Kansas Jayhawks News
Ericka Brockish at Through the Phog wonders if Lance Leipold may be the next Big 12 football coach to be fired:
Well, that hope didn’t last too long, as the Jayhawks have steadily gotten worse each season since 2023, when the Jayhawks went 9-4. Kansas had back-to-back 5-7 seasons, missed bowl games, and now sit at 3-4 with only one win in Big 12 play.
This doesn’t bode well for Leipold, who was already starting to feel his seat warm up at the start of the season.
Joel Wagler, also at Through the Phog,
writes about Todd Reesing and his career at Kansas:
While Reesing has an incredible college quarterback, his size prevented him from a professional career. He was generously listed at five-foot-eleven (probably measured with his cleats on). Still, he was incredibly fun to watch and played with a toughness and a skill KU fans have never seen play in the Crimson and Blue at quarterback.
Jimmy Adeniran at Roundtable Sports hosted by Yahoo wonders whether the win over Baylor is the spark the program needed:
The victory was especially important for a Kansas team looking to find consistency in Big 12 play. After facing adversity throughout the season, the Jayhawks showed they could respond when the game was on the line. The result also gave the team something positive to take into its upcoming matchup against TCU.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram has 4 observations about the Jayhawksahead of the game against TCU this weekend. One of the items is about the defense:
The Jayhawks rank in the middle of the pack or slightly below average in the Big 12 in most defensive categories, but the unit has a glaring issue that teams have been able to exploit. The Jayhawks rank last (16th) in the conference in rush defense, with teams averaging 166.9 rushing yards.
Through the Phog also writes that Tyran Stokes and Taylen Kinney are the best freshman duo we’ve seen at Kansas in quite a while:
While Kinney and Stokes didn’t put up quite as good of numbers as Duke’s best players, who just so happen to be seniors, it’s impressive nonetheless, and should give fans a lot of hope in these guys balling out this season.
Joel Wagler reminds everyone that it’s not panic time after losing to Louisville and Duke in the exhibition games:
It’s strange that the Kansas basketball team just hosted Louisville and Duke and took two losses in these competitive matchups, and it doesn’t matter. It’s natural to panic slightly after losing these games, but because they were both exhibition games, neither counts in the grand scheme of things. It is tough, though, to watch the Jayhawks lose these games in the Phog against such prominent programs.
Jason Glassberg at the Daily Kansan has three takeaways following the Duke game, noticing that Self went the small ball route for most of the game:
Centers Christian Reeves and Paul Mbiya didn’t see the floor much. Reeves played 6:18, and Mbiya played less than four minutes. This made Dawes (6-foot-9) Kansas’ tallest player on the court for the majority of the second half. The Jayhawks ran an even smaller lineup with Dawes on the bench, with Stokes serving as the primary post defender.
“I thought if our guards rebounded it would have gone really well,” Self said about Kansas playing small.
Self’s reasoning for the very limited minutes for Reeves and Mbiya was Kansas’ inability to guard Duke’s ball screens, which he noted wasn’t Reeves’ or Mbiya’s fault.
Other Links!
ESPN has a long but good post up on the recent sale of the Lakers and how it all came together:
Interviews with more than a dozen team insiders, league executives and others with intimate knowledge of the sale reveal how the deal, which was made over a furious 72 hours, upstaged an already-transformative offseason — and reignited yet another unresolved round of messy public bickering among the six Buss siblings that still hangs uncomfortably over the beginning of this new season.
ESPN also found the Oregon version of our Mikeville as they cover what is going wrong for the Ducks:
Ron McCullough has been making the two-hour drive from Portland to Eugene for 29 seasons. He has walked into Autzen Stadium countless times, sat in Section 33 and watched as bright green trees fade into shades of amber and gold every fall. Championship-worthy or underwhelming, McCullough has bore witness to it all while never leaving an Oregon game until the clock hits triple zero.
“This,” McCullough said at halftime of last week’s game against Nebraska, “is the first time.”
Defector has a fun post up covering Pat McAfee’s whining after Utah didn’t welcome him and his schtick with open arms:
ESPN’s prize hog used Monday’s episode of his daily talk show to complain about what a bad experience he had at the University of Utah when he was there for College GameDay this past weekend. More specifically, McAfee was aggravated because the school had posted a video (now deleted) in which a couple of students were prompted to do an impression of him. “He’s gonna say a corny line,” said one student who was predicting McAfee’s GameDay pick. “He’s gonna be like, ‘Houston, we got a problem. Gimme the Utah Utes.'” For the record, McAfee picked the visiting Cougars in Saturday’s game, but Utah won, 21-13.
QOTD: It’s almost November and we’re finally getting some fall weather, so college football fans should be getting excited for the playoffs and post season. But are you? I almost linked a post about the CFP bubble but I just don’t care at this point, especially knowing they’re about to add even more teams to the whole thing.
