Last week, Kansas fans would not have been wrong if they had replayed the highlights of that 42-31 Border Showdown loss to Missouri. But now the slate can finally be wiped clean as Big 12 play is back for a Kansas side looking to improve on its 4-5 mark from last season. Now, before Jayhawk supporters begin to map out the possible routes to a Big 12 Title game, it is crucial that the team has used its bye week between Missouri and West Virginia to fine-tune before conference play kicks off.
Early Monday afternoon, Kansas head coach Lance Leipold spoke with the media over the preparations the team had made since last week.
“I thought they handled it [the bye week] well. It's always slightly different when you can tell that there's not a game coming up, so to speak. But all in all, we challenged the guys again, the attitudes have been good, the work ethic's been good, and I think we got a lot accomplished. We tried to, take some reps off a few guys, and try to work getting healthy, but also addressing things that we need to get better at.”
Without sounding cynical, this is probably typical coach talk, whether Leipold didn’t want to reveal too much, or genuinely did mean what he said, that quote above will be echoed by a number of teams during their off weeks this season.
One nice touch was when Leipold interrupted the next question to throw in this.
“I'm sorry, last thing. We did get a chance to scrimmage some of our young guys and get a chance for them to play some live football again.”
Later, Leipold followed up on what he wanted to see improved from Missouri.
"Being a physical and fundamental team that's gonna tackle well and again, play physical up front. Again, I still think our defensive front, for the most part, has been active in physical in doing things. But offensively, we've got to be consistent up front and doing those things to give us the true balance that we need to be the type of offense we like to be. Defensively, we've shown flashes of being a really good defense, being multiple and athletic and doing those things, again, [after] playing a really good opponent, some of that did not reach the standards we need to play winning football."
The most important thing fans want to see is winning football, especially after a first loss of the season, which brought in some real questions over Leipold’s game management, but so far, with West Virginia slowly looming, fans can feel confident that the bye week was taken well.
The Mountaineers bring an enticing prospect to the table. Under the returning Rich Rodriguez, West Virginia has gotten off to a steady 2-1 mark, and both sides will be looking for a chance to ease into conference play with a 1-0 record under their belt.