He snuck up from behind, him wearing his black sweater over a purple-and-white button-down, black jeans and white shoes, and a sly grin crept across his face, as he saw the back of the gray-suited gentleman, a tuft of white hair, standing and surveying the crowd inside the lobby of the Vanier Family Football Complex.
It's 6:40 p.m. on Saturday and Kansas State senior quarterback Avery Johnson, a native of Wichita, Kansas, is surrounded by reporters after the Wildcats suffer a 35-16 defeat to No. 22 Houston at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Nobody likes to lose, particularly a young man who's won 19 games as a Wildcat — sixth most by a K-State signal-caller in the last 36 years.
It's Monday early afternoon as we're introduced to Matt Gilhool, his 6-foot-11, 213-pound frame coming through the doors of the Kansas State men's basketball team meeting room, a mop of brownish hair, a quick survey of the sports writers and cameras positioned opposite him, as he slides into a folding chair that strains to hold his long lower body. It's been 182 days since the native of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, who spent his freshman season on the end of the bench at LSU, announced on Instagram that he was coming to the Little Apple.
Two weeks from the first exhibition game for a new-look Kansas State men's basketball team that features 13 newcomers, including 10 Division I transfers, head coach Casey Alexander in a news conference on Monday said that "I think we're ready to go."
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