LAWRENCE — A lot went wrong and not a lot went right for the Kansas football team in the first half of the season. Now the Jayhawks are hoping to flip the script.
KU (1-5) opens the second half of its season against Houston (2-4) on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium with hopes of snapping a five-game losing streak. The Jayhawks have been close as they’ve had a lead in the second half in four of the five losses but have yet to finish the job.
“Guys are motivated,” said running back Devin Neal. “We want to win at the end of the day. Guys are willing to do whatever it takes.
“We need to play with the same confidence and swagger that we had going into the first game. We got to get back to being ourselves and not beating ourselves up with errors. We’ve had too many errors. No one’s perfect. So we got to get back to being the old us.”
With Neal (584 yards/5.8 avg./5 TDs) and Daniel Hishaw (310 yards/6.5 avg./3 TDs), the Jayhawks have run the ball effectively, averaging 212 yards per game as a team. But eight Jalon Daniels interceptions and penalties on offense have slowed the team at times. And on defense, the team has recorded just 10 sacks and has failed to get crucial stops, especially in the fourth quarter.
But KU coach Lance Leipold remains steadfast that his team will bounce back. In fact, he’s counting on the team’s fundamentals and daily work habits to come through.
“We’ve got the second half of the season starting now,” Leipold said. “We’re going to look at how we’re going to come out of these last six games and continue. But I’ve said many times that if we were 6-0 right now, or anything else, we’d be talking about the same things.
“Your process and our practice regime are things that you don’t change based on wins and losses. To me, that’s a knee-jerk reaction to how you’re going to go about it. And I think consistency in our approach, but attention to detail and getting better, and addressing the things that we can do to try to get ourselves in a better position are key.”
While KU’s win-loss record isn’t what the team had hoped for, Neal is close to writing his name in the KU record book. He is only 181 yards away from breaking June Henley’s all-time rushing mark of 3,841 yards. Neal, however, is focused on something else.
“I’m mindful of it,” Neal said of the school record. “But at the end of the day we’ve got to execute for me to even get there. I’m definitely excited about it, but at the end of the day I’d rather win. That’s what we’re focused on right now. But I am excited for it.”
Henley played at KU from 1993-96, while Neal is in his fourth season as a Jayhawk (2021-24).
