Somewhere in the privacy of his ow
n home, 70-year-old Kansas State coach Bill Snyder is enjoying this and laughing at those who quietly thought the energy was gone to resurrect the Wildcats.
But as we’ve suspected for years, the private Snyder is different from the public guy. So it should be no surprise Snyder seems oblivious to the instant success he and the Wildcats are experiencing after he decided break a three-year retirement to return to Kansas State just under a year ago.
The Wildcats are sitting atop the Big 12 North with two regular-season games remaining after being picked to finish on the bottom half of the ision in the preseason media poll.
“I really haven’t gotten too excited about it,” Snyder said of the Wildcats’ success. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the success that we have had recently. When we do well, I’m happy about it. I try to stay on an even keel.”
Steadiness is exactly what Snyder has given the Wildcats. After a win. After every loss.
Even knowing how weak the North has been, who would have thought the Wildcats were capable of winning the ision after suffering a 66-14 loss to Texas Tech on Oct. 10? It seemed the prognosticators were right and Snyder’s return would be more of the same ups-and-downs the program has experienced the past five years.
It turns out, Snyder didn’t think much after that loss other than how to right what went wrong. The following week, the Wildcats returned the favor to Texas A&M, smashing the Aggies 62-14. Kansas State has won three of its last four since losing on the road to Texas Tech.
Who would have thought the Wildcats had such a run in them?
“That’s just is not the way we think,” Snyder said when asked if thought the team might be able to bounce back in such an impressive way. “We are maybe not smart enough to think along those lines. It was `What are our lessons in that ballgame? What can we do to get ourselves better? Let’s set out to do do that.’
“There was no … I don’t try to make those kind of projections.”
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