I know, I've had two weeks to create a Kansas preview, and it's now Thursday of week 2 and I'm just now getting around to it. Sorry, been a little busy guys, damned real world. I was going to do a preview of our offense against the Kansas defense, but it basically went "Our cheerleaders could score on Kansas, at will, for 4 quarters". So I turned to our defensive side of the ball, and decided to do a little digging. As it turns out, Kansas can run the ball a bit, and we have not proven we can stop the run, so I figured we'd take a look at that.
Kansas currently has the second best rushing attack in the conference, behind Missouri, averaging 236 yards a game on the ground. Their leading rusher, James Sims, is averaging 84 yards a game. That friends, is the good news for Kansas. What's the bad news, you ask? Well, for one, their offense may never actually see the ball, as their defense may never get off the field.
But, let's click the jump, and get deeper into this.
Still with me? Good. Now then, while Kansas has averaged 200 plus yards a game on the ground, they did most of their work against McNeese State and Northern Illinois, rushing for 301 and 253 respectively. When they faced off against Georgia Tech (a game I hope to see emulated Saturday), the Jayhawks only managed to rush 151 yards, across 5 backs, with no single player reaching the century mark. By comparison (and to let you know just how horrible the Kansas defense is), the Ramblin' Wreck had two players over 100, and 5 players over 60 yards, on their way to 604 rushing yards (an NCAA record). Later against Texas Tech, KU did get back over 200 yards rushing for the game, but no one has ever accused Tech of having a stout defense.So then, what do all these numbers mean for us? Well, statistically we have, to put it lightly, a shit defense. We give up an average of 428 yards per game and 27 points, good enough for 104th total defense. But, stats are like assholes, everyone has one, most don't look pretty (outside of porn, that is). The problem with looking at stats like those are that we have had huge leads most of the time this season, other teams are throwing like crazy, and we play backups for a chunk of the game. We will be the second best defense Kansas has seen this year (to GTech), and Tech was able to crush Kansas.
Another thing that plays directly to our favor is the fact that we have a top 25 pass defense, and Kansas can't pass well. We should, in all reality, be able to have single coverage and stuff eight of 9 in the box and just hammer the KU line all day. I'm looking for big things from the defense Saturday, really big. I will be pissed if we give up more than 300 yards the whole game. That's including garbage time. I'm hoping to see some video game numbers on both sides of the ball.
I'll leave you with this. I won't be able to attend Saturday's game, I have some family business to attend to (and to be fair to my family, they planned it knowing how bad KU is), and so I won't actually see the game, or hear it, I'll simply get texts from ESPN ever time we score. And I am in no way worried. I expect it will be 45-7 by the half (though I'm hoping we break 50), on our way to a 66-14 W.
Go Pokes