MANHATTAN — Kansas State football had a chance to steal a game amidst its worst performance of the season when it got the ball back against Arizona , down six and with under two minutes left.
Avery Johnson had struggled up to that point, but it wouldn't have mattered if he could pull a rabbit out of the hat for the second time in three weeks. Already sitting at 1-2, coming off a horrendous loss to Army , the quarterback faced fourth-and-7 from the Wildcats' 43.
The pass fell incomplete, and the Wildcats fell to 1-3 heading into an idle week. It felt like the season was over .
" We're gonna make some changes, and we're going to fight our tails , fight our ass off through the storm," Wildcats coach Chris Klieman said after the game. "I told our guys, 'Do not jump off this ship,' and I don't think we will. I think you guys know that we won't either."
What happened over the following two weeks helped Kansas State turn its season around. Now sitting at 4-4 and coming off a dominant 42-17 win over rival Kansas, the Wildcats are "ascending" toward the team many thought they'd be before they kicked off their Week 0 game in Ireland.
Much of the feel-good Kansas State is feeling now heading into a critical Saturday, Nov. 1, matchup with No. 13 Texas Tech at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, can be attributed to the adjustments that Klieman and the Wildcats made in the two weeks after their loss at Arizona, leading into a 14-point win over UCF.
"We just went back to what we do in fall camp," Klieman said.
Klieman kept his coordinators in Manhattan rather than hitting the road to recruit, hoping to "tweak" aspects of their approach from a coaching standpoint, whether it's the technique they were preaching or the personnel they were fielding.
"We weren't a very good football team," Klieman said. "So we needed another week of fall camp, and it came at the right time."
During the idle week ahead of the Wildcats' home game against UCF, they weren't game-planning for the Knights; there were no practice snaps against any UCF formations, no walkthroughs and nothing in the coaching offices preparing for the Knights.
It was just Kansas State vs. Kansas State on the practice field with the best players going up against each other in different situations, from third downs to inside runs to seven-on-sevens.
The coaches used those practices to reevaluate their roster as if they were fall camp practices ahead of the season opener. Some of their preseason script was affected by having to play a Week 0 game in Ireland, forcing the coaches to gameplan for Iowa State earlier than they would have otherwise.
"We weren't playing very well," Klieman said. "The guys owned it, players and coaches owned it, that we weren't a very good football team. We weren't playing very well, so we had to go back to square one."
The Wildcats came out of the week energized. They preached the "energy" they found, and it carried over into the weeks ahead.
Kansas State was in control for the entirety of its 34-20 win over UCF. The Wildcats know they let one get away when they fell by one to Baylor the next week, but they responded with a 13-point win over TCU and then dominated this past week by blowing out their in-state rival, extending their winning streak over Kansas to 17.
"We're not gonna stop fighting," Johnson said after beating KU. "It just shows the amount of grit that this team has. The whole message throughout the locker room is taking one week at a time, and next up is Texas Tech. If we come out and we play the way we did today, we have a really good chance."
Kansas State now heads into a week in which it will host one of the best teams in the country, one that remains a Big 12 favorite to qualify for the College Football Playoff. Texas Tech brings one of the best rosters in the sport to Manhattan, a team that almost everyone would have assumed would annihilate the Wildcats after the first four weeks of their season.
The Wildcats continue to ascend and will have a chance to make a statement this week, something that may not have been possible if they hadn't been able to return to camp earlier in the year.
"We've got a really good football team coming in here in Texas Tech, and we're excited to have them at home," Klieman said. "But we've gotta come up with great plans and have great focus, because it's gonna be a heck of a battle here at The Bill."
Wyatt D. Wheeler covers Kansas State athletics for the USA TODAY Network and Topeka Capital-Journal. You can follow him on X at @WyattWheeler_ , contact him at 417-371-6987 or email him at wwheeler@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: How Kansas State football turned its season around
