In his left hand, he's nursing a dark-brown protein drink in a clear plastic cup with two white straws jammed through the lid. His right hand digs into the pocket of dark sweatsuit pants. A black backpack hugs tight against his fuzzy purple Kansas State Wildcats hoodie, the one with the white Powercat in the middle. And then there's the surprised look slapped upon the face of fifth-year senior tight end Garrett Oakley as he's met inside the lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex after Monday morning's practice on the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
Phil Collins' 1980s hit song, "In the Air Tonight" shot across the football field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium on Monday morning. Although it was far from nighttime as sunlight pelted Manhattan, the song's lyrics, "I can feel it coming in the air tonight," rings true for Kansas State.
The introduction arrives shortly before 3 o'clock on an unseasonably warm late-September in the Little Apple, so drenched by hours of rain showers causing the light limestone brick encasing the Ice Family Basketball Center to glow. Inside the two-story building, past the lobby and down a dark carpet, a young man in a black Nike long-sleeved t-shirt enters the team theater room, and upon glancing at the seated reporters for the first time, breaks the silence with politeness.
Four months have passed since fifth-year senior Dez Lindsay reached those glass double doors to the Ice Family Basketball Center for the first time, as the 23-year-old native of Louisville, Kentucky, whose hoops story took the unranked 6-foot-6, 215-pound forward from Louisville's Male High School to Florida SouthWestern State College and onto Oregon, sought new life, a hardwood rebirth at Kansas State in the Big 12 Conference.
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