Kansas State football team all in for Texas Bowl opportunity: 'This is a close-knit group'

MANHATTAN — In a bowl season filled with turmoil, Kansas State so far has been a model of stability.

Take the Texas Bowl, where the Wildcats (7-5) will face LSU at 8 p.m. on Jan. 4 at Houston's NRG Stadium. The Tigers (6-6) already have had several key players transfer or opt out since the end of the regular season.

K-State, on the other hand, is all in.

"We’ve still had some flu bug guys. We’re still missing a guy here or there — a few each day, it seems like," K-State coach Chris Klieman said last Tuesday before the team adjourned for a short Christmas break. "But knock on wood, we continue to stay healthy and guys stay with the program.”

An allegiance to the program seems to be a pervasive theme among the players.

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“A lot of the players in this locker room, I feel like the guys love football and just want to play football," said All-Big 12 safety Russ Yeast, a graduate transfer from Louisville who spent just one season with the Wildcats. "To us, it's another opportunity to play another game, another opportunity to get a win, so, I think that's a big deal.

"Nobody really thought about opting out or anything like that because we want to go out there and have another chance to play the game that we love.”

Klieman agreed that the team's camaraderie is a key factor.

"It gives us another chance to be together as a football team," he said. "This is a close-knit group of guys that cares a lot about each other and enjoys each other's company.

"I know our guys are chomping at the bit because they really want to play together one more time. And that's the sign of a really good group of seniors and leaders that have stuck together through an awful long time."

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The fact that the Wildcats finished the regular season with back-to-back losses has fueled a desire to get another shot at going out on high note. The 22-17 loss at Texas on Nov. 26 especially stuck in their craw.

“We had some time off after the Texas game and then getting back into practice, and now I'm just fired up to be out there and play another football game with my guys," said sophomore running back Deuce Vaughn, a consensus All-American. "I feel like we're really ready to go because it's another opportunity.

"I guess that's the biggest thing is we have another opportunity to come out here and just showcase what all K-State is about."

K-State has not won a bowl game since beating UCLA in the 2017 Cactus Bowl. The Wildcats lost 20-17 to Navy two years ago in the Liberty Bowl, and last season did not make it to the postseason after losing their last five games to finish at 4-6.

"A few of these guys were a part of the bowl game when we played UCLA a few years back, but probably didn’t play very much," Klieman said. "(They) didn’t have success against Navy. Then last year, I think going through last year as difficult as it was from a COVID standpoint.

"One of the things that I think is so unique about college football is the bowl system, the playoff system, and the postseason in general. There's probably a lot of guys bummed last year that we didn’t get an opportunity to play in a bowl game."

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Vaughn, for all his individual success last year as a true freshman, missed out on the postseason experience.

"(I'm) super excited," he said. "This is going to be the first time I get to go to a bowl site, get to have that four to five days with my teammates and get into practice and being in a new city and having all the amenities that come with it — going to a Rockets' game, going to all the venues that the Texas Bowl has ready for us and be in the hotel and just spend time with my guys and getting this last opportunity to be together this season.”

LSU has had two of its top defensive players — linebacker and leading tackler Damone Clark, and defensive tackle Neil Farrell — opt out of the bowl game. Starting quarterback Max Johnson announced that he is transferring to Texas A&M.

Freshman Garrett Nussmeier is the Tigers' only available scholarship quarterback and he has appeared in four games, which means playing in the bowl would cost him a redshirt year. LSU has asked the NCAA for a waiver that would allow him to retain the redshirt while playing the game, but if that is not granted, the Tigers could be forced to go with a walk-on.

"It does make it kind of difficult when you're not really sure which players you're going to play against, but you can just prepare for everybody and just kind of look at what they did throughout the course of the season and try to be ready for everything," Yeast said. "LSU is a storied program and it's a program that I grew up watching. So, it'd be really fun to get a chance to go out there and play against them.”

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas State football eyes big opportunity against LSU in Texas Bowl