Kansas State started its season strong with a 51-9 victory over the Missouri State Bears for its first win of 2012. The final scoreline would seem to show just how easily the Wildcats sailed past the Bears, but there were some early defensive struggles for K-State and it took until the end of the game for the team to finally pull away and put the beat-down scoreline on.
In their post-game quotes, the Wildcat defenders seemed to all agree that the team could have done better, but was effective at bending without breaking against Missouri State:
Senior Cornerback Nigel Malone
On how the defense played in the game…
"They did a really good job on game-planning us. They found a chunk of yards, but like I said, it is bend but do not break. We came out in the second half and they had a big play starting the second half. We came out strong and tried not to give them a touchdown."
Senior Linebacker Arthur Brown
On the overall defense play tonight…
"There are a lot of areas that we have to improve, I have to give credit to them (Missouri State). They did a great job of keeping the tempo and making us react and showed us the many areas of our game that we need to improve on. We are just going to take it day-by-day."
The Wildcats will need to improve from adequate as they face FBS competition in their next game -- they will face the Miami Hurricanes on Sunday.
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