 play began and little seemed to go right against the Cowboys.

K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson played his worst game of the season, his receivers struggled to get open and the Wildcats averaged 3.9 yards per rush. Things weren’t much better on defense, where Cowboys running back Chuba Hubbard ran wild for a season-high 296 yards and receiver Tylan Wallace caught eight passes for 145 yards.

You could say the honeymoon phase is over for Klieman now that he has lost his first game. The Wildcats clearly have work to do before they can consider themselves contenders in this conference. This isn’t the last time they will face an up-tempo, versatile offense like Oklahoma State. Things might get even harder next week with undefeated Baylor up next.

And yet ... There wasn’t a sulking face to be found in K-State’s locker room when this game was over.

There was frustration, but no sadness. There was anger, but not fear. Klieman wouldn’t let the Wildcats hang their heads, not even after he lost his first game as a head coach in two years, ending a streak of 24 straight victories going back to his time at North Dakota State.

We have seen how he handles his team after wins. Turns out, it’s the same after a loss.

“Like I told the guys, I’m not going to change,” Klieman said. “They don’t know that yet, because we haven’t had a loss, but I promised those guys I’m not going to change. I’m still going to love them and still be the same guy. My challenge to them is: don’t you guys change.”

“You guys are preparing your tails off. We didn’t execute exceptionally well tonight, but our preparation, I thought, the last two weeks was dynamite. If we keep believing and buying in and stacking those days and having great preparation, it will pay off.”

Several K-State players called this loss “a learning experience.”

The oldest members of the roster are used to playing against prototypical Big 12 teams like Oklahoma State that like to speed up games and win shootouts. But this was new for Klieman and his coaching staff. All three of K-State’s nonconference opponents play much differently.

Everyone wanted to know how they would handle that test.

The stat sheet said they failed, but the Wildcats aren’t looking at that as anything more than a wake-up call after Klieman said they battled and fought with ideal energy.

“It’s early in the season,” senior defensive back Denzel Goolsby said. “It’s just one game. We aren’t going to let it define the rest of the season. If anything, we are going to learn from it. Maybe it was a good dose of medicine early that will help us learn what we need to improve on and wake us up a little bit. We will be that much more hungry against Baylor.”

The Wildcats will need to improve on both sides of the ball before they host the Bears. Senior punter Devin Anctil was arguably the team’s MVP of this game for booting seven punts 321 yards.

But it seems like they need the most work on offense. K-State looked hobbled without Malik Knowles in the lineup. K-State’s top receiver missed the game with a foot injury and the Wildcats clearly missed his ability to stretch the field.

Oklahoma State came with run blitzes that K-State wasn’t expecting and limited the Wildcats to one first down in the first half and 244 yards in the game. James Gilbert scored their only touchdown on a short run in the fourth quarter when the game was all but decided.

K-State is a team built to play from ahead with a power running game, and it found itself trying to play catch up here. It never found a rhythm. Thompson completed 11 of 23 passes for 118 yards, but was “under duress” most of the night and appeared so “gassed” in the second half that Klieman opted to kick field goals and punt on fourth down when he would normally go for it.

Klieman doesn’t know when Knowles will return to action, but K-State receivers may need to find new ways to get open without him in the short term.

“It felt like nothing was working initially,” senior receiver Dalton Schoen said, “and it is hard, from my experience, to get anything going offensively when you can’t get in a rhythm. I know we struggled even to get first downs. That threw everyone off. It makes people timid.”

The Wildcats need to do something different, because Oklahoma State is not known for its defense and it shut them down for much of the night.

Thirteen points won’t win many Big 12 games.

Everyone associated with K-State football realizes that. But they aren’t sulking, not even after their first loss with a new coach.

“We have to be better in a lot of different phases,” Thompson said. “We didn’t play very well tonight. We know that. But I’m telling you our energy and our mindset is great. There is nobody pointing fingers at nothing. There’s nothing to hang our heads about. They outplayed us today. It’s as simple as that. We just have to go back to the drawing board.”

This story was originally published September 29, 2019 at 12:32 AM.