Watch Coach Klieman’s Press Conference  |  Listen to Coach Klieman’s Press Conference  |  Listen to Player Breakout Interviews

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman and select players met with members of the media on Friday inside the Vanier Family Football Complex as the Wildcats recapped spring practices. Links to video and audio of Klieman’s press conference – which was streamed on Big 12 Now on ESPN+ – are above in addition to an audio link of player breakout interviews. The opening statement of Klieman’s press conference is below.

CHRIS KLIEMAN, HEAD COACH

Opening Statement…

“Well good morning, everyone. It’s great to see everyone about five days removed from the end of spring drills. I want to start by (giving) my condolences to the Barrett family with the passing of Ernie, Mr. K-State. What a great man. I had a lot of interactions in my four-plus years with Ernie. Everybody remembers the strong handshakes and him grabbing the back of your neck. A pure K-Stater. Football was really important to him, athletics in general. He embraced myself and our staff. My thoughts go to the Barrett family.

“We finished up spring drills on Saturday with a short practice and then a little bit of a scrimmage with the younger guys. It’s hard right now for spring games for a couple reasons. One, we were down tight ends and defensive ends because of the amount of kids that had season-ending surgeries that we didn’t have enough bodies there. And just roster management. You lose kids. Some kids enrolled early, and some kids didn’t enroll early. So, your numbers are different at each position. For the past few years, I’ve felt very comfortable with how we’ve done spring ball. We’re getting our work in and keeping guys as healthy as we can and making sure that we’re progressing towards 2023. So, I thought we had really good work done in some drills. We’re excited. We had a lot of guys out, obviously, like we’ve had in previous spring balls, but I some of our younger players got some work. We shelfed some of the sixth-year guys, some of the o-linemen especially and a couple of linebackers just to make sure that we could continue to focus on the future and focus on developing a bunch of those young o-linemen that we’re really excited about. So, I’m in the process right now of meeting with every kid on the football team. I had a few days of those this week, and then I’ve got the majority of them next week before we end up heading out the following weekend for Big 12 meetings in Phoenix at the first of May. So, busy times around here.”