Kansas State at Texas - Wildcats head on the road to open 2023

Wow, what a way to end 2022.

It wasn’t exactly pretty, and the start was downright putrid, but your Kansas State Wildcats managed to come back and take down then-#24 West Virginia on Saturday to cap a 12-1 start to the regular season. It’s the Wildcats best start since 2016-17, when they also opened 12-1 including 1-0 in Big 12 play.

Of course, tonight will be much more difficult, and there’s no way that the Cats can come out as flat against the Texas Longhorns as they came out against WVU. Really, it shoudn’t have worked for the Cats to come back on Saturday, but it’s really not going to work against the #6 Longhorns.

Texas opened the season at 7-1 prior to the indefinite suspension of head coach Chris Beard for his domestic issues, including wins over then-#2 Gonzaga and then-#7 Creighton (both in Austin), and an overtime loss to then-#17 Illinois in New York City. But, like K-State, they finished 2022 winning out, and took down Oklahoma 70-69 on Saturday afternoon in Norman to start the season 12-1.

The Longhorns are good, make no mistake, but, like Drew points out in his preview, it should be a close game, and anything that should be close will give K-State a chance. Don’t expect K-State to open 2023 like they closed 2022...but there’s a chance, and it’s worth watching to see if it can happen.

This evening’s matchup is scheduled for a 8:01pm CT tip at the brand-new Moody Center in Austin and will be “aired” on the Longhorn Network with Lowell Galindo (play-by-play) and Lance Blanks (analyst) on the call. You’ll also be able to hear the game online at K-StateSports.com (and via the Varsity Network app), plus parts of the K-State Sports Radio Network and on SiriusXM 390 with Wyatt Thompson (play-by-play) and Stan Weber (analyst) calling the action over there.

Go Cats!

Reminder: No posting of illegal streams. Anyone posting links to such places will be immediately banned from the comments without warning. You have been warned.

That said, you are welcome to link to any public, legitimate paid (maybe with a free trial) service that you know carries LHN (like SlingTV).

Hey, are you on Discord? We are now, too! Feel free to join us! (Make sure you click the reaction button on the rules notice though, or you won’t see anything.) We’ll have a game thread there as well!