On the one day of the year built for disguises, Kansas State can’t hide what it wants to do.

Its results have followed the rushing total like a shadow. Two hundred yards or more has meant a win. Anything short of that, a loss.

The Wildcats won all four games in which they reached 200: 312 yards against Nicholls, 295 against Washington State, 201 against Tulane and 359 against Kansas. They lost all three in which they didn’t: 155 at Cincinnati, 117 against Houston and 84 at Arizona State.

Arizona State is the game Colorado will want to study. Kansas State played it without quarterback Avery Johnson, who has run for 462 yards at 9.1 per carry and is listed as out Saturday. Backup Jacob Knuth, who started last week in Tempe, is listed as doubtful. First-year coach Collin Klein hasn’t named a starter.

“We knew it was going to be about offensively winning the line of scrimmage,” Klein, the Loveland High School graduate, said Monday of last week’s defeat. “We did not do that.”

Without a run game, Klein said, nothing took the pressure off the rest of the offense. Kansas State’s running backs combined for 61 yards on 22 carries. The Wildcats faced eight third downs of 7 yards or longer and went 0-for-4 on fourth down.

In the turnover department, it’s Colorado’s stoppable force against Kansas State’s movable object. The Buffaloes (2-5 overall, 0-4 Big 12) have spent the season handing out treats, with 16 turnovers in seven games.

Quarterback Isaac Wilson had thrown seven of the team’s Big 12-high 10 interceptions: three against Texas Tech and two each against Utah and Oklahoma State. The Wildcats’ secondary has tricked an opposing quarterback only once. Kansas State’s defense has a single interception — fewest in the Big 12 — among its four takeaways all season.

On the other side, the Wildcats have been stingier with the ball. Kansas State has given it away just six times. Johnson threw three interceptions in 187 attempts, and Knuth hasn’t thrown one in 42. Colorado’s defense has forced seven turnovers.

Tight end Brady Kopetz said the answer lies in what comes after a mistake.

“We just need to handle adversity better. You know, at times mistakes are going to happen,” Kopetz said. “Adversity is going to happen in a football game, and you’ve just got to figure out how to respond to that better.”

Coach Deion Sanders’ list of keys for Saturday included “running the ball, creating turnovers, eliminating the penalties.” Across all of it, he said, “We’ve got to have some kind of consistency.”

Running the ball also means sticking with it. In Colorado’s only FBS win, 14-13 at Georgia Tech, the Buffaloes ran 49 times and threw 27 passes. At Oklahoma State, the run game disappeared after halftime. They ran 21 times for 57 yards in the first half and led 24-23 at the break. In the second half, they ran nine times for minus-1 yard, and JaQuail Smith was handed the ball just twice.

Kansas State’s run defense has worn two masks this season. It allowed 96 rushing yards per game in nonconference play. Against Big 12 opponents, that number has more than doubled, to 204.8. Last week, Arizona State’s Cardae Mack ran for 159 yards and four touchdowns. Colorado’s defense is still shaking off a 57-point night in Stillwater. Linebacker Gideon Lampron, the team’s leading tackler, kept his to-do list short.

“We just need to be disciplined, not shooting ourselves in the foot, you know, jumping offsides,” he said “Can’t miss 29 tackles like we did, and I think we’ll be good.”

Receiver DeAndre Moore Jr. kept his shorter: “Play hard, strain to the finish, play with relentless effort, and don’t give up.”

The coach on the other sideline knows the territory. Klein is from Loveland, and his father grew up in Boulder. He said he has “a lot of family all through the Front Range” but grew up more of a Colorado State fan and never went to a Buffs game. That was news to Sanders.

“I had no idea that he was a local kid,” he said. “Heck of a play caller. He knows what he’s doing.”

Saturday is the first of Colorado’s final five chances, and the Buffaloes can afford to miss only one if they want to go bowling. Kopetz isn’t ready to settle for that.

“We still want to win a bowl game. We still want to win out,” he said.

Neither is Sanders.

“I don’t see, oh, we’re going to get our butts kicked. I don’t. I never see that,” he said. “I’m not built like that.”