The Kansas Jayhawks' football season has not gone quite to plan despite an early season which saw momentum swing in the favor of Kansas after a strong 3-1 start, Kansas has responded with a 1-3 stretch, which has included a 37-34 loss to the No. 17 Cincinnati Bearcats, a grinding 20-17 win over the UCF Golden Knights before back-to-back 42-17 losses to the No. 13 Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Kansas State Wildcats. That has since seen the momentum go out of favor for Lance Leipold’s team.
As it stands, Kansas sits with a 4-4 record this season, which has also seen the Jayhawks fall to a 2-3 Big 12 mark.
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach have spent the season posting weekly bowl projections, which have seen the Jayhawks' fortune change drastically.
When the pair last combined their projections, Kansas was tabbed for the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, with both Bonagura and Schlabach pitting Kansas against Louisiana Tech.
Since the inception of the bowl, Kansas has not once featured in it. However, the Bulldogs and the Jayhawks have a weirdly broad history, which has seen the two square off four times between 1987-2013.
Kansas has taken three of the four matchups, with Louisiana Tech’s only win in 1987, a 16-11 dogfight. In the following three matchups, Kansas has been able to handle Tech with relative ease, including a 34-14 win in 2005, a 29-0 win in 2008, and a tight 13-10 win in 2013.
Obviously, these really do not foretell the outcome if these two were to meet today, with the matchups being so inconsistently spread apart and the series stopping in 2013.
The Bulldogs are a member of Conference USA and hold a firm 4-3 record, including a 2-2 mark in conference play.
For Kansas, its next two games could be bowl-defining. A 1-7 Oklahoma State Cowboy team comes to David Booth Kansas Memorial, before the Jayhawks will have to travel to Tucson, Arizona, to take on the 4-3 Arizona Wildcats. Both the Cowboys and the Wildcats will give Kansas the easiest benchmarks as Iowa State and Utah await Leipold at the end of the season.
Kickoff is set for 2:30 p.m. CT with streaming available on ESPN 2.
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