Kansas State fans didn’t have too much to celebrate following their team’s 41-20 loss to TCU Saturday. It ended a five-game winning streak for the Wildcats, dropped them out of first place in the Big 12, and likely ended their playoff hopes. There was a silver lining however.
Tyler Lockett, a senior wide receiver from Tulsa, Oklahoma, caught 11 passes for a season-best 196 yards and a touchdown. It was his fourth 100+ yard receiving game of the season, and the 13th of his career, further extending the K-State record he’s held outright since his 12-catch, 125-yard, 2-touchdown performance against Texas Tech earlier this year.
Records are nothing new for Lockett, who is responsible for both of the two biggest single-game receiving performances in Kansas State history (278 yards on 12 receptions against Oklahoma last season, and 237 yards at Texas, also last season). The senior did break new ground on Saturday however. On his ninth catch of the day, a 14-yard first down completion on the first play of the Wildcats’ first drive of the fourth quarter, Lockett reached 3,032 career yards. That brought him into a tie for the all-time K-State record, a record held by his dad, Kevin Lockett.
The older Lockett played wide receiver for the Wildcats from 1993-1996. He finished with more receptions (217), receiving yards (3,023), and receiving touchdowns (26) than any player in school history. He also held the single-season records for receptions (72) and receiving touchdowns (13), but both of those records have since been broken. Not the career marks though, not until now.
Tyler’s next catch in the TCU game, a 30-yard grab, moved him past his father and gave him the all-time Kansas State receiving yardage record outright.
As of today, the older Lockett still holds the other two marquee Kansas State all-time receiving records — the ones for career catches and receiving touchdowns. Those are in serious jeopardy of falling soon though, as the younger Lockett still has three regular season games and a bowl game to break them.
Tyler is currently at 203 career-receptions and 24 career-touchdowns, just 14 receptions and 2 touchdowns shy of his father’s all-time K-State records. If the younger Lockett maintains the pace he’s been on this season, he’ll break his father’s receptions record and tie his touchdown mark in the final regular season game of his collegiate career at Baylor, and by the end of the Wildcats’ bowl game, he’ll hold all three.
It might happen even sooner than that, since Kansas and West Virginia, the two teams the Wildcats face next, are eighth and tenth in the Big 12 in passing yards and touchdowns allowed this season. Baylor has allowed the second-fewest receiving yards of any Big 12 school, but only West Virginia has allowed more passing TDs than Baylor’s 23 this season.
In an interview with ESPN’s Jake Trotter earlier this month, the older Lockett made it clear how he feels about his son breaking his records, “… I would love for Tyler to surpass anything I was able to do on the field, and that’s simply because my job is for his life to be more successful. I also want Tyler to be more successful off the field than I was or I have been.”
Once Tyler takes all three records from his dad, the next chance he’ll have to surpass his dad will be the NFL Draft. Kevin went 47th overall to the Kansas City Chiefs in 1996. We’ll see if Tyler can do any better.
