Bringing K-State to Western Kansas

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Casey Alexander, wearing a lavender quarter-zip and a smile, grabbed the microphone at the 2026 Scott City Catbacker Nut Fry, and had the crowd of several hundred Kansas State fans in stitches as Alexander opened his first taste of western Kansas with quick-wit one-liners, revealing a jovial yet laid-back personality sure to win over audiences throughout the Sunflower State.

Soon after, Alexander, who was hired as K-State men's basketball head coach in March, took on a more serious tone, expressing gratitude after the former head coach at Belmont, one of just four head coaches in college basketball to win at least 20 games in 10 straight years, gets his first opportunity to guide a Power 4 program.

"I've met great K-Staters everywhere," Alexander said. "It already feels like home. I'm proud to be here and to be one of you. It's a special thing for me."

Intrigue surrounds Alexander's first season at K-State, as Alexander was met with just one returning K-State player from this past season — sophomore guard Andrej Kostic — while the newly-assembled K-State coaching staff labored to put together a roster for the 2026-27 season.

"It's rare to start a new job and take over a program and have one player on your team and you're basically starting from nothing," Alexander said. "We got ready for the transfer portal to open, and we were ready to meet with the right people and go through that process. Getting to the finish line and having a roster together happened quicker than we anticipated but not at all do we feel like we sacrificed quality in order to get to that point.

"I'm really excited about the roster that we have, and I'm looking forward to having those guys in front of you."

Although there is no bonafide headliner on his first roster, Alexander is known for disciplined, efficient offenses that score a lot of points while focusing on teamwork — ingredients that helped him to win 166 games and four conference titles in the last seven seasons, including the 2026 Missouri Valley Conference Championship.

The influx of new players on roster comes as K-State coaches and staff also begin the process of settling into the Little Apple over the summer months.

"We worked really hard to identify players who fit how we play," he said. "We're confident that we're going to put a good roster together and have a successful season, but we have a lot of new faces and haven't coached any of them. We have one returning player and everyone else is new. We have 10 staff members moving to Manhattan and only a few of those guys have ever been to Manhattan before.
We have 10 wives and 20-something kids who've never been to Manhattan, so there are a lot of unknowns.

"But I do feel like the roster that we constructed is full of guys that you're going to love watching play. You're going to love how hard they play, what kind of people they are, and they'll represent western Kansas — tough minded, committed to each other, and they'll do what it takes. It'll be fun to watch, and at the same time it's a group that'll be very well connected and cares about each other and that cares about K-State like you do."

Klein: 'I haven't figured out how to put 26 hours into a day yet.'

K-State head coach Collin Klein criticized one rule that college football teams across the country must deal with in fall camp ahead of the 2026 season, while the former 2012 Heisman Trophy finalist reiterated the tireless efforts to bulk up winter conditioning and spring workouts in bracing for what rules dictate will be a lighter fall camp.

"You can only have eight padded practices in fall camp, which is crazy, because you're going to play a whole season and you only put your shoulder pads on eight times? That's crazy," Klein said. "So, in the spring the rules are a lot lighter, so we were able to have 12 practices of full pads, playing the game of football like you're supposed to play it, because the only way you get better at playing football is playing football the way you play it in games. That's a little bit of an old-school mindset and old-school mentality, but it was very important for us to lay that foundation fundamentally that this is how we play the game of football here. Our players responded to that and that was the fun part.

"Yes, we were pushing them to their breaking point, but all the sudden that light bulb went on, and they said, 'I got better.' Guys are playing the best football they've played in their lives. They see it. That relationship growing into them and that light bulb coming on that when you invest and sacrifice and work really hard you get to reap the rewards and feel that benefit of that tangibly day in and day out. That's contagious because that starts that competitive fire in each one of those players. Players are really smart. They know if you're getting them better and that feeling is contagious."

Klein said that he made his debut at the 2010 Scott City Nut Fry. Little could anyone predict the ride to come for Klein and K-State as they enjoyed 10- and 11-win seasons and at one point vaulted to No. 1 nationally in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Then Klein, the former K-State offensive coordinator who guided the Wildcats to two of their top 10 seasons in offensive production in 2022 and 2023, returned to K-State as head coach in December after leading a Texas A&M offense to success for two years in the tough SEC.

Catch phrases such as "New Old School" and "K-State Family" and "Living in Physicality" are found tastefully written on the purple and white balloons that greet visitors and recruits and families to the Vanier Family Football Complex.

This isn't just a new era. It's a movement.

And it's a greeting to a building — and a new old-school world — built on excellence.

"The best part of spring was getting around the guys and getting the guys who believed in what we were doing and wanted to be here and making sure how we built the roster — we had a couple guys leave, but we had a lot of guys stay and believe in the vision in what we were trying to do and how we were presenting it, and I laid out the map of how we were going to do in the eight months leading up to the season," Klein said. "That started in the winter. We expanded the winter program and made it a full eight-week session, and we grinded those guys and pushed them to their breaking point. I told them they need to find it. That's what real football and real lift is, is finding your breaking point and moving it forward, and then moving it forward again, because how hard you have to play to play this game over and over again, that's a habit, and that's built in the winter.

"Learning how to finish through the line sounds overly simplistic, but the simplicity of having to finish through the line and exactly what that means — we filmed every single rep in our winter conditioning program, and watched every single rep as a staff to show that it's important and to communicate to them and show them and hold them accountable to, 'This is how hard we play every single snap, and this is what it looks like, and this is what it doesn't look like.' That was the foundation to the whole spring. It doesn't matter what play you call, what scheme you have, if you don't make that a habit and make that who you are, you have no chance. So that was the first part of the foundation."

As Klein and his coaching staff go forward, Klein tipped his cap to the coaching legend who he played for at K-State and who remains a mentor.

"I'm not like Coach Snyder," Klein said. "I haven't figured out how to put 26 hours into a day yet. But we've been grinding the last four weeks on the recruiting trail and every single day since the spring. After Memorial Day weekend, we're going to work 35 straight days. We'll have about 70 guys on campus for the 2027 class to be able to pick and get the right ones that we need and want."

Mittie: 'We have as tough of a non-conference schedule as we've ever had.'

Jeff Mittie bragged that he had been to the Scott City Nut Fry nine times as K-State head women's basketball coach. Mittie, who ranks among the top 20 in wins for active Division I coaches, enters his 13^th season at K-State in 2026-27, and he remembered the food, the faces and the HRC Feedyards on the edge of a city rich in K-State fandom.

"Taryn Sides, her name continues to grow," Mittie said. "She's one of the best shooters in the country, and last week our team went out to Phoenix for 3-on-3 USA Basketball, and it was exciting because USA Basketball was very interested in Taryn possibly being added to a team later this summer, and that'd be exciting.

We have a good group back. Gina Garcia, our point guard, was one of the special freshmen in the country. Nastja Claessens is back, and Brandie Herrod started every game for us. We have a good core group back. I like what we've done in the portal. We have to add a center. We think we have one added here, and I'm not ready to release it yet, but we're a top 15 team if we add this center and things fall right. I'm not there yet, we're still working, and I don't think right now in this environment you're never not recruiting, but we're close."

Meanwhile, Mittie recently closed one of the more challenging non-conference schedules in recent memory, and he boasted that "it's as tough of a non-conference schedule as we've ever had." He specifically designed the non-conference schedule with a NCAA Tournament appearance in mind.

"Minnesota was in the Sweet 16, then we play Missouri in Kansas City, then we play NC State — a Final Four team two years ago — and we play Villanova, and those two games are in Florida," he said. "We play an ACC school in SMU and a Big East school in Creighton, whose been to the Elite Eight.

"My philosophy with scheduling is we have to put ourselves into position to be a top seed every year in the NCAA Tournament. It was pretty special when we hosted the NCAA Tournament a couple years ago and we sold 21,000 tickets when we hosted it, and that was pretty special. So, you have to schedule tough, win the right games, and we'll have every opportunity to do that."

Geopfert: 'We're trying to win a national championship.'

Not much time has passed since the K-State men's and women's teams wrapped up their appearance in the Big 12 Outdoor Championships, and the strides by Geopfert and his coaching staff remain ever present as K-State track and field staged arguably its best year in school history, which keyed by an incredible run when K-State men finished No. 4 nationally and the women finished No. 7 in the NCAA Indoor Championships.

Geopfert, who with his staff authored one of the greatest turnarounds in Big 12 track and field history, is eager for more.

"We've been really, really fortunate, and it takes a team of people," he said. "We had some great staff, great support staff, and we have some great student-athletes who are committed to K-State, a lot of athletes from the state of Kansas, and it's a good mix. What we were able to accomplish this indoor track season, we were seventh on the women's side in the NCAA Championships and we finished fourth on the men's side of the NCAA Championships — it took a lot of people. We're trying to win.

"It's a gravitation toward excellence or it's a gravitation toward mediocrity, and we want to gravitate toward excellence. We're trying to win a national championship. That is the goal at Kansas State — trying to win a national championship. We're getting after it on every front. I was told before I came to K-State that K-State was a special place, and K-State is a special place, and the support is tremendous, and it's a wonderful thing to be a part of."

Geopfert detailed efforts that, if backed by donations, could give K-State one of the top 5 track and field facilities in the NCAA.

"We're really fortunate that the indoor track and outdoor track are directly adjacent to each other," Geopfert said. "Our administration and Coach Cliff Rovelto did an unbelievable job renovating that football facility into a world-class indoor track. With both of those facilities, outdoor and indoor, from a training perspective, has been brilliant. We're trying to do a few things to bring more events to K-State. This year, when Kansas Relays was cancelled, we promptly picked it up and had the first-ever K-State Relays. We want every high school in the state of Kansas to come and attend the K-State Relays next year. It's going to be the third week in April.

"What we're trying to do with our indoor track, while it's an unbelievably good training facility and we've been able to attract some of the best athletes in the world to K-State, we need to add seats. The only school in the conference that is able to host an indoor conference track meet right now is Texas Tech. So, we go down there every single year to Texas Tech. We went down there last year and lost the conference title by one point to Texas Tech. We're tired of going to Texas Tech. What we want to do is put 3,000 seats in that indoor track facility, and that'll allow us to host the Big 12 Indoor Championships every other year, rotating with Texas Tech. With our K-State fan base, I have no doubt we're going to pack that arena.

"Next year we host the Big 12 Outdoor Championships in the second weekend in May, and we want everybody there for that, and then hopefully shortly after that, we'll be hosting the indoor championships as well."

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