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Ask Tysyn Hartman about his right knee, and how injuring it in the final game of his sophomore season against Nebraska has impacted his play since, and there is a good chance he will answer with a cliché.
“It is what it is,” he said.
One can forgive Hartman, now a senior safety at K-State, for the response. Over the past year and a half, he has been asked about his knee on countless occassions. He has played through pain and when he struggled, the question was always, “Did the knee hold you back?” When he excelled, the question was always, “Are you feeling healthy again?”
For the record: He is feeling healthy now.
But his knee obviously hurt him during the first seven games of last season. He just wasn’t himself. He played so poorly that it seemed as if he suddenly forgot how to tackle and cover.
He doesn’t like making excuses for himself, though, so he acts as if he was healthy throughout his junior year. Maybe that attitude is why he was able to close it out so strong. Despite his early play, Hartman came through with a pretty good season. Especially from a statistical point of view.
He made 86 tackles (second most on the team and a career high) intercepted two passes and recovered a fumble. Not bad, right?
K-State coach Bill Snyder thought enough of it to bring Hartman with him to Big 12 Media Days in Dallas last week, and proclaim him the leader of the Wildcats’ secondary. Maybe even the defense as a whole.
“We’d like for him to have as much total command as he can of the secondary,” Snyder said, “because he has good working knowledge of what goes on back there.”
Hartman gained that knowledge through several routes. The most obvious is his experience. This is his fifth season at K-State, and he’s played in so many games that opposing fans probably say, “That guy is still in school?” when he takes the field.
He also knows what it’s like to play on the other side of the ball. He was a quarterback in high school, and that has aided his ability to read offensive schemes.
All that has helped him get to this point.
He is a senior, a captain and one of the Wildcats’ top defensive players. He had a brilliant sophomore season (54 tackles, 11 passes defended and five interceptions) and a strong finish to his junior season (two interceptions against Texas, 12 tackles against Oklahoma State) but he also had a terrible start.
Was that due to his knee or something else? Which Tysyn Hartman will show up in 2011?
Snyder thinks he knows the answer.
“He works at it and he gets better and better,” Snyder said. “He’s a good guy.”
