Hawk Talk...The Morning After Edition(WK9)

A look at news and notes about Jayhawks and upcoming opponents...

• Game Recap from KU athletics
• Complete Game Book...Everything you could ever want to know.
• Game Box Score.
• Game Notes.
• KC Star recap.
• Postgame Quotes...and some highlights.

 Kansas Head Coach Mark Mangino

 On looking to the future after two losses:

“Here’s the reality of it: we got a good old fashioned butt-whooping today, and we know that.  It happens to everybody from time-to-time in college football.  You just get a day where the snowball starts rolling downhill, and it gets bigger and bigger and before you know it, you have no chance to stop it and it runs you over.  That’s what happened to us today.  In our locker room there is no panic or feeling bad.  Nobody’s taking that route.  We don’t do that here.  This program has had to fight through losses before and tough times before and we will continue to do that.  There is no doubt in my mind our team will be ready to play next week.  I’m not concerned about that.”

 Junior Safety Darrell Stuckey

 On the mood in the lockerroom:

“It was disappointment.  We know that we went out there and didn’t do anything right. It’s been a long time since we’ve been beat like that. I think it’s a learning experience. Anytime you go out there and you fall so hard on your face, you really have to see what happens and learn from this. As a team, we have to pull together and stay strong. Anytime you have so many things go wrong, you have to become a better player. You have to become humble and see that maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was. We have to come together.”

 Junior Running Back Jake Sharp

 On averaging six yards per carry:

“Our offensive line was making creases. I was hitting those creases and making yards. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out for us in the big picture.”

 Senior Quarterback Todd Reesing

 On the pressure of the Texas Tech defense forcing his mistakes:

“I am not sure it was the pressure they were putting on me. The first one was just a bad throw. Dexton (Fields) was open and I was throwing on the run and just couldn’t get a good ball out there to him. The next one I was just unsure of what to do with the ball and the guy made a good play. The last one was the same thing, the guy just made a good play. I’ve never had that happen to me in a lot of years of football to have back-to-back mistakes like that. Sometimes when things go bad they can get real bad. You can’t really sugarcoat that. We just didn’t play very well in the second half. We started off not too bad on offense, we were moving the ball. Then they kept scoring and we couldn’t respond. And then we started to fall apart in the second half.”

 On the difficulty of taking such a lopsided loss:

“It is hard.  Since I have been here, the few snaps that I had my freshman year and all of last year we have never been beat that bad. So you have three years of football and like coach said we have never had a butt-whooping like that. It is tough, but the reality is that it happens. You can’t expect to play for three or four years and expect to not get your butt whooped every now and then. You have to learn from it.  We are still tied for first in the Big 12 North with a lot of football to play. We just have to bounce back and for how bad we played hopefully we got a lot of mistakes out of the way today.”

 My Thoughts...Well what can you really say this was a tough loss and a very dissapointing loss.  Tech outplayed us in every phase of the game.  Our defense couldn't compete with the potent Tech offense and our offense failed to get any traction after the first few drives of the game. 

 Things can go in a good direction from here or a very bad direction.  Next week will be a very telling game for this team and how they will finish out the year.  Kansas must come out and control the game against Kansas State and regain the confidence they have certainly lost these past two weeks. 

Looking at the post game press conference quotes, I do like the positive attitude most of these guys seem to have.  They lost they understand it and they are ready to turn the page and make it right.  Todd Reesing took full responsibility for his mistakes and that is big as well.

Overall take it for what it's worth Tech has been a team building their program for a while now, Kansas is new on the scene and still needs some time to get the athletes and experience in place to be a consistent team and one that wins the big games. 

Now I turn the page...the Sunflower showdown awaits and lets right the ship and get a big win against our instate rival.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!!