Watch Coach Klieman’s Press Conference  |  Listen to Coach Klieman’s Press Conference  |  Listen to Player Breakout Interviews

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman and select players met with members of the media on Monday inside the Vanier Family Football Complex to preview the Dillons Sunflower Showdown against Kansas on Saturday night inside Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Links to video and audio of Klieman’s press conference – which was streamed live on ESPN+ – are above in addition to an audio link of player breakout interviews. A transcript of Klieman’s opening statement is below.

CHRIS KLIEMAN, HEAD COACH

Opening Statement…

“Good afternoon, everyone. Coming back and looking at the film, it was not a very good performance in the first half as far as statistics. I didn’t think we tackled very well on defense. We couldn’t really move the ball on offense. It was the same thing we talked about on Saturday night, but we were able to get turnovers, get the touchdown on the interception from (Marques) Sigle, and get the explosive play from Avery (Johnson) to J-Jack (Jadon Jackson), and that gave us some life. Two plays really, in my opinion, helped solidify or give us the chance to be successful – one is the fourth down stop that we had at the end of the first half, and the other one was a fourth-and-six or fourth-and-seven on the first drive of that second half where we decided to go for it. We were just a little bit out of field goal range and didn’t want to punt. Avery did a great job making a rusher miss, and hit Ty Bow (Ty Bowman), who is playing really well for us. I’m happy for Ty, he makes the big catch and makes the first down, and we scored on that drive. We ended up playing really, really good football in the second half. I told the guys after the game what we’ve done the last two weeks is really impressive, to go on the road in two different time zones at night and get back as late as we get back. We tried to take care of the guys with some of our scheduling that we’ve adjusted, but to go on the road at Colorado and at West Virginia and find ways to get two big wins in different ways that we did was really impressive. Hopefully we can build off of that. Now, this week, fortunately, we get to play at home. Another night game gives us an opportunity to get our bodies back and get our minds fresh with the extra time we have on Friday and Saturday. We’re going to need that extra time on Friday and Saturday. They (Kansas) do a lot of different things, as they always have, especially offensively. They’re really creative with what they do offensively with shift, trade motions. They’ve got a lot of talented guys on both sides of the ball. So, we’ve got to come up with really good plans and then spend some time to execute it. Make sure that we know our assignments and can play fast.”