http://insider.espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8419248/kansas-state-wildcats-beat-oklahoma-move-ahead-big-12-title-race-ncf
anyone have access?
Is Kansas State for real?
KC Joyner [ARCHIVE]
ESPN Insider | September 24, 2012
Coming into the 2012 college football season, the Kansas State Wildcats were not receiving very much respect.
It wasn't that easy to figure out why, either. The Wildcats were returning 18 starters (including special teams) from a team that finished second in the Big 12, won 10 games and earned a berth in the Cotton Bowl in 2011, and yet they were slotted sixth in the Big 12's preseason poll by a panel of media covering the conference. The surprise that last year's team was seemed to carry into 2012. The pollsters essentially said, "OK, now prove it."
LHC Bill Snyder's group may not have received much respect, but that changed to some extent after Saturday's 24-19 upset against the Oklahoma Sooners in Norman; the win vaulted the Wildcats to No. 7 in this week's AP Top 25, which is the highest ranking of any Big 12 team.
Even with that ranking, there may still be doubters who lean toward their preseason assessment of Kansas State and believe that this program, which had finished better than .500 only two times in the six seasons preceding last year, is still a ways away from vying for conference supremacy. There are some who might say Saturday says more about what Oklahoma is not than what Kansas State is.
That might seem reasonable at first glance, but after taking a closer look at the game tape and metrics, it is clear that these Wildcats are not just a flash in the pan -- they are a legit top-10 team and true contenders for the Big 12 title.
The victory against the Sooners wasn't just a case of Oklahoma giving the game away with inopportune turnovers -- the Wildcats actually outplayed OU almost across the board.
The Wildcats' rushing attack was graded out as having good blocking (very roughly defined as when the offense doesn't allow the defense to do anything to disrupt a rush attempt) on 30 out of 40 rushing plays, which is an amazing 75 percent good blocking rate (GBR). Even the best college teams normally post GBR totals in the 50-55 percent range, and those marks include games against creampuff opponents. That Kansas State did this against one of the strongest run defenses in the conference speaks volumes to its collective run-blocking ability.
What makes the performance even more impressive is that it allowed Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein to post 4.6 yards per carry (YPC) on 17 rushes. That may not sound like a high-powered achievement until realizing that Klein's 3.6 yards per carry total last year was the lowest among FBS ball carriers with at least 200 rush attempts. Klein obviously has more rushing talent than his 2011 YPC total suggests, and sneaks diminish the average, but these numbers just add more heft to the idea that the Kansas State run-blockers really asserted themselves against OU.
Another notable aspect of the Wildcats' offensive showing against the Sooners is that Klein averaged 7.1 yards per pass attempt (YPA) despite gaining only 47 yards on eight vertical passes (defined as passes thrown 11 or more yards downfield). That equates to a 5.9 vertical YPA, which is well below the double-digit YPA bar that serves as the rule of thumb of acceptable productivity at this depth level.
The low vertical YPA shows Oklahoma was able to take away downfield throws but Kansas State just worked around it. Klein completed 11 of 12 short passes for 102 yards (short passes being defined as aerials thrown 10 or fewer yards downfield). That equals 8.5 yards on average on every dink and dunk throw, or nearly a first down on every pass.
Klein also did a fine job of protecting the offense by not making any bad decisions (i.e. mental errors that lead to turnover opportunities). There was only one pass Klein threw that the Sooners had any sort of chance of picking off, and that was due to a very good play by Oklahoma defensive back Javon Harris. The Wildcats also gave up zero sacks, had zero fumbles and had to throw only one pass away, so their negative plays on offense were almost nil. They dominated in the category that's never really been given a better name than "the little things."
Now contrast each of these items to Oklahoma's totals in the same categories.
The Sooners' offensive blockers gave their ball carriers good blocking 62.5 percent of the time, which is a good mark but not quite as good as the Kansas State total.
Oklahoma did best the Wildcats in vertical YPA (138 yards on 13 passes, or 10.6 vertical YPA) but lost some of that lead due to lower productivity on short passes (6.6 YPA on 24 passes). The Sooners also saw their overall YPA fall even further due to three throwaway passes and three miscommunications between quarterback and wide receiver that prevented completions. All totaled, Kansas State ended the game with a YPA lead of 7.1 to Oklahoma's 6.9.
Sooners quarterback Landry Jones also cost his team with a bad decision that nearly led to an interception, which went along with another near interception that occurred on one of the miscommunication throws. To put it another way, Oklahoma may have lost the turnover battle 3-0, but if Kansas State had done a better job of catching all of the passes Jones threw to it, the Wildcats easily could have won the turnover battle by five and kept the game from being as close as it was.
This win was not a fluke, and since it occurred in Norman, a site where Stoops' Oklahoma squads were 14-0 against ranked opponents prior to this game, it shows the Wildcats are capable of beating any team in this conference at any venue. That ability will be needed when Kansas State takes road trips to play the West Virginia Mountaineers (Oct. 20), TCU Horned Frogs (Nov. 10) and Baylor Bears (Nov. 17) later this year.
None of those matchups will be easy since all of those teams are currently ranked in the Top 25, but given how those programs have played of late (West Virginia struggled to beat Maryland, TCU barely got past Kansas and Baylor was almost upset by Louisiana-Monroe), there is a good chance that the Wildcats could come away with wins in all three contests if they play at the level they reached against Oklahoma.
Given the fact the Big 12 is not likely to see a team go unbeaten in conference play, the Wildcats could even lose one of those games and still walk away as the conference champion if they were to win a home contest against the Texas Longhorns in the last game of the year.
In other words, Kansas State is a lot closer to winning its second Big 12 championship than the preseason
pundits thought.
