Klieman gets brutally honest ahead of Texas Tech, something K-State players appreciate
Chris Klieman sat down and addressed what he knew was going to be a big topic Tuesday afternoon.
Kansas State lost 24-20 at home Saturday to West Virginia, which entered the game on a five-game losing streak. K-State was 6-3 and aiming for 10 wins in Klieman’s first season as coach of the Wildcats.
The loss nailed home a peculiar pattern in Klieman’s first season: three wins followed by two losses, followed by three wins followed by two losses.
At 6-4, K-State has been wildly inconsistent with a win over four-time defending Big 12 champion Oklahoma and a loss to a team that entered Saturday with one Big 12 win, against Kansas.
“We’re still fighting consistency; that’s the biggest thing,” Klieman said during his weekly news conference.
Klieman went on to talk about how, though his offense has shown it “can be” explosive, isn’t an explosive group.
He spoke about emotion and how after the opening-play touchdown to Dalton Schoen, the Wildcats couldn’t capture “sustained emotion.”
Klieman said while his team doesn’t have to play perfectly to win, it isn’t good enough to score in three plays and put 50 points on the board. He said while the defense can make plays, it is young enough that opponents will make plays against the Cats.
He said K-State can’t afford to lose on offense, defense or special teams and expect to be successful.
Although the evidence of K-State’s roller coaster season is clear, Klieman could have shoved it under the rug and focused on the Wildcats’ final road trip of the regular season to Texas Tech.
Instead, he brought a glaring problem in his program to the light. And his players appreciated it.
“It’s something I don’t think we’ve ever gotten here at the program with straight shot honesty,” senior defensive tackle Trey Dishon III said. “The only reason I say that is maybe the coach-to-player interaction nowadays is more consistent that we have more trust, we have more respect for the guy because he’s going to push us.
“Guys are going to respond to that. They have to. If you keep something in the back of your pocket the whole time, nothing is going to get done.”
Dishon will start his 47th career game Saturday in Lubbock, Texas. Out of Horton, Kansas, he was recruited to play under former coach Bill Snyder. When Klieman arrived, Dishon — in a sense — had to be recruited again.
“He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Dishon said. “Every decision he makes, in my opinion, is the right one. Going on from here, even after I’m gone, he’s headed in the right direction. As time goes on, with him being honest like that, it’s only going to get better.”
The same could be said of senior safety Denzel Goolsby, who became a team captain ahead of the 2019 season.
“You have to be honest with yourself if you want to move forward,” he said. “Coach does a great job of keeping it real with us, and we try to keep it real with each other. One thing he hit on yesterday was holding each other more accountable. I think we can all do a better job of that.
“I think there were times in the past when we let things slide a little bit in practice because it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, I would have made that play in the game.’ But at the end of the day, you’re creating habits and tendencies that are going to carry over.”
Junior running back Harry Trotter said Klieman’s honesty stood out.
At K-State, he is in a backfield that features two graduate transfers in James Gilbert and Jordon Brown. In Week 1, Trotter got 10 carries. Since then, that number dropped each week until the Wildcats played KU. Against the Jayhawks, he had 20 carries for 92 yards and a touchdown.
Although his usage rate changes from week-to-week, he said Klieman told him it would before the season.
“This place is definitely unique,” Trotter said. “I’ve been lied to a couple times, I’d say, but that’s one thing here that I’m never going to have to worry about.”
K-State’s inconsistency has been tough to watch at times. It’s something the players said they know is a problem, but senior center Adam Holtorf said it’s not as easy as correcting in even a few weeks.
When Klieman arrived at K-State, he told fans his first season would have its challenges. The Wildcats experienced that in their first two Big 12 games, both losses to Oklahoma State and Baylor.
As soon as it seemed K-State had turned the tide with wins over TCU, OU and KU, the Cats lost at Texas and to West Virginia.
Now it feels as if K-State is back where it was more than a month ago. Trotter said the messages from Klieman and the vibe in the locker room is no different than it was the first time K-State lost back-to-back games.
“With Coach Klieman, you know he’s got your back,” Holtorf said. “The same things we realize, the same things you realize are the same things he realizes. We’re all on the same page.”