College Football - KU

Kansas FootballMangino: “Texas is an outstanding team, an excellent football team. No weaknesses on the offensive side of the ball. They feature a great quarterback in Colt McCoy. He can beat you throwing and he can beat you with his feet. Their defense gives you looks, moves around, they have a really impressive defensive line, outstanding linebackers that run sideline to sideline and really an excellent secondary that plays the ball well and also tackles well. It’s a challenge to go down to Austin, but we’re looking forward to going down there and playing very well.” Brown: “The Kansas game is important for many reasons. It's an opportunity for us to tie up the Big 12 South. It is a chance for Colt to become the winningest quarterback in the history of college football. This is Senior Day. It'll be a tremendous atmosphere on Saturday night, and we need to send our seniors out the right way and give them a crazy crowd.”

That's a Hard RainThis is the third reader contribution since we started the policy of including our best readers as part of UFR. If you didn’t have a chance to read the others, Greinke – Jonathan Tucker and Cassel – Jason Lisk… “Mark Mangino may be facing the biggest challenge in his coaching tenure at Kansas in the following months.  The former ambulance driver will have to hurry to resuscitate a program that surprisingly has greatly underachieved this season.”

Kansas FootballMangino: “We’re not going to get down from losing games. We’re going to find a way to get better, that’s the way we do it here. We keep looking for solutions. Nobody is feeling bad for themselves, there is nobody pouting. If you go down the hallway to the coaches’ suites, people are working. Players are coming in and asking questions and getting DVDs to watch and things like that. It’s business as usual. We’ve had some kids on occasion or two who don’t handle diversity well. But you prepare them for both - talk about the highs of winning and the lows of losing and the pitfalls that come with losing and all the new things that come with winning.”

Sometimes Turnovers don't matter. Sometimes they do.

I reject any loss of confidence argument regarding Todd Reesing. I’m of the opinion that it must be a physical problem that has led to one of the most amazing metamorphoses I have ever seen in an athlete – or at least a football player. It’s not unusual for baseball players to go in slumps – even basketball players. But, college QBs generally play reasonably consistently game in and game out – at least Senior QBs do – at least Senior QBs that have been extremely consistent the rest of their careers do – at least Senior QBs that have receivers like Briscoe and Meier … do. So what is going on with TR the past four games?

Kansas FootballMangino: “This week we travel to Lubbock to play Texas Tech. Texas Tech is 5-3 and as always, they bring a high-powered offense. They are the No. 1 passing team in the country in Division I. They throw the ball well and catch it well. They have used three different quarterbacks this year, and all three have been effective at various times. They have had some ups and downs this season, but who hasn't in the Big 12? We are looking forward to getting down to Lubbock. We need to get back on the winning track and we are looking forward to it.”

Kansas FootballMangino: “Obviously, it was disappointing to lose (to Colorado), but that is long gone out of our system. It is behind us. We can’t change it, we can’t do anything about it, but we can do something about the games we are about to play and our next game is against Oklahoma. I have been a part of their program and they will not have any problem getting their players ready to play. It was an important time of my life. I enjoyed it and I’m glad to hear I am still popular there even though I wear Crimson and Blue now.”

Kansas FootballMangino: “Colorado is a good football team at home. They always play well in Boulder and we understand the challenge there. They have made a change at quarterback. Tyler Hansen will now replace the coach’s son, Cody Hawkins. From all indications, they are making that a permanent move. On defense, they can be stellar at times. They gave Texas a rough time in the first half. They had some good calls and made some good plays, so it will be a challenge for us. We are looking forward to going to Boulder and playing well and trying to get another Big 12 North win.”

A Mirror Image redelephants.comAs you may remember, the very first post on UFR was a Reesing vs Daniel argument between Brad and I. If you want to go back and review it, here is the link. I was going to do an update on UFR’s one-year anniversary (October 23, when KU would have been, presumably 6-0). However, with the Mangino comments about Reesing being included in the Heisman discussion, I thought I would go ahead evaluate how Reesing is progressing compared to Daniel’s three seasons. It’s amazingly close.

Kansas FootballI’ve started adding more of my own data to these pre-game reports. Nevertheless, a good deal of it is from the Kansas Athletic Department. There are a lot of items to chew on, but the single most telling stat is that KU is +200.75 yards versus their competitors, Iowa State is +20.80. KU is favored by 19 points.

Since we are reinitiating UFR without Brad (MU alum) and since Sam has replaced him (KU alum), I thought it would be appropriate to address this issue head on. I was especially pleased to see what Sam wrote about the subject yesterday – “I can promise you won't read any KU homer stuff from me. I loved my time in college, like most people do, but stopped rooting a long time ago for KU in the way you'd expect. My bias is for the Big 12."

Kansas FootballKU Media Relations: Kansas and Southern Mississippi will be meeting for the first time in school history. KU is meeting all four of its non-conference opponents this season for the first time. Kansas is meeting a Conference USA opponent for the second time this season as the Jayhawks won 49-7 at UTEP on Sept. 12. The Jayhawks are now 17-9 against current members of the league all-time with a 4-0 mark vs. UAB, 3-0 vs. Houston, 1-0 vs. Rice, Tulane and UTEP and 5-5 vs. Tulsa. Before this season the last time KU played a Conference USA team was a 42-13 win against Houston in the 2005 Fort Worth Bowl. The last previous regular season meeting before this year was a 21-3 win against Tulsa to open the 2004 season.

Kansas FootballKU Media Relations: Recap of last week’s game vs. Duke: “After reviewing the tape, we feel like we had a good performance against Duke. We know there are areas we need to work on, but the key thing is we are better every week, which is what is most important for us.”

Kansas Football

KU Media Relations. Kansas senior quarterback Todd Reesing threw for 338 yards and three touchdowns and also collected 51 yards on the ground to lead Kansas to a 44-16 win over Duke on a sunny Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium. The win improved Kansas to 3-0 on the season, marking the second time in the last three seasons the Jayhawks opened the season with three-consecutive wins. The loss dropped the Blue Devils to 1-2.

Kansas FootballKU Media Relations: Duke (1-1) will be on the road for the second straight week as the Blue Devils take on No. 22 Kansas (2-0) at Kivisto Field at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kan. on Saturday, Sept. 19. Kickoff is scheduled for 11 a.m. The game will be televised by VERSUS with Ron Thulin calling the play-by-play, Kelly Stouffer providing the color commentary and Lewis Johnson reporting from the sideline. The Blue Devils are coming off a 35-19 victory at Army while Kansas defeated UTEP on the road, 34-7.

Kansas FootballKU Media Relations: Recap of last week’s  game vs. UTEP “I am very pleased and our staff is pleased with the effort on both sides of the ball, as well as our kicking game. I thought it was one of those games where we really felt like we were in control of the game from early on, and maybe just left some points on the field, but still played pretty well on offense. We did some good things in the run game and pass game, and we did a good job controlling the line of scrimmage on offense, which is something we really needed to do.”

Jake "looking" SharpKansas Media Relations: Senior DE Maxwell Onyegbule and the Jayhawk defense set the tone early as the University of Kansas football team rolled past UTEP 34-7 in front of 31,885 fans Saturday night in the Sun Bowl. Senior QB Todd Reesing guided the offense to over 575 yards of total offense as KU improved to 2-0 for the sixth straight season, while the Miners fell to 0-2.

 Well, if you just started paying attention to Kansas and Missouri football in 2007, you would say "not very". However, it's worth noting the last time they were both ranked in the same season in football before 2007 was 1976 (31 years earlier). If you didn't know it, KU is #24 and MU moved into the rankings at #25 Tuesday.

Kansas FootballI figured I might as well go ahead and paste this since I’m in a pasting mood. KU held their press conference on Tuesday. Here are the main quotes. This information is also from KU’s media relations department and follows the KU-UTEP preview I posted yesterday.

The “first” is not related to the story, but to the post. This is the first post out of the few hundred I have done on UFR where I essentially cut and pasted. Talk about a VACATION by comparison! The University of Kansas puts out some great previews for the upcoming games. I figured I couldn’t do a better job if I tried. This is the kind of information I find interesting. So, even though the game is days away, here it is. You can thank Mike Strauss (and company) at KU Media Relations. I know I am!

A Mirror Image redelephants.comI’m sure them’s fightin’ words to people on both sides of the line. I live in one and work on the other and I have nothing against … “those people”, but I certainly understand the rivalry. Anyway, the point of this post is to make a comparison between KU in 2009 and MU in 2008. Is it 100%? Of course not, but there is a surprising amount of similarity. Considering Missouri was 10-4 in 2008, the theory here is that Kansas should be able to match that number in 2009.