Kansas State Wildcat coach Chris Klieman held his weekly press conference on Tuesday, ahead of this Saturday's game at Texas Tech.
Big weekend for us heading down to Lubbock against a really good Texas Tech team. They're playing well. Happy for Coach (Matt) Wells. He's one of my close friends in the profession and happy to see him having success, doing it in a variety of ways, but an explosive offense, veteran quarterback, a lot of good skill players playing really well up front offensively. Defensively, people have gotten after them a little bit. I think they have some really good talent, some good athletes. They run to the football and they smack you, but they've run into a couple of teams that have been able to rush the football, and then they have to play catch up. That's kind of where we're at right now as far as we need to play from ahead more so than from behind, and that's what we've done the last few weeks is play from behind. That's probably not suited best for us. You see when we play ahead against Stanford or against Nevada, our ability to dictate some of the tempo and pace and calls we make both offensively and defensively. We're playing from behind, we have probably been more aggressive on defense, which causes some bigger plays. Then, offensively, we'd like to be balanced. We're better balanced right now. It's a big week for us, an important week for us. Guys had good spirits and good energy yesterday and are excited for another opportunity.”
On the ability to run the football this week…
“That's really important for us to be able to sustain the run, and then have balance and continue to be able to throw the ball because I think Skylar (Thompson) is playing at a really high level. So, I don't want to take the ball out of his hands, and we also believe there's going to be some wind out there on Saturday. So, based on that, you may have to be able to run the ball a little bit more into a breeze. Then the kicking game becomes a big factor too.”
On the status of defensive end Bronson Massie…
“It's either going to be this week or next week. We're still hoping for this week, and we're just getting into practice today. He's going to do a few things today. We'll see how he responds, but we'll feel confident whether it’s this Saturday and it's a good chance it still could be, if not it should be the next Saturday.”
On the balance on offense…
“I think that's why he's (Skylar Thompson) able to make those plays because Deuce (Vaughn) is an active contributor and people are always knowing where Deuce is, which opens up a lot of guys in the pass game. I think it's opened up Joe Ervin. Joe’s been playing really well. Excited for Joe because he's getting stronger, and we got to find ways to get Joe the football, because Joe is doing some really good things. I like the fact that we have a couple of backs that are explosive guys as well as a really good passing game that you have to account for.”
On the message to the team…
“1-0 today, and 1-0 for the week.”
On seeing the potential of the wide receivers…
“I don't know. We've got good wide receivers. Phillip (Brooks), Malik (Knowles), Landry (Weber) are good players. I think we saw Tyrone Howell can do some things. We've got good players at wide receiver.”