MANHATTAN, Kan. -- As the ball floated in the air down the sideline, Gus Malzahn began to jog along with it. And as the pass safely landed in the arms of D'haquille Williams, Malzahn's jog turned into a sprint, full of fist pumps of relief.
"I knew this was gonna be a tough one," Auburn's head coach said.
On a Thursday night before a rowdy Bill Snyder Family Stadium crowd, as Kansas State hung around despite squandering chance after chance, Malzahn didn't want to give the Wildcats a final opportunity to finally deliver.
So in the last two minutes facing third-and-9 at Auburn's 37-yard line, Malzahn shoved the run-and-punt aside, and dialed up the slant-and-go. And quarterback Nick Marshall, as he did all last year, came through at the end, lofting a spiral over the top to Williams that sealed the Tigers' 20-14, grind-it-out win on the road.
"Our guys found a way to win," Malzahn said. "I told them after the game, I feel like this is one of those games that can really help us in the future. Because we faced some major adversity tonight. And our guys responded."
With a daunting SEC schedule still ahead, the fifth-ranked Tigers will have to play better than they did in Manhattan to slide into the inaugural College Football Playoff.
LSU and Texas A&M and Georgia and Alabama aren't likely to repeat the miscues that doomed the Wildcats and helped the Tigers escape with the win.
Auburn's running game slogged through a paltry average of 2.8 yards per carry, as the Tigers produced just 55 yards in the first half, the fewest of the Malzahn era.
The passing game sputtered, with Marshall sailing passes or his receivers dropping them, as the nation's top third-down offense coming into the weekend was stopped on its first five third-down conversion attempts.
And the coverage units, well, they looked silly trying to corral Kansas State's Tyler Lockett.
But underscored by Marshall's game-clinching completion, the Tigers also showed that familiar fourth-quarter gumption that carried them all the way to last year's SEC championship and into the national title game.
"It will help us moving forward," Malzahn said. "Even though last year's team would handle adversity as well as any team I've seen, this year is a new team. A lot of guys are back. But it's a new year. We learned a lot about our guys. A lot of teams couldn't win in this environment against a team that talented. [The Wildcats] played their guts out. We knew they would. And it was good for us."
Despite a gutsy effort from its defense, Kansas State couldn't scoop up fumbles, couldn't catch touchdowns and, most glaringly, couldn't make a field goal.
Place-kicker Jack Cantele, who had a banner sophomore season last year that included a game-winning kick to beat TCU, missed all three of his field goal attempts, notably a 22-yard chip shot in the third quarter that would have tied the game. Cantele was ultimately replaced by Matthew McCrane on the Wildcats' final extra-point attempt.
"There were a ton of mistakes that we made that impacted the outcome of the ballgame," Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder said. "Auburn is a tremendous football team. We just made too many mistakes."
Cantele wasn't responsible for all of Kansas State's miscues.
Quarterback Jake Waters fumbled the ball away on the Wildcats' first series, which led to an early Auburn field goal.
Then on its ensuing possession, after Kansas State had driven to the Auburn 2, Waters fired a pass into the end zone that bounced off the chest of Lockett and into the arms of Auburn's Jonathan Jones for a touchback interception.
"We should have won," Waters said. "We just couldn't finish in the red zone. To leave that many points on the field is just frustrating."
The mistakes robbed the Big 12 of a golden chance to land a marquee nonconference victory to impress the playoff selection committee, while launching Kansas State into the early playoff discussion.
"We left a lot out there on the field," Lockett said. "We missed field goals, we fumbled the ball. We just made a lot of mistakes."
But in a game that was mostly defined by its errors, it was Auburn that flashed its championship pedigree with championship-caliber plays down the stretch.
Adjusting to the pace of the game and Kansas State's run-stuffing defense, the Tigers churned out a 15-play drive that began in the third quarter and ended in the fourth with a Marshall touchdown pass to Williams that gave Auburn a 17-7 lead. Along the way, Marshall completed a pair of passes on third-and-8s to keep the drive rolling.
Kansas State fought back with a late touchdown to give itself a chance. But the Wildcats never could get the ball back.
"We knew this was going to be a dogfight," said Marshall, who completed 15 of his 22 passing attempts in the second half -- none bigger than the final one of the game to Williams. "We responded to adversity.
"That says a lot about our team."
A team that didn't play its best.
But a team that survived a dogfight to remain alive and well in its playoff hunt.