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MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman and select players met with members of the media on Tuesday inside the Vanier Family Football Complex as the Wildcats host Baylor on Saturday afternoon inside Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Links to video and audio of Klieman’s press conference – which was streamed live on Big 12 Now 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. It’s great to see everybody. Tough, tough loss on Saturday. We had a pretty good meeting yesterday with our leadership council. A couple of things – one, how proud we were of the effort and how the guys fought and battled and played. Texas is really good; we all know that. I don’t know if there’s a lot of teams that can go in there, be down 17-0 and do nothing right the whole first half on offense, defense, or on teams, and then flip the game with the punt block to get at least competitive at halftime. Then we go down 27-7, things weren’t going really great, and all of a sudden, we put a great drive together get to 27-14. Then we start creating some turnovers, and, lo and behold, we’re in the game and have a chance to win. It’s a credit to the locker room. It’s a credit to the culture. Our guys are hurting. We had a chance, an opportunity, to win the game and didn’t get it done. The biggest thing for us now is we’ve got to move forward. We always talk about how you respond. Well, this is a little bit different. We had a top five-team, in my opinion, on the ropes. They made some plays down the stretch and found a way to win. Hats off to them. Now, we’ve got to be able to move on. We’ve got so much story to write in this season and so many more things to accomplish and some awesome opportunities. The first one starts this Saturday with one of our last two for the seniors at The Bill. So, we had a really good practice after a meeting yesterday. We had a really good practice, good energy, good focus, and I’m confident the guys are going to come back and respond.”