The headline to this story is misleading.
K-State won on Saturday with a comeback that has worked exactly once, the previous 545 times an AP top-five team has led another college football team by 21 points since 2004.
Explaining how that happened lies somewhere between preparation and a prayer.
"We were starting to make some of those plays in the passing game, some of the shots down field and some of the 50/50 balls, and then obviously getting the play to Deuce," Chris Klieman said. "I thought it gave us some life, a big play to get us down to the one. They came right back down and scored, but then they cut Keyon Mozee loose…You can't cut people loose."
Maybe that's the best place to start piecing together how Saturday happened.
As the Wildcats clawed their way back against Oklahoma, Skylar Thompson connected on passes of 77 and 78 yards.
In 2019, that would have been the longest and second longest play from scrimmage for K-State. Those are also the longest and second longest passes of Skylar Thompson's career.
They happened on back-to-back drives in Norman.
As Klieman noted, the second of those big passes came on a defensive miscue by Oklahoma, when the Sooners forgot all about Mozee down the sideline.
The first one was a 77-yard strike to Deuce Vaughn, who Thompson found in the slot after Vaughn lined up as receiver.
Deuce on the loose#KStateFB ⚒ @C_Vaughn22 pic.twitter.com/RI6fbi8NDE
— K-State Football (@KStateFB) September 26, 2020
The pass itself traveled five yards from scrimmage. The other 72 yards came on the legs of a true freshman running back who has electrified college football this season.
"I pretty much had an option route. Saw they were in man. Cut across his face, caught the ball and split between the Mike linebacker and him, and then it was just me and the safety," Vaughn said. "Went and made a play. Got to about the five-yard line and felt somebody on my legs. Wanted to get the ball to the end zone. Of course, I'm only 5-foot-6, so it's kind of hard."
The impact that Vaughn has made on this offense through two games can't be understated. His numbers would be impressive for any player, but as a true freshman, they jump off the page.
Vaughn has 245 all-purpose yards this season and a pair of touchdowns. Of that total, 153 yards have come when the Wildcats send Vaughn out wide as a receiver.
As Vaughn said, he's only 5-foot-6. He's not out there going up for contested catches over cornerbacks.
This is a player making an impact with the kind of speed that can turn targets on a bubble screen or as a slot receiver into game-changing plays.
The kind of plays that happen once in 545 games.
Vaughn's ability was on full display throughout the second half, when he got loose on two more plays that helped swing the game for the Wildcats.
On another pass where he was targeted in the slot, Vaughn broke four Sooner tackles before racing down the sideline to set the Wildcats up deep in Oklahoma territory.
¡Vaya jugada de Vaughn! Y no se cansa de correr @KStateFB @RodolfoLanderos @SirJohnLaguna pic.twitter.com/Dacf2WQVpI
— FOX Deportes (@FOXDeportes) September 26, 2020
When Vaughn found the endzone to tie things up midway through the fourth quarter, it was as simple as hitting the hole out of the backfield and being quicker than anyone else on the field.
"Once we got the momentum, I feel like we never gave it back," Vaughn said. "We had all types of feelings coming off of a loss a few weeks ago, just knowing that we were a better team than we showed against Arkansas State. For those two weeks, we prepared, prepared, prepared, wanting to show the nation that last year wasn't a fluke."
One constant from last year's upset of No. 5 Oklahoma was the play of Thompson down the stretch. The fifth-year quarterback rushed for two touchdowns in the second half, making sure the Wildcats didn't leave points on the field against the Sooners.
"Like I said after week one, you find out a lot about a person and team through challenge and adversity. This team responded, and I had no doubt going into this game that we were going to have a chance to win," Thompson said. "Kept pounding the stone and kept believing."
Thompson has now beaten three AP top-10 teams as a starting quarterback at K-State.
To put that in perspective, it's as many AP top-10 wins as K-State managed as a program between 1939 and 2000.
When Thompson didn't have the football, the Wildcats defense stepped up against Spencer Rattler, a quarterback who had more touchdowns (3) than incompletions (2) in the first half.
Here's how Oklahoma's drives in the fourth quarter went:
Punt
Punt
Punt
Interception
There were turnovers that swung this football game and some serious offensive firepower on the K-State sideline. But the Wildcats don't win on Saturday without their defense.
Down five players from the two-deep roster, K-State prevented Oklahoma from running out the clock on the ground and put Rattler in a position where he was playing not to lose.
"We're going to keep bringing the fight, and we knew if we kept pounding for four quarters that eventually we'll have some success," Jahron McPherson said.
That attitude may be the best thing to come out of Saturday for the Wildcats.
It would probably take the kind of game that ends with confetti on the field for K-State to pull off a more memorable victory than the 38-35 win over No. 3 Oklahoma.
And yet, with eight games in front of them, the Wildcats have a senior quarterback who has proven no stage is too big, a freshman running back suddenly in the national spotlight and a defense that just shut out a College Football Playoff team in the fourth quarter.
The only thing harder to explain than what happened on Saturday in Norman might be what the Wildcats could do next.
"People dream about these moments all the time, and for me, I dream about this all the time," McPherson said. "Coming out of halftime, we made some adjustments. Our biggest thing was that we weren't coming out of the fight."
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September 28, 2020 at 06:09PM
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