MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham and defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman met with members of the media on Thursday at the Vanier Family Football Complex, as the Wildcats are in their final preparations before hosting TCU. Links to video of both press conferences are above, and a complete transcript is below.
COURTNEY MESSINGHAM, OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On if K-State stays with the passing game due to its recent efficiency...
“To a certain extent because we've talked about as a program, the more explosive plays you can get, the better opportunity you have. That being said, I still think we got to have good balance, but he is throwing it extremely well. He's been, two and three games now, getting more and more accurate, getting more and more comfortable, especially with his lower body. That obviously helps him throw it.”
On Texas Tech changing things against K-State to stop the run…
“They did more of a better job saying, ‘We're not going to allow Deuce (Vaughn) and Joe Ervin and some of those guys just hit some inside zone.’ So, I did feel like they were slanting an angling and a little bit more and in some run pressures. When that happens, obviously, we got to take advantage of throwing football, because not all Skylar’s (Thompson) balls were down the field. A lot of them were shorter to intermediate stuff that then people were able to get something more out of.”
On what West Virginia did last week against TCU’s defense...
“Well, they did a couple things. They have some extremely explosive receivers that, a couple times, they just dumped a little hitch screen out there to them and a guy went and took it down to the one-yard line. The other thing they did, they got a little bit of quarterback run. Had a huge play coming out at like the minus seven or so and ran a power-read type play and the quarterback slid out the backdoor for about 60 (yards). They did a good job of mixing it up. Their quarterback, I thought, played well, but they ran the ball well. They got good running back – a couple of them, really – but No. 4, No. 24, are both really good running backs. They've got a lot of different weapons that we've got to try to do the same thing, meaning use your tight ends, use your wide outs, use your tailbacks because they used all three of them. Then, their quarterback used his feet a little bit. It was actually not what I consider their starter that the big run, but their backup.”
On eliminating turnovers...
“We keep talking about the fundamentals over and over again. Like I said before, I'm not going to harp on turnovers as much as every Monday when we get together as an offensive unit, we talk about, ‘Guys, we have to take care of the ball if we’re going to play complimentary football.’ No, unfortunately, we haven't yet, and we need to. As we keep going and we want to keep winning football games, we've got to win the explosives and we got to win the turnover battle.”
JOE KLANDERMAN, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR
On TCU’s running backs...
“The real deal, skill wise. These guys are as good as anybody in the league. I know I say that a lot. Maybe I get caught up in it. But you're not going to find a better tandem. Those guys are sensational. They've got people they can throw to on the outside, a bunch of them, and they’ve got a quarterback that can make things happen and orchestrate things. So, it’s going to be a challenge.”
On what changed for the defense in the second half…
“Nothing, we just executed better. We gave up a few bonehead things, I would say, in the first half. If you look at some of those things that happened on the first series, it wasn't anything that anybody was doing. We just weren't finishing the plays. We had five guys around that first one that scored and lost our leverage out there. That can't happen when you're playing good defense. In the second half, we just didn't make those technique errors. We didn't do anything drastically different schematically. There was no big Rocky Balboa speech. It was just the guys just started to do what they do, what they can do.”
On if he knew how special Felix Anudike-Uzomah’s safety was right away or on film…
“No, I realized how good of a play that was. That's something that we've been trying to get out of him a little bit is just knowing when you can take your shots. I think sometimes he plays it a little bit too conservatively for how good of a playmaker he is. That's just being a young guy and trying to be right all the time. That was one of the messages, it's one thing to be right and hope everybody else is right. It's another thing to take matters in your own hands once in a while and take shots, make plays and play fast. That was kind of the message last week. When we started to roll a little bit, that's what guys were doing.”
On TCU quarterback Max Duggan…
“He used to be just a really good athlete that played quarterback. Now, I think he’s a complete quarterback that has command of his offense. I’ve seen him throw field-side outs. I don’t recall that being in his arsenal in the past. I don’t see him making bad reads or mistakes with the football that he may have done in the past few years. I see, when things break down, it used to just be, option A, I’m taking off running. Now I see him continuing to keep his eyes down the field. He’s gotten better every time we face him, unfortunately.”
On the big-play capability of the TCU offense…
“Extremely. As I mentioned, I don't know if there's another team that has as many threats at every position as they do. Those tailbacks, even if you get hats to the deal, getting them to the ground is an issue and same thing with the receivers. You might have a hitch that gets caught in front of you. That should be a routine play, it's not going to be just that easy. We're still going to have to get those guys on the ground and run through our leverage.”