Kansas State's miserable season is finally over. A bleak year with such a dark outlook could have left the players lost and not knowing where to pull motivation from.
For Nate Johnson and PJ Haggerty, it was the self-resilience that made them continue on.
"I would say it was an up-and-down season, but we just didn't quit," Haggerty said in his BYU postgame interview. "We faced a lot of adversity, but in the end, we just all stayed together. We just played, had fun, and were with each other every day. We grinded. I’m glad to have finished it with them."
Johnson echoed Haggerty's sentiments, saying the positivity is what brightened the dark hole.
"It was a long year, but at the same time, we still found a way to stay positive and have a smile on our faces," Johnson said. "With [coach Driscoll], it's kind of hard not to. So throughout those ups and downs, we just tried to stay positive and look ahead."
Kansas State coach Matthew Driscoll, much like Jerome Tang, pointed out the amount of outside scrutiny that the team has faced in the social media age.
"In this day and age, there’s just so much money and so much social media, and so much stuff that said," Driscoll said. "The nastiness that they get behind closed doors: the DMs they get that are nasty, and the emails we receive that are nasty. All that stuff doesn’t echo in a thimble to the fact that all we do in this industry is just pour into them. They’ve grown as men. They’re gonna be better husbands, fathers, and corporate people. They’re gonna be better human beings because they’ve accepted our ability to pour into them. Shame on those who don’t look."
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