Takeaways from Kansas State’s thrilling Sunflower Showdown win over the KU Jayhawks
The streak continues.
Kansas State defeated Kansas 31-27 in an unusually competitive game for this rivalry that gave the Wildcats their 15th straight victory in the Sunflower Showdown.
This game was closer than most have been over the years. The Jayhawks led at halftime and pulled ahead 27-16 early in the third quarter. The Wildcats were genuinely in trouble. But they were the better team from then on and walked away with a come-from-behind victory that left the entire locker room satisfied.
“This was a really good Kansas team,” K-State offensive lineman Cooper Beebe said. “We knew we had our work cut out for us. To get this one was definitely special.”
Will Howard led the Wildcats (8-3, 6-2 Big 12) with 165 yards passing and two touchdowns to go along with an important rushing score in the fourth quarter that put his team in the lead for good.
He didn’t want to lose his first game to the Jayhawks.
“There is no better feeling,” Howard said, “than beating little brother.”
DJ Giddens also had one of his best games and gave K-State 102 yards on the ground.
Devin Neal rushed for 138 yards and three touchdowns for the Jayhawks (7-4, 4-4 Big 12), but it wasn’t quite enough with Cole Ballard starting at quarterback as both Jason Bean and Jalon Daniels were sidelined with injuries.
The Wildcats stayed in contention for a Big 12 championship with the victory. They will try to finish out their season with a victory next week at home against Iowa State.
Until then, here are some K-State takeaways from its win over KU:
The Wildcats made big plays at big moments
You have to give credit to the Jayhawks for putting up a good fight against the Wildcats. This game was much more competitive than your typical Sunflower Showdown. Heck, Kansas led by double digits early in the second half. That doesn’t happen often in this rivalry.
But K-State proved why it has a winning tradition against its in-state neighbor by making the biggest plays of the night with the game on the line.
Kansas had two opportunities to win this game in the second half but dropped a potential pick-six interception on defense and fumbled a punt at midfield. Those miscues gave K-State new life, and Chris Klieman’s team took advantage.
“Nobody flinched,” Klieman said. “We were down in Texas and nobody flinched. We were really down at Oklahoma State and nobody flinched. We felt like we had a chance to get the game to the fourth quarter. That’s what we’re always asking for is, man, keep fighting. That’s the culture of our team. Everybody talks about, what is culture? You see it right there? That’s our culture on display.”
The biggest play of the night on offense came from Will Howard when the K-State quarterback sprinted 15 yards to his left for a go-ahead touchdown with 10 minutes, 31 seconds remaining. Howard doesn’t run all that often, but he isn’t afraid to get physical when his team needs him to. He made a winning play.
Later in the fourth quarter, Kansas had an opportunity to take the lead when it drove to within a few yards of the goal line, but K-State’s Marques Sigle came up with an interception in the back of the end zone.
“I was just following my rules,” Sigle said. “I trusted my keys and then saw the ball thrown at me. I just went up and got it.”
Howard also found Phillip Brooks for an important first down that allowed K-State to run out the clock in the fourth quarter.
The Jayhawks weren’t capable of making those plays. The Wildcats were. That is why they left Lawrence with a victory.
K-State struggled against a creative KU offense
Conventional wisdom was that the K-State defense would have a significant advantage over the KU offense without Jalon Daniels or Jason Bean playing at quarterback.
The drop off from either of them to third-string freshman Cole Ballard seemed massive.
But things don’t always play out the way we expect them to. Turns out, the Jayhawks were able to move the ball just fine with Ballard leading the offense.
One reason: K-State was ill-prepared to stop the option-based attack that KU pivoted to without either of their top two passers.
The Jayhawks deployed an unpredictable string of formations that featured speed options, direct snaps to running backs, misdirection passes and other unique looks that looked like what you find in games involving Army and Navy.
KU tried to move the chains with a methodical approach that took a lot of time off the clock and took pressure off Ballard as he made his first start.
It’s fair to wonder how often K-State practiced against those kind of looks in practice leading up to this game.
The Wildcats seemed caught off guard by it. They didn’t even play all that poorly on defense, but the Jayhawks did manage to out-gain them 396-333. They were just going up against an offense they hadn’t seen before.
That was the main reason why KU raced to a 27-16 lead early in the third quarter and put itself in position to end a long losing streak against K-State in the Sunflower Showdown.
K-State eventually settled in and came up with big stops when it needed them. None were bigger than an interception in the end zone by Sigle in the fourth quarter with the Wildcats clinging to a 31-27 lead.
Give the Wildcats credit for persevering in the end. But it was not an easy path for them to that point.
Points after touchdown were important for K-State
It is wild that neither team attempted a field goal and yet the final score looked like this game was filled with kicks.
The bizarre score came to fruition because of points after touchdowns.
K-State successfully blocked a PAT by KU and returned it the length of the field for two points in the first half. Later, the Wildcats went for two and got it on a keeper from Howard.
Those plays made a huge impact on Saturday. Both teams scored four touchdowns apiece. The score would have been tied at 28-28 had successful extra points followed all of them.
Keenan Garber had a play to remember
One play unfolded like a dream for K-State defensive back Keenan Garber.
The senior found himself in a perfect position when Nate Matlack blocked an extra-point attempt in the second quarter. Kansas had just scored a touchdown to take a 13-7 lead, but momentum was about to swing in K-State’s direction. The ball blocked ball bounced directly into the hands of Garber, and he took advantage of the gift.
Garber immediately stiff armed a pair of potential tacklers and then out-ran everyone on the field to the end zone for two points.
After growing up in Lawrence, Garber knew exactly how to celebrate. He looked up into the stands, raised his arms above his head and then motioned them back and forth as if he was “waving the wheat.”
Garber began his college career as a wide receiver but transitioned to defense last season. He has since come into his own as a corner. Garber has scored in back-to-back games.
Blocking out outside noise
K-State had to deal with some unusual distractions leading up to this game.
Early on last week, it looked like the Wildcats were well-positioned to reach the Big 12 championship game with a pair of victories in their final two games against KU and Iowa State. But then the conference clarified its rules in a way that made K-State’s path to another league title much more difficult.
Some teams may have been annoyed by that news. Not K-State.
“We heard about it,” Howard said. “We knew that it was going on, but for the most part we were locked in on KU, because we knew how big of a game this was. You guys saw. It was a dogfight. Those guys are a good team. We had to gut it out. It wasn’t a pretty game. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch. But we knew we had to get the win. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. None of that tiebreaker stuff matters if we don’t win.”
It is hard to know exactly what K-State needs to reach the Big 12 championship game, given how difficult it has been for the conference to explain its tiebreaker rules.
Texas is all alone in first, while K-State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are tied for second one game back.
But it appears as though the Wildcats can get there if they finish in a four-way tie for first place with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas or if both the Cowboys and Sooners lose while the Wildcats win to finish in second all alone.
This story was originally published November 18, 2023 at 9:33 PM with the headline "Takeaways from Kansas State’s thrilling Sunflower Showdown win over the KU Jayhawks."