{"id":27765,"date":"2019-12-30T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T20:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/?p=27765"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:28:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:28:26","slug":"2019-liberty-bowl-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2019\/12\/30\/2019-liberty-bowl-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Liberty Bowl Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2019 Liberty Bowl preview matches The Naval Academy and Kansas State.\u00a0 In this day and time, it\u2019s not easy to know if teams will actually care about or show up for a bowl game.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good bet these teams will show up.\u00a0 The Kansas State Wildcats come in with an 8-4 record.\u00a0 The Navy Midshipmen sport a 10-2 record.\u00a0 With that being said, this is the 2019 Liberty Bowl preview.<\/p>\n<h2>Liberty Bowl Preview<\/h2>\n<h3>Kansas State Wildcats<\/h3>\n<p>First, Kansas State had an up and down season.\u00a0 However, the Wildcats were competitive in every game with the exception of Big XII championship runner up, Baylor. As a season highlight, the Wildcats also boast a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/2019\/10\/26\/oklahoma-vs-kansas-state-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">victory over CFB playoff participant Oklahoma<\/a>.\u00a0 Kansas State finished conference play in a four-way tie for third place.<\/p>\n<p>Important to note, Kansas State continued the same style of play under first-year head coach <strong>Chris Klieman<\/strong>.\u00a0 Klieman comes to Manhattan after an extremely successful stint at North Dakota State.\u00a0 Similarly, Kansas State continues to play hard-nosed defense and a ball-control style on offense.\u00a0 On offense, the Wildcats are led by hard-nosed junior quarterback <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/skylar-thompson-1.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Skylar Thompson<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Additionally, the key for a Wildcat victory will be contingent on how well they defend the Navy running game.<\/p>\n<h3>Naval Academy Midshipmen<\/h3>\n<p>Navy always comes prepared to play in bowl competition.\u00a0 The Midshipmen are well coached by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/ken-niumatalolo-1.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ken Niumatalolo<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0 In fact, Niumatalolo has been head coach of Navy from 2007 to present.<\/p>\n<p>First, Navy is led on offense by record-setting rushing quarterback <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/malcolm-perry-1.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Malcolm Perry<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Perry rushed for 304 yards against Army, the most rushing yards by an individual in the storied history of Army\/Navy.\u00a0 The Midshipmen do not throw the ball much, they were one for one against Army.<\/p>\n<p>Navy showed tremendous improvement over the 2018 defensive unit this year. Navy finished in second place in the very competitive American Athletic Conference West.\u00a0 In fact, the only conference loss Navy suffered was to conference champion Memphis.<\/p>\n<h3>The Final Word<\/h3>\n<p>In summation, this should be a very interesting and competitive game. It would be surprising if either of these teams were unprepared to play. The Wildcats have a history of playing well in bowl games in recent years. Comparatively, there is little doubt that Navy will come in ready to play. After all, the military is all about discipline.<\/p>\n<p>The key for Kansas State will be to keep the ball out of the hands of the Navy offense.\u00a0 The Wildcats will need to win the battle defensively on first down.\u00a0 Without question the Wildcats will need to keep a spy on Perry, he is the key to the Navy offense.\u00a0 With this in mind, Kansas State will definitely need to win the turnover battle, they can\u2019t give Navy a short field.<\/p>\n<p>Comparatively, as for Navy, the keys are very similar. \u00a0In order to be successful, the Midshipmen need to control the ball on offense, limit turnovers, as well as win the battle of first down.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, Navy is a very difficult team to prepare for in a short period of time. \u00a0The Midshipmen run an option attack that very few teams use.\u00a0 Even so, Navy is very disciplined and rarely commits pre or post-snap penalties. Finally, barring multiple turnovers by the Midshipmen or a costly injury they should coast to a victory.<\/p>\n<h3>Prediction<\/h3>\n<p>Navy 37, Kansas State 23.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2019 Liberty Bowl preview matches The Naval Academy and Kansas State.\u00a0 In this day and time, it\u2019s not easy to know if teams will actually care about or show up for a bowl game.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good bet these teams will show up.\u00a0 The Kansas State Wildcats come in with an 8-4 record.\u00a0 The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3198,"featured_media":27769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,6,7361,35581],"tags":[30,239,4926,1145,5302,2956,140,588,1178,1324,6041,498,313,473,37,2796],"class_list":["post-27765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-americanathletic","category-big12","category-bowl-games","category-oklahoma-sooners","tag-american-athletic-conference","tag-baylor-bears","tag-big-xii","tag-bowl-games","tag-cfb-playoffs","tag-chris-klieman","tag-fbs","tag-kansas-state-wildcats","tag-ken-niumatalolo","tag-liberty-bowl","tag-malcolm-perry","tag-memphis-tigers","tag-navy-midshipmen","tag-north-dakota-state-bison","tag-oklahoma-sooners","tag-skylar-thompson"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78936,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27765\/revisions\/78936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}