K-STATE SPORTS INFORMATION
MANHATTAN -- No. 17 Kansas State found a way.
Avery Johnson engineered an 81-yard drive and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to running back Joe Jackson with 42 seconds remaining, and the Wildcats held off first-time starting quarterback Jerry Kaminski and North Dakota for a 38-35 nail-biting victory Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
K-State, 1-1 overall and 0-1 in the Big 12 Conference, led 31-21 late in the third quarter before North Dakota, 0-1, scored two touchdowns, including a 20-yard run by Sawyer Seidl that gave the Fighting Hawks a 35-31 edge with 4:19 left in the fourth quarter, leaving the sellout crowd of 51,927 in stunned silence while North Dakota first-year head coach Eric Schmidt applauded his players' effort from the sideline.
Johnson and the Wildcats avoided disaster in their first-ever meeting against North Dakota and prevented the FCS member from pulling off perhaps its biggest win in history.
"If you give teams life, they're going to stick around the whole time," K-State head coach Chris Klieman said. "I told the guys, you're never assured of anything. You're never given anything. You never deserve anything. You've got to earn everything you have.
"This new era of college football, nobody knows what teams have. Nobody knows how good teams are or how much they've improved through improved players or improved staffs. I knew we were playing a good football team."
K-State, which opened its season with a 24-21 loss to No. 22 Iowa State in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland, last Saturday, spent the beginning of the week recouping from long travel.
"I told the guys I hope this was our hangover game," Klieman said, "and that's no disrespect to North Dakota because they're a good football team that came in here and beat us. We beat them on the scoreboard late."
The back-and-forth slugfest ended with K-State staging its fifth come-from-behind victory since the beginning of the 2024 season when trailing in the fourth quarter. This one marked the Wildcats' first game-winning touchdown with under 1:00 left in regulation since Skylar Thompson connected with Isaiah Zuber on the final play in a home game against Iowa State in 2017.
ohnson had career highs across the board as a passer, completing 28-of-43 passes for 318 yards and three touchdowns, while he rushed for 43 yards, including a crucial 25-yard run on the game-winning drive.
"I've always been the person to think if we get the ball last, we should win the game, and I'm always going to have that type of confidence in myself and my teammates," Johnson said. "That helps with poise, confidence and calmness, and I think everybody feeds off that. I'm continuing to be a great leader even in adverse times."
In the second game of his second season as a full-time starter, Johnson showed something to Klieman in the game-winning drive.
"That's going to be a defining drive for Avery Johnson because he was as calm and as cool and made play after play after play. Even after we had a drop, it didn't bug him, and he came back and made a play; then we ultimately got a score," Klieman said.
After K-State's final touchdown, North Dakota took over with 37 seconds to go, and the crowd rose to peak level, and a K-State defense that had its hands full with the Fighting Hawks all game forced Kaminski to throw four straight incompletions, including a deep ball that glanced off the hands of Caden Dennis down the sideline with 5 seconds left, as the Wildcats survived a rollercoaster night.
"Coach says it all the time that it's hard to win at this level, so it's cool to be able to get a win, but we all kind of know we're going to have to play better than that if we want to achieve what we want to achieve," said defensive end Cody Stufflebean, who had a career-high two sacks. "We had to win and have confidence in ourselves knowing our offense can execute. We just had to go out and play well."
K-State outgained North Dakota, 461 to 354, in total offense and held the Fighting Hawks to just 5-of-14 on third downs and 1-of-2 on fourth downs. K-State improved to 27-7 when totaling at least 375 offensive yards since 2022.
K-State wide receiver Jayce Brown had a career-high 12 catches for 109 yards and a touchdown, marking the most receptions by a K-State player since Tyler Lockett had 13 in the final game of his career, the 2014 Alamo Bowl. Jerand Bradley had five catches for 46 yards and Jaron Tibbs had three catches for 55 yards and a touchdown.
However, the third quarter saw sophomore running back DeVon Rice rise to the occasion with a pair of touchdowns of nine and 13 yards. Seeing significant action in place of the injured Dylan Edwards, Rice had seven carries for 40 yards and two touchdowns, and Joe Jackson had 11 carries for 55 yards.
"There were a lot of emotions when I scored my touchdown," Rice said. "It was a dream come true. I was prepared for the moment. I'm just happy."
Meanwhile, Jackson's lone catch in the game made everybody happy. Jackson caught the game-winning pass from Johnson along the edge to the right side inside the 10-yard line, turned up field and stepped into the end zone, then dropped the ball and flexed in excitement.
"We practice the two-minute drill almost on an everyday basis," Jackson said. "We knew we had the focus on what it took to get it done."
K-State got it done in the clutch. K-State found a way.
"It's a one-week season," Johnson said. "We have to grab the good and fix the bad, and we'll continue to learn from it and get better, but we need to focus on Army now and figure out how we're going to go 1-0 next week."
Klieman is eager for the Wildcats to improve.
"We've got to get a lot better," he said. "We've got to improve in all areas, not just one area. In all phases, we've got to improve, but I've been in this business too long. You'd better enjoy every opportunity you have to get a victory, so we're happy about the victory."
