Kansas State University Athletics
Old Acquaintances Meet on Saturday
Sep 09, 2022 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
The theme for the week has been old acquaintances. Kansas State and the University of Missouri first met on the football field in 1909. Except back then it was Kansas State Agriculture College. Mike Ahearn versus Bill Roper. Aggies versus the Tigers. Manhattan versus Columbia. Through the years, the teams played 97 times — first as members of the Missouri Valley Conference, then in the Big 7, Conference Big 7 Conference, Big 8 Conference, and then in the Big 12 Conference.
They were foes separated by 250 miles. They didn't particularly like each other. They shared at least one thing in common: They both disliked the school down the road.
K-State's series against Missouri remains the fourth longest in school history, yet the teams haven't tangled in 11 years. The memories run thick. No. 2 K-State beat No. 19 Missouri 31-25 in 1998 to finish with its first undefeated regular season in history. K-State beat Missouri 66-0 on Senior Night in 1999. Darren Sproles rushed for 273 yards against Missouri in 2003, which remains the single-greatest rushing performance by a K-State player against a league opponent. And somewhere, in an alternate universe, Brandon Archer is still racing down the sideline with his dramatic 45-yard interception return to beat the Tigers 36-28 in 2005 in the final game of Bill Snyder's first tenure as head coach.
Those days are long, long gone, pages in history covered by layers of dust. When K-State, 1-0, meets Missouri, 1-0, at 11 a.m. Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, it'll mark 3,990 days since the old foes battled on the gridiron.
"I remember as a kid growing up watching KU/Missouri and K-State/Missouri and Nebraska/Missouri and I thought they were great rivalries, and so I'm excited," K-State head coach Chris Klieman says. "When you get a regional one, for our fans and players, it's really exciting, and I know it's exciting for the fans and all the people who saw Mizzou come in here for so many years."
Collin Klein was the last K-State quarterback to slay the Tigers. Klein had three rushing touchdowns as K-State beat Missouri 24-17 on October 8, 2011, for its first 5-0 start since 2000. Missouri bolted to the Southeastern Conference in 2012. Since joining the SEC, the Tigers have finished with a winning record four times in the last 10 years.
"It means I'm getting old," Klein says while remembering his playing days against the Tigers. "I'm excited about (Saturday)."
Which brings us to present day. Saturday marks the first time that K-State has faced a former member of the Big 12 Conference in a regular-season game. Bill Snyder Family Stadium holds 50,000 and every seat is spoken for in a matchup that oozes with anticipation. Many TVs across the nation will be tuned into ESPN2 to watch the two old-school rivals rekindle a competitive flame in the Little Apple.
"I'm incredibly excited," K-State quarterback Adrian Martinez says. "It's an old-school Big 8 rivalry and I know we're sold out and we have a lot of Missouri guys on the team and a lot of guys that are passionate about this game."
Missouri head coach Eliah Drinkwitz says, "It's a big test for us to go on the road."
Drinkwitz is 12-12 in his third season at Missouri. Over the last two seasons, the Tigers are 2-7 on the road. The Tigers come off a 52-24 season-opening thumping of Louisiana Tech in Columbia. Drinkwitz has hammered into his team this week that Saturday will be different.
"We ain't done nothing," Drinkwitz says. "We're 1-0, which is exactly what we wanted to do, but what we did last week, they don't carry any of those points over. This is a brand-new week with a whole different set of challenges in a tough environment on the road. If we're worried about last week and patting ourselves on the back and all that bull crap, we're in for a tough day."
K-State comes off a 34-0 shutout victory over South Dakota. Deuce Vaughn had 126 rushing yards and one touchdown, senior transfer Martinez saw his first action in a Wildcats uniform, and the defense showed its depth and stiffened in the final seconds to preserve the Wildcats' first shutout since 2019.
Soon after the victory, all eyes turned toward the Tigers and the SEC. K-State has won five of its last seven games against non-conference Power 5 opponents since 2016, including all three games under Klieman. The Wildcats beat Mississippi State in 2019, and Stanford and LSU last season.
"(The SEC) is definitely elite but not too much to where you can't win a game," says sophomore defensive end Nate Matlack, a native of Olathe, Kansas. "It's not intimidating to me, but I'm definitely excited for the challenge to show that the Big 12 can easily compete with the SEC. I'm super excited for it."
K-State's shutout against South Dakota marked its first since 2019. Still, K-State defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman contends, "We still have a long way to go."
"We're still developing," Klanderman continues. "I'll say this about our performance — we played hard, which is always the first step, and we played together and stayed in the game. It's sometimes easy when you get a lead to relax a little bit. I don't think our leaders were letting that happen. We checked all the boxes for week one, but we're certainly far from a finished product."
Missouri racked up 558 total yards, including 323 on the ground — its most rushing yards since 2017 — and scored five rushing touchdowns against Louisiana Tech. Sophomore quarterback Brady Cook completed 18 of 27 passes for 195 yards and one touchdown and one interception and added 61 rushing yards on seven carries, including a 20-yard touchdown run. Cook completed passes to eight different players, including 5-foot-11, 215-pound Luther Burden III, who was the first true freshman to start a season opener at Missouri since Jeremy Maclin in 2007. Burden had three catches for 17 yards and a touchdown and scored on a 17-yard run as well.
"The thing that scares me about (Cook) is he throws the ball well, but he also extends plays with his legs," Klanderman says. "They're going to use him a little bit in the run game, and it wouldn't surprise me if they do some read (option) stuff with him because he can really run. He looks like he has tremendous speed on tape. He has the ability to keep plays going in the pocket.
"His escapability in the pocket, when you're playing with guys who have speed and push things down the field, you've got to match that up somehow in the secondary, so that'll put a lot of heat on our front and on our linebackers to keep Brady Cook corralled if he does get out of there."
Nine different Missouri players carried the football. Division II transfer Cody Schrader had 17 carries for 76 yards and one touchdown. Nathaniel Peat added eight carries for 72 yards and a 34-yard touchdown run as well.
"They're going to run the football," Klanderman says. "That's their identity and that sets up a lot of the gadgets and things that they do to get explosive plays. It starts with their run game and they're really good at it.
"It starts with us stopping the run."
K-State racked up 297 rushing yards of its own against South Dakota and averaged 6.6 yards per rushing attempt. The Wildcats led by such a wide margin that Klein, in his first regular-season game as offensive coordinator, had the luxury of emptying the sideline over the final two quarters. Martinez completed 11 of 15 passes for 53 yards and added 13 carries for 39 yards and one touchdown over three quarters of action.
"It was really good to see from an operational standpoint," Klein says. "Our guys operated moving around. Our systems were good and went about how we thought. It was a really good first step."
Although Missouri recorded three interceptions against Louisiana Tech, it also surrendered touchdown passes covering 75, 64 and 37 yards. However, that the Tigers allowed just eight rushing yards to Louisiana Tech draws the attention of the Wildcats.
"It's going to be a challenge, but there's always strengths and weaknesses to everything you do offensively and defensively," Klein says. "How we execute our play and how fast we play and stay on blocks is going to be important because they're long and physical. It'll be a good challenge."
Missouri has three players on its roster from the state of Kansas. K-State has seven players on its roster from the state of Missouri — quarterback Jaren Lewis, wide receiver Phillip Brooks, wide receiver Xavier Loyd, long-snapper Randen Plattner, defensive end Cartez Crook-Jones, offensive lineman Michael Capria, and Preseason Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year Felix Anudike-Uzomah.
One by one, each of the Missouri-born players stood up and addressed their K-State teammates earlier this week. Former K-State player Reggie Blackwell, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, sent a special video message to the team. For each Missouri-born K-State player, there's a story of being underrecruited or entirely overlooked by their home state university, and the jilted emotions have apparently stayed with those players.
"I'm looking forward to that game a lot," says Brooks, a native of Lee's Summit, Missouri. "That'll be one of my most favorite games to play this year. Tune in for that. I'm excited to play them. I'll just say that."
The stage is set for a showdown. In a series that spans more than 100 years and took an 11-year break, this game will reignite those purple-flame passions that have been stewing inside loyalists for quite some time. In a series that has featured many memorable K-State moments over the years, this one might move the decibel levels to peaks we haven't felt in a non-conference contest in nearly a decade. There's no trophy. Only state and conference pride.
This new-age clash could be one that the old acquaintances won't soon forget.
The theme for the week has been old acquaintances. Kansas State and the University of Missouri first met on the football field in 1909. Except back then it was Kansas State Agriculture College. Mike Ahearn versus Bill Roper. Aggies versus the Tigers. Manhattan versus Columbia. Through the years, the teams played 97 times — first as members of the Missouri Valley Conference, then in the Big 7, Conference Big 7 Conference, Big 8 Conference, and then in the Big 12 Conference.
They were foes separated by 250 miles. They didn't particularly like each other. They shared at least one thing in common: They both disliked the school down the road.
K-State's series against Missouri remains the fourth longest in school history, yet the teams haven't tangled in 11 years. The memories run thick. No. 2 K-State beat No. 19 Missouri 31-25 in 1998 to finish with its first undefeated regular season in history. K-State beat Missouri 66-0 on Senior Night in 1999. Darren Sproles rushed for 273 yards against Missouri in 2003, which remains the single-greatest rushing performance by a K-State player against a league opponent. And somewhere, in an alternate universe, Brandon Archer is still racing down the sideline with his dramatic 45-yard interception return to beat the Tigers 36-28 in 2005 in the final game of Bill Snyder's first tenure as head coach.
Those days are long, long gone, pages in history covered by layers of dust. When K-State, 1-0, meets Missouri, 1-0, at 11 a.m. Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium, it'll mark 3,990 days since the old foes battled on the gridiron.
"I remember as a kid growing up watching KU/Missouri and K-State/Missouri and Nebraska/Missouri and I thought they were great rivalries, and so I'm excited," K-State head coach Chris Klieman says. "When you get a regional one, for our fans and players, it's really exciting, and I know it's exciting for the fans and all the people who saw Mizzou come in here for so many years."
Collin Klein was the last K-State quarterback to slay the Tigers. Klein had three rushing touchdowns as K-State beat Missouri 24-17 on October 8, 2011, for its first 5-0 start since 2000. Missouri bolted to the Southeastern Conference in 2012. Since joining the SEC, the Tigers have finished with a winning record four times in the last 10 years.
"It means I'm getting old," Klein says while remembering his playing days against the Tigers. "I'm excited about (Saturday)."
Which brings us to present day. Saturday marks the first time that K-State has faced a former member of the Big 12 Conference in a regular-season game. Bill Snyder Family Stadium holds 50,000 and every seat is spoken for in a matchup that oozes with anticipation. Many TVs across the nation will be tuned into ESPN2 to watch the two old-school rivals rekindle a competitive flame in the Little Apple.
"I'm incredibly excited," K-State quarterback Adrian Martinez says. "It's an old-school Big 8 rivalry and I know we're sold out and we have a lot of Missouri guys on the team and a lot of guys that are passionate about this game."
Missouri head coach Eliah Drinkwitz says, "It's a big test for us to go on the road."
Drinkwitz is 12-12 in his third season at Missouri. Over the last two seasons, the Tigers are 2-7 on the road. The Tigers come off a 52-24 season-opening thumping of Louisiana Tech in Columbia. Drinkwitz has hammered into his team this week that Saturday will be different.
"We ain't done nothing," Drinkwitz says. "We're 1-0, which is exactly what we wanted to do, but what we did last week, they don't carry any of those points over. This is a brand-new week with a whole different set of challenges in a tough environment on the road. If we're worried about last week and patting ourselves on the back and all that bull crap, we're in for a tough day."
K-State comes off a 34-0 shutout victory over South Dakota. Deuce Vaughn had 126 rushing yards and one touchdown, senior transfer Martinez saw his first action in a Wildcats uniform, and the defense showed its depth and stiffened in the final seconds to preserve the Wildcats' first shutout since 2019.
Soon after the victory, all eyes turned toward the Tigers and the SEC. K-State has won five of its last seven games against non-conference Power 5 opponents since 2016, including all three games under Klieman. The Wildcats beat Mississippi State in 2019, and Stanford and LSU last season.
"(The SEC) is definitely elite but not too much to where you can't win a game," says sophomore defensive end Nate Matlack, a native of Olathe, Kansas. "It's not intimidating to me, but I'm definitely excited for the challenge to show that the Big 12 can easily compete with the SEC. I'm super excited for it."
K-State's shutout against South Dakota marked its first since 2019. Still, K-State defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman contends, "We still have a long way to go."
"We're still developing," Klanderman continues. "I'll say this about our performance — we played hard, which is always the first step, and we played together and stayed in the game. It's sometimes easy when you get a lead to relax a little bit. I don't think our leaders were letting that happen. We checked all the boxes for week one, but we're certainly far from a finished product."
Missouri racked up 558 total yards, including 323 on the ground — its most rushing yards since 2017 — and scored five rushing touchdowns against Louisiana Tech. Sophomore quarterback Brady Cook completed 18 of 27 passes for 195 yards and one touchdown and one interception and added 61 rushing yards on seven carries, including a 20-yard touchdown run. Cook completed passes to eight different players, including 5-foot-11, 215-pound Luther Burden III, who was the first true freshman to start a season opener at Missouri since Jeremy Maclin in 2007. Burden had three catches for 17 yards and a touchdown and scored on a 17-yard run as well.
"The thing that scares me about (Cook) is he throws the ball well, but he also extends plays with his legs," Klanderman says. "They're going to use him a little bit in the run game, and it wouldn't surprise me if they do some read (option) stuff with him because he can really run. He looks like he has tremendous speed on tape. He has the ability to keep plays going in the pocket.
"His escapability in the pocket, when you're playing with guys who have speed and push things down the field, you've got to match that up somehow in the secondary, so that'll put a lot of heat on our front and on our linebackers to keep Brady Cook corralled if he does get out of there."
Nine different Missouri players carried the football. Division II transfer Cody Schrader had 17 carries for 76 yards and one touchdown. Nathaniel Peat added eight carries for 72 yards and a 34-yard touchdown run as well.
"They're going to run the football," Klanderman says. "That's their identity and that sets up a lot of the gadgets and things that they do to get explosive plays. It starts with their run game and they're really good at it.
"It starts with us stopping the run."
K-State racked up 297 rushing yards of its own against South Dakota and averaged 6.6 yards per rushing attempt. The Wildcats led by such a wide margin that Klein, in his first regular-season game as offensive coordinator, had the luxury of emptying the sideline over the final two quarters. Martinez completed 11 of 15 passes for 53 yards and added 13 carries for 39 yards and one touchdown over three quarters of action.
"It was really good to see from an operational standpoint," Klein says. "Our guys operated moving around. Our systems were good and went about how we thought. It was a really good first step."
Although Missouri recorded three interceptions against Louisiana Tech, it also surrendered touchdown passes covering 75, 64 and 37 yards. However, that the Tigers allowed just eight rushing yards to Louisiana Tech draws the attention of the Wildcats.
"It's going to be a challenge, but there's always strengths and weaknesses to everything you do offensively and defensively," Klein says. "How we execute our play and how fast we play and stay on blocks is going to be important because they're long and physical. It'll be a good challenge."
Missouri has three players on its roster from the state of Kansas. K-State has seven players on its roster from the state of Missouri — quarterback Jaren Lewis, wide receiver Phillip Brooks, wide receiver Xavier Loyd, long-snapper Randen Plattner, defensive end Cartez Crook-Jones, offensive lineman Michael Capria, and Preseason Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year Felix Anudike-Uzomah.
One by one, each of the Missouri-born players stood up and addressed their K-State teammates earlier this week. Former K-State player Reggie Blackwell, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, sent a special video message to the team. For each Missouri-born K-State player, there's a story of being underrecruited or entirely overlooked by their home state university, and the jilted emotions have apparently stayed with those players.
"I'm looking forward to that game a lot," says Brooks, a native of Lee's Summit, Missouri. "That'll be one of my most favorite games to play this year. Tune in for that. I'm excited to play them. I'll just say that."
The stage is set for a showdown. In a series that spans more than 100 years and took an 11-year break, this game will reignite those purple-flame passions that have been stewing inside loyalists for quite some time. In a series that has featured many memorable K-State moments over the years, this one might move the decibel levels to peaks we haven't felt in a non-conference contest in nearly a decade. There's no trophy. Only state and conference pride.
This new-age clash could be one that the old acquaintances won't soon forget.
Players Mentioned
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