How to Watch: (15) Kansas State at West Virginia

It all begins here.

Kansas State can clinch a spot in the Big 12 championship game with a win and a Texas loss to Kansas. The former, of course, is by far the most important demand of the day. On the bright side, West Virginia is near the bottom of the conference standings and has at times been very, very terrible this season. On the other hand, they did just beat Oklahoma and they’re fighting for bowl eligibility.

The Game

The 15th-ranked Kansas State Wildcats (7-3, 5-2 Big 12) visit the West Virginia Mountaineers (4-6, 2-5).

The all-time series is even again after K-State’s 34-17 win last year ended the Mountaineers’ five-game winning streak. The Cats had won the first four Big 12 meetings between the two teams, each game by increasingly lesser margins of victory, before West Virginia then won the next three games — each by increasingly larger margins of victory. The Cats came close in the COVID year, but still lost by four, and then the Mountaineers posted their highest point total ever against the Cats last year in a 37-10 win.

Neal Brown and Chris Klieman took over at their respective schools in the same year, and Brown has a 2-1 lead in their meetings. Brown’s career record is 56-40, but only 21-24 at West Virginia. As for Klieman, he is seeking career win #100 this weekend.

Right now, Kansas State is the favorite to move on to face TCU in the Big 12 Championship Game. A win over the Mountaineers would only marginally improve that probability, as they are strong favorites going in to the game to begin with. A loss, however, would be crippling and would give Texas the chance to reclaim second place in the standings based on tiebreakers.

Kickoff

Saturday, November 19, 1:00pm CT at Milan Puskar Field at Mountaineer Stadium (60,000) in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Tickets

If you’re in the area, the game is not even close to sold out; seats on the entire upper deck on the southwest side and much of the closed northwest end are still available through West Virginia’s ticket office for prices ranging between $70-100, but you don’t need to do that because there are third-party seats ranging from $24-205. (There are higher ticket prices, but they don’t appear to be serious sales. Nobody’s paying $9300 for upper deck seats to this game.) Seats on the lower level K-State sideline are available for as low as $48, which is the median ticket price overall.

Weather

Good news: it’ll be sunny. Bad news: it’ll be about 36° the entire game.

Odds

The Wildcats opened as 6.5-point favorites, and we hope you got your bets in then because the spread has moved to -8 per DraftKings with the over at 54.5. That works out to a 31-23 win for the Cats. Oddsshark’s projection is much more favorable, as their computers have churned out a 29-14 final. K-State is 6-3-1 against the spread while West Virginia is 5-5. The money line is +250 for the Mountaineers, -300 for the Cats.

Television

After seemingly weeks of actually being on television, this one’s going to be streaming only.

Radio

As always, Wyatt Thompson, Stan Weber, and Matt Walters will be on hand on the K-State Sports Network as well as via satellite on SiriusXM 121 or 200/SXM App 954.

Internet Streaming

The game streams on Big 12 Now at ESPN+ with Mark Neely, former Wildcat Barrett Brooks, and Toni Petry on the call. K-State radio’s audio feed is available via kstatesports.com. Live stats provided by StatsBroadcast, with the usual caveat about possibly being only available to the media.

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