Scott Fritchen

It doesn't take much for Kansas State head coach Collin Klein and his team to get up for the Wildcats'next opponent in a challenging Big 12 Conference season.

Two weeks from the first exhibition game for a new-look Kansas State men's basketball team that features 13 newcomers, including 10 Division I transfers, head coach Casey Alexander in a news conference on Monday said that "I think we're ready to go."

It's Monday early afternoon as we're introduced to Matt Gilhool, his 6-foot-11, 213-pound frame coming through the doors of the Kansas State men's basketball team meeting room, a mop of brownish hair, a quick survey of the sports writers and cameras positioned opposite him, as he slides into a folding chair that strains to hold his long lower body. It's been 182 days since the native of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, who spent his freshman season on the end of the bench at LSU, announced on Instagram that he was coming to the Little Apple.

It's 6:40 p.m. on Saturday and Kansas State senior quarterback Avery Johnson, a native of Wichita, Kansas, is surrounded by reporters after the Wildcats suffer a 35-16 defeat to No. 22 Houston at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Nobody likes to lose, particularly a young man who's won 19 games as a Wildcat — sixth most by a K-State signal-caller in the last 36 years.

He snuck up from behind, him wearing his black sweater over a purple-and-white button-down, black jeans and white shoes, and a sly grin crept across his face, as he saw the back of the gray-suited gentleman, a tuft of white hair, standing and surveying the crowd inside the lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex.

After its emotional win over Kansas to extend the nation's longest winning streak by a team in a rivalry game, it's back to business for Kansas State, which prepares to visit Arizona State at 2:45 p.m. (CT) Saturday at Mountain America Stadium.

A calmness falls over sophomore JoJo Scott as he tells the tale, the one that began holding the pigskin at age 7, and that featured adversity and an uncertain path handful of years later before the young cornerback rediscovered his passion for the gridiron. The 19-year-old Scott didn't have the easiest road, but he says that he didn't have the hardest road, either, growing up the baby of three children and watching his mother, Priscilla, do everything that she could for her children in Lakeland, Florida.

Kansas State head coach Casey Alexander, whose first Wildcats team features 13 newcomers, including 10 Division I transfers, and which has garnered sub-average outside expectations, made an emphatic opening statement on Wednesday at Big 12 Men's Basketball Media Days.

Kansas State saw its passion and hard work translate to its biggest win yet under head coach Collin Klein with an emotional triumph over Kansas in Manhattan.

A legendary voice went silent when Kansas State graduate Greg Sharpe, the one-time Voice of the Wildcats who spent 17 years as Voice of the Huskers, passed away after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.