The loss to Missouri may still sting, but after the bye in week three, Kansas must turn its focus to the quickly approaching home stand.
The Jayhawks are about to enter an extremely pivotal stretch, as they have two very winnable games coming up in the Booth. The first game of this mini-stretch will be on Saturday, September 20th, against KU's first Big 12 opponent of the season, the West Virginia Mountaineers. The latter will be against Cincinnati a week later on Saturday, September 27th.
West Virginia comes into this game with a confusing 2-1 record. In their two victories, the Mountaineers looked impressive, with a 45-3 win over Robert Morris, and a 17-10 overtime win over Pitt. Their only loss was to the hands of a solid but inferior Ohio team, granted it was on the road. Like many other teams at this point in the season, nobody really knows how good WVU truly is, but they will most definitely want to show their true colors when they come to Lawrence next week.
KU played WVU last season in Morgantown on September 21st, 2024. If you remember, the Jayhawks looked good until a weather delay that lasted a couple hours. Once the game resumed, the Mountaineers came from behind, and scored two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter to triumph by a score of 32-28. It goes without saying that revenge will be on the mind of Jalon Daniels and his team in this one.
The KU faithful are hyped to welcome Cincinnati Football to Lawrence for the very first time, as the Booth is already sold out of tickets weeks in advance. Cincinnati has a bye next week and will not take the field again before this game. That means the Bearcats will be 2-1 heading into the competition. Their lone loss came to Nebraska by a score of 20-17 back when they kicked off their season at Arrowhead Stadium. Their two wins came over Bowling Green and Northwestern State in weeks two and three, by a combined score of 104-20.
The history between the Jayhawks and the Bearcats is shockingly slim. In fact, the only game ever played between the two programs took place two seasons ago on November 25th, 2023. In this game, Jason Bean and Devin Neal delivered in a big road victory as Kansas won by a score of 49-16. This capped their regular-season and brought their record to a refreshing 8-4 (first time with a winning record since 2008).
KU will be favored in both of these upcoming games, but that does not mean they should be taken lightly. Going 0-2 in this stretch would be absolutely devastating. This is supposed to be the "lighter" part of their schedule, and losing these home games would really put a damper on their postseason aspirations. Going 1-1 would be fine, but is still obviously not the goal for Lance Leipold if his team really wants to make some legit noise this year.
Should the Jayhawks win both of these meetings, they will head to UCF in week six with a record of 4-1. Though, the contest against UCF is on the road, Kansas could very well be favored to win. If they did, they would be 5-1 when they travel to Lubbock to take on a talented Texas Tech squad on Saturday, October 11th. For now, this Jayhawks squad just needs to take things one game at a time. Despite the week two loss at Mizzou, KU could still beautifully position themselves for the second half of the season with wins in the next few weeks.