Impressive opening win for Wildcats

Well, that was fun! That’s pretty much all I have to say about a game where the Wildcats executed so well on defense, and played well enough on offense to come away with a solid won over a Power 5 team.

Kansas State beat Stanford 24-7 at the AllState Kickoff Classic. The itself win was much more comprehensive than the score line suggests. The Wildcats dominated Stanford wire-to-wire, particularly on defense, as Jon Morse notes in the BotC post-game recap.

Joe Klanderman’s defense left Stanford confused. Unexpectedly, the Wildcats lined up in a 3-3-5 formation and Stanford could not puzzle it out for the bulk of the game.

Meanwhile, Skylar Thompson had a mostly good game with some uneven play here and there. But for him, this game was less about having a standout performance and more about finding the light after a “dark and stormy” year.

Quotes from the coaches:

— David Shaw: “This game was not indicative of how hard we’ve played, how hard we’ve practiced and how well we practiced. Disappointing to me that we didn’t go out there and execute better.”

— Chris Klieman: “Obviously excited about the great performance today. Been building on this for about eight months through an unbelievable difficult winter, difficult spring, difficult summer, difficult fall camp, because we knew we needed to be better and challenge the guys and they challenged each other.”

If the game left you with nothing to outrage about, let me remind you of this debacle from FS1 (photo courtesy of Nick Leckey on Twitter):

Onwards and upwards, #EMAW Nation!