Manhattan ? Kansas State football coach Ron Prince didn’t smirk and didn’t appear at all to be forcing out his eyebrow-raising claim about Saturday’s game against Kansas University.

“This game will test us significantly,” Prince said Monday. “The greatest test we’ve had so far this year.”

Whoa, cowboy.

Kansas State, ranked 24th in the latest Associated Press poll, started the season with a road game against then-No. 18 Auburn. It’s just a few days removed from a road game at then-No. 7 Texas.

And yet Saturday’s 11 a.m. home game against the Jayhawks is the cock of the walk? Really?

“(Kansas) has more of a complete team in all three areas,” Prince said when pressed, “than any other team that we’ve faced to this point.”

K-State quarterback Josh Freeman was asked if he felt KU’s defense was tougher to attack than Texas. He said yes.

“They have a few less athletes on their team,” Freeman said of KU, “but they play with more discipline and play harder.”

On top of that, there was genuine concern by Prince, it seemed, concerning KU’s bye week allowing for more preparation time than K-State gets.

Maybe that’s the reason the Wildcats’ stunning 41-21 victory over Texas on Saturday didn’t appear to inflate heads, at least not publicly.

Instead, Prince and his players spoke highly of the 2007 Jayhawks, a squad that has rolled over its four nonconference opponents by a combined score of 214-23.

“Right now, they’re 4-0,” defensive end Ian Campbell said. “They have some really good players. I think we match up really well together, so I think everybody’s going to get what they want out of that. It’s going to be a good TV game.”

K-State’s players, though, were adamant that last year’s sequence of events in no way foreshadows this year’s. In 2006, Kansas State beat Texas, 45-42, before going to Kansas the next week and getting stomped, 39-20, by the rested Jayhawks.

The Wildcats committed six turnovers in the ’06 Sunflower Showdown, and Prince and a couple of his players implied that the Wildcats, in their eyes, beat themselves that night in Lawrence.

“As far as mistakes we made and being careless with the football, it hadn’t happened all year,” Freeman recalled. “There was stuff in that game that we could replay a thousand times, and none of that stuff would’ve happened again. But it happened, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to move on.”

Kansas State has, and successfully at that. Though it lost the Texas Bowl to Rutgers to finish last season, the Wildcats are 3-1 this year. A stellar effort against Texas – particularly on defense and special teams – has highlighted the young 2007 season.

But, if you believe Prince, the mighty Longhorns were nothing compared to what’s coming up. Even if KU is the team doing the traveling this week.

“All I know is they’re 4-0,” Prince said, “and they’re nationally ranked in virtually every category – much higher than we are. I don’t care who you’re playing, I don’t care what level it is. To be able to score 40, 50, 60 points and to be able to limit points the way they have :

“I’m not taking anything away from our team. I just think they have a really good team, and we’re going to need to play our best, and we’re going to need to play aggressively. If we do that, then I like our chances to win the game.”