Read full transcripts (provided by K-State Athletics Communications) of Kansas State coordinators Scottie Hazelton and Courtney Messingham.

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On offense performance on Saturday…

“Obviously, (we were) really, really good to start the game. I felt like we were focused, went out and made plays. (We had) a number of third-down conversions early. (I) was really happy with how we started.”

On staying committed to running the ball…

“The biggest deal with it was still where the game was. Our biggest deal is to get it to the fourth quarter and still give yourself a fighting chance, take care of the football. Obviously, the one turnover we had, I felt was huge in the game just because of (our) inability to get points when you had it down inside the 40-yard line. Part of our deal was just keep the game in a manageable setting. From our standpoint, we have to run the ball to do that.”

On James Gilbert’s availability…

“I would anticipate that he will play, but, to be honest with you, I thought there was a good chance he would play last week. I’m hoping we’re getting closer and closer to full strength when the game kicks off.”

On extent of James Gilbert’s injury…

“Obviously, it’s something that’s been keeping him out. We have to get him better, but we also want him to go play when he’s full strength.”

On Jordon Brown’s availability…

“Same deal. We need him, but we need him full strength because we’re a whole different outfit, I believe, when you have those two guys (Brown and James Gilbert). Obviously, they were both fairly healthy when we played Oklahoma, and we played really, really well. Unfortunately they got nicked up a little bit there. As I said, I would hope that they’re both back and able to play, but until you get out there and see how they truly feel. Because there’s one thing we don’t want to do - we don’t want to put them in a situation where they can’t defend themselves being tailbacks.”

On the challenges that West Virginia’s defense poses…

“They’re again - which a lot of teams in this league are - they’re that odd-front. Not all the time, but they play quite a bit of odd-front, and they have length at their D-line. They do a good job of putting pressure on people without having to blitz a bunch. They really do a pretty good job of stopping the run, and we have to do a good job of being able to establish the run because the people that have had good chunk plays in the passing game, a lot of times it has been off of a play-action type of play. So, that’s what we need to be able to do is establish the run and then be able to throw it.”

On the defensive adjustments Texas made last week…

“Well, I think it’s a couple things that they did. One, they didn’t give us some ‘free ones.’ As an example, the big play to Malik (Knowles), they obviously had a bust in their coverage. The other part that I thought that they did is they really just turned it on as far as pressing the outside and saying, ‘Hey, front seven, you guys need to get after it.’ They did a nice job with their D-line and linebackers of putting pressure on us, stopping the run game and then forcing us to have to be able to make a play in the passing game.”

On the Malik Knowles touchdown at Texas...

“To be honest with you, it was similar to earlier in the year where Malik got out in space one-on-one. Unfortunately, in that one, he didn’t make a guy miss in space. This time, obviously, he did a great job of having a one-cut and the guy kind of flew by him. Malik’s long and can run. So, once he got out in space, you had a pretty good feeling he was going to be able to go to score.”

On Wykeen Gill’s availability…

“I don’t believe he’ll be in a position to play. Obviously, any time with any of those injuries, it’s more what does the docs say when we get to Saturday, but I right now I would anticipate he wouldn’t.”

On the health of Malik Knowles and the team in general at this point in the season…

“Everybody, at this point, is probably a little closer to 85% by the time you get this far into the season. The biggest thing for Malik, quite honestly, is his ability to feel comfortable and just go play fast. I think, fortunately for us, he has felt pretty good, but he’s not close to ‘truly 100%’ but, like you said, almost no one is at this time.”

On if deferring or receiving to start the game matters with the game plan…

“Not so much. A little bit more is what you’re going to be starting the second half. In other words, if you’re getting the ball to start the second half compared to maybe not getting it to start the second half, and how you would prefer calling the first two or three or four plays of the second half. That’s more trying to get the right mindset of your team back. If you’ve been running the ball extremely well in the first half, a lot of times you want to come out and establish and say, ‘Hey, they’re not going to stop the run.’ If you maybe haven’t been running it as well, you want to try to come out and get a play action, do something to try and get a of a momentum play right out of the gate to start the second half. Opening the game, it’s pretty much whether we get to receive the kick or don’t. We’re pretty much similar. We’re going to start the same.”

On if Texas made an effort to take away the quarterback run…

“I felt like they did because in some of our outside-run game stuff, it was definitely a, ‘Hey, you’re not giving it for the hand sweep. You’re going to have the quarterback keep it.’ Obviously, when he does keep it in those situations, now you have your quarterback getting tackled like a tailback. We really didn’t want to put him in that situation very much.”

On what has impressed him most about freshman Joshua Youngblood…

“The biggest thing really with Josh is just, when he gets his opportunity he plays 100 miles an hour. Not just the return he took back for a touchdown but in general when you see him, if it’s handing him a ball when he scored on the touchdown run (against Oklahoma), he plays as fast as he can play. He plays - free is maybe not the right term - but he doesn’t have a lot of cares in the world. He’s worried about trying to make something happen. I love that about him.”

On the growth of Joshua Youngblood…

“He did a great job when he got here in the summer of really trying to learn the playbook and really trying to understand where you fit in as a receiver. So, I’m not surprised. I think the sky's still the limit for him, though, because I think he’s just scratching the surface of what he brings to the table.”

On losing tight end Samuel Wheeler…

“It’s a big loss, honestly. The biggest thing would be, obviously he’s a big enough guy, even though he’s not huge, to get in the backside as a tight end. Maybe not be at the point of attack in the run game standpoint, but yet then still be able to stress people in the passing game. He’s obviously a much more fluid athlete than the other tight ends.”

On the decision making of Skylar Thompson…

“He still just has to make a game-day decision when the play is happening. We even talked a little bit about some of our naked bootleg stuff where he’s getting on the perimeter - when do you just take it down to the tight end or (Nick) Lenners in the flat, and when do you go push the ball down the field. You can’t tell him, ‘This is the best time to do that,’ or ‘This is the best time to do this.’ He has to feel it and I think he’s done a good job this season of doing that.”

On Skylar Thompson only having one interception…

“Part of that for him is I think he’s done a good job of letting the offense come to him and not try to force things. Every week we’ll talk about, ‘Take what they give. You can’t be afraid to try to make a play, but yet you can’t force plays to happen.’ Knock on wood, he’ll continue to do that and take the opportunities. The other thing, the receivers have done a nice job of going and attacking the football. Dalton (Schoen) is a very good example of a guy that’s done a really nice job of high-pointing the ball on a couple of different nakeds where he (Thompson) has thrown the ball deep down the field to Dalton. Dalton went and took it away from the DB. That’s part of it also as far as not throwing interceptions, is receivers basically going and attacking the football.”

On what they did best and what they struggled with the most against Texas…

“We started off the game in a pretty good place. They did a good job working some RPO things, which slowed our guys down a little bit. It hurt not having AJ (Parker). As you take away - like we always talk about, ‘Hey man, there’s some good teams in this league with good weapons, and if you take away one thing, it makes you soft at something else.’ They did a good job going back and forth between those two things. I think the guys battled really hard. I was excited about Walt (Walter Neil Jr.) getting a pick down there tight to keep it in there and keep us in the game. I thought we did alright on third down. There’s a couple that you’d like to have back, but, overall, we’ve been playing good on third down all year.”

On how different West Virginia is schematically than Texas…

“It depends on what West Virginia teams shows up, I suppose. They have been spreading the ball around and working some stretch game. So that’s a lot different, but earlier in the season they were very similar. If you kind of look at their whole body of work, there’s some similarities between those two teams, especially early in the season. They were a lot closer than you would think. So, to see what they’re going to come out in and what they’re going to do, it will be interesting. You have to have to have a plan for them to spread it around and throw it all over the place, and you have to have a plan for them to do the stuff that they did early in the year that Texas really kind of ran against us also. So, you’ve got to have a plan for both.”

On the difference between the two quarterbacks at West Virginia…

“They’re similar. We had a chance to watch No. 2 (Jarrett Doege) last year because he was at Bowling Green. So we did a little preparation for him. He’s a good RPO guy, knows how to run the system. He did a good job when he was there at Bowling Green. When he got into the game this last week, there’s so little tape on him you can’t totally make a judgement out of that time that he was in. He’s a good player and understands how to run an offense. He has a lot of experience playing college football. They’re pretty similar guys. They both are very efficient in what they do, neither of them turn the ball over a lot. They don’t make really horrible decisions, and really they’re not taking sacks right now, which is a great deal for them. He’s getting rid of the football when he needs to and just running it when he has to, too.”

On how to coach a size disadvantage at cornerback…

“Stay in front of them and make them come back to the ball, really. That’s what you’re really looking for. If you can take a big guy off the line, then sometimes you can win. If he gets a release by using his weight or his size against you, then you really have to do a good job of staying on top. Once they get downfield behind you, it’s hard to make plays on those, just the different height things. Every corner will play it a little bit different depending on his style. But really just staying on top is the number one thing because if you give up a 70-yarder, that will kill you fast. If you give up five 15-yard plays as they work their way down the field at different times, you have a chance that they’re going to mess up at one some point or we’re going to make one play, and that happened a few times for us, fortunately in that Texas game. They messed up a couple times, and that gave us opportunities to get off the field. We got a pick on that one drive, which gave us the opportunity to get off the field. So, that’s really what you look for. You like people to have to drive and get multiple-play drives against you because the chance of them messing up or us making a play, that goes up with every play you get.”

On the challenges of not knowing which quarterback will play…

“I think it’s one of those deals you just have to play who shows up. There's a reason why there’s a starter and there’s a backup most of the year. You get to see who they are. I think with every game you kind of go into it, too, it’s a little bit of a deal where you say, ‘Every team is going to do a little something different.’ Texas came out and did a lot of different things against us that we had to adjust to. It’s going to be like that with every game. Everyone’s going to come in and look at what you do, your style of defense, and what we do is different than most of the teams in the league. There’s TCU, who’s four-down (linemen) and there’s Oklahoma, who’s four-down sometimes. So for us, it’s hard to compare sometimes. You have to look for those clips on tape and say, ‘Hey, they look like us. What are they going to do against those teams?’ Then you have to make your best guess. They could come in just like our offense would go into spring ball and they’re going to do different stuff against us then they do when they’re playing all these three-down teams. It’s a different philosophy for every team. So, there’s always a little adjustment in the beginning through, really, the first quarter of every game to figure out what they’re going to do versus you. I think that’s what we have this week too.”

On what they could’ve done better on the late 3rd and 14 at Texas…

“We ran a blitz that’s been very successful for us most of the year. I think that Texas did the best job of counting, switching the formation, and counting again just to double check. They kind of gambled on it. If I could have it all over, shoot, I would love to get out of the call and get to something else that we’ve worked on. It’s one of those things - it comes down to us being able to rush on our blitzes, and we got stuck on them because they did ID it. It’s a hard blitz to ID and pick up. They did a good job with that and with that one-on-one matchup that ended up on the sideline. Those plays are going to happen sometimes. It’s a deal where you’d say, ‘Well that’s a bad deal.’ Those plays happen. You look at it and say, ‘Jeez, that was a critical time,’ but you could say any third down in that game was a critical time. If we blitz a couple times earlier and we make plays on them, we say, ‘Hey, good job.’ It’s one of those things. Every time you blitz, someone’s band is going to play, right? That’s kind of how it works. Either we’re off the field and we’re happy, or they’re over there getting happy and we’ve got to defend some more plays. So we hope that it works out in our favor most of the time. It’s one of those things where it comes down to a one-on-one matchup, and, really, that one came down to four one-on-one matchups. We lost all three up front with the blitzers and we lost the one on the edge. So, that’s going to happen sometimes.”

On how difficult it is to intercept Skylar Thompson in practice…

“Yeah, early in camp we did OK against him. I guess I can’t remember any on the top of my head lately in practice. We go against each other every once in a while. He’s been throwing the ball well. So, we hope he continues that streak, man. He’s a good player.”

On what defensive tackle Trey Dishon has mean to the team…

“He’s a guy that his leadership shows up every week just how he approaches the game. He is definitely the guy in that defensive tackle room that they all look to. That position group, if you really watch those guys, they do some amazing things. They’ll make plays downfield with their running and their effort. I would say those guys in that room have not been manhandled by anybody in our conference or that we’ve played. It’s great to see just the toughness and the fight that he brings every day. He’s a steady leader that really works hard for us. Those guys have made some big plays because they all burst and they all expect each other to do those things. He, along with (Jordan) Mittie and those guys, hold those guys to such a high standard. I know like four or five plays in the Texas game that they made plays on balls down field - passes that were thrown and they turn around and ran. I remember the one against Oklahoma where, shoot, they went up and got the ball and we tried to too and missed it. The dude caught and we missed a tackle and Mittie made it. It was on a third down and long too. We make that play, heck, we’ve got a chance. If we don’t make that play, with how they were scoring, who knows what happens. You get some of those plays. He’s done a great job really leading that room.”

On what he has learned about Trey Dishon during the season…

“I like his ink, first off all, but he’s just a classic guy. He’s a guy’s guy, man. He’s like a dude that if you were in college with him, you would hangout and drink beer with this guy just because he’s a good dude. That’s who he is. He’s a guy that’s not afraid to say it like it is. He doesn’t really have to sugar coat things. You find those humble guys that I think are honest and humble and they do things right. Those are the guys that you want to be around. You’d like your kids to grow up and be people like that. He’s a good dude like that.”

On the performance from the cornerbacks without AJ Parker…

“Solid. I think that those guys they gave great effort. I know that they got some plays made on them at the same time. I think that some of the matchups where hard there, too. I think that they’re getting better. We try to stress them with the best that we have on the scout team every day, and we get our receivers down there sometimes to work against them, too. I think that they’re going to continue to improve. Like we say, it has to be the next man up. If we have to put more stress on guys like Trey (Dishon) and the front guys, well we have to do that sometimes, but you’re short. So, it’s a give and take thing. They’re holding up. We just can’t do it do them as much as maybe we used to when we had more guys just to roll.”

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