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The Kansas State Wildcats will host the Nicholls State Colonels at Bill Snyder Family Stadium on Saturday in each side’s 2019 college football season opener.
The game (7 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on regular TV anywhere, but you can watch it live right here on ESPN+, the digital streaming service from ESPN that has exclusive coverage of dozens of college football games and other live sports every week, all the 30-for-30 documentaries and additional original content (both video and written) all for $4.99 per month.
You can sign up for ESPN+ right here, and you can then watch Kansas State vs Nicholls live on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone (Android and iPhone compatible), tablet, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or other streaming device via the ESPN app.
Nicholls vs Kansas State Preview
Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder retired from coaching for a second time on December 2. Now 79, Snyder it a career in 2005 after 17 seasons at the helm of the Wildcats, but he returned ahead of their 2009 campaign.
A week after the 1998 AP Coach of the Year’s most recent announcement, the school disclosed their hiring of former North Dakota State head coach Chris Klieman.
The 51-year-old took over a program that went 5-7 in 2018, just their second losing season in 10 years.
“You always worry about [growing pains] in the first game,” Klieman said on Tuesday, according to 247Sports. “I think everybody does, from false starts, to delay of games, to somebody jumping offsides, to just having to call timeout because we don’t have something right. We’ve tried to, you know, replicate as many of those things as we can in practice, but there’s going to be some anxiety. And so some kids are going to make mistakes.”
In their first test of the season, Kansas State’s defense will be charged with slowing down a Colonels squad that scored 32.3 points per game and amassed 474 yards of offense per contest in 2018.
The Nicholls State offense is led by senior quarterback Chase Fourcade, who’s been the Colonels’ starter since his freshman season.
In 13 games last year, the nephew of former NFL quarterback John Fourcade completed 60.8 percent of his passes for 2,930 yards, 21 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions.
“A great quarterback, a guy that I have a ton of respect for,” Klieman said of Nicholls State’s signal caller, per 247Sports. “I’ve watched him play; the last couple years I’ve watched him play because we’ve played teams that they’ve played in the playoffs. He’s got a great bunch of moxie, he’s an athletic guy. Not a very big guy, but he plays big.”
With the graduation of Damion Jeanpiere Jr., the Colonels’ leader in receiving yards in each of the past two seasons, Dai’Jean Dixon will take over the Nicholls State’s No. 1 receiver.
As a sophomore in 2018, Dixon led the team with 53 catches and 7 touchdowns, amassing 753 yards through the air, the second-most on the team.
“It’s all about chemistry. When we don’t have practice, we’re always out here on the field,” Dixon said of working with Fourcade, according to The Houma Courier. “Even if we’re at home, we just call each other and get together to work on some things. It’s good to work on what you’re already good at and then what you’re not good at. We just have that connection. You have to have that connection with your teammates.”
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