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Jayhawks turn the tables against Huskers

Kansas sets more school records in weekend rout of once-dominant Nebraska

By Asher Fusco

Monday, November 5, 2007

The Nebraska Cornhuskers visited the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday, and the game was an absolute blowout. There’s nothing unusual about that statement.

What was strange about Saturday’s game was that the Jayhawks were the ones doing the dominating.

For the better part of the last half-century, Nebraska pushed Kansas around, winning 37 of the teams’ last 38 match-ups. Saturday, the No. 5 Jayhawks played the role of Big 12 bully, turning the tables and routing the Cornhuskers, 76-39.

With the victory, Kansas moved into fifth in The Associated Press and Coaches’ polls and fourth in the BCS standings while securing its first ever 5-0 start in conference play and first 9-0 start since 1908. The Jayhawks’ 76 points set a school record for the most scored in a conference game and easily surpassed the team’s previous high of 40 points against Nebraska (4-6, 1-5 Big 12). Kansas actually passed that mark by halftime, scoring 48 points before the end of the second quarter.

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“Nebraska has a good tradition, and they always play hard,” senior wide receiver Marcus Henry said. “So to look up and see that score on the scoreboard was pretty amazing.”

The Jayhawk offense looked impressive the entire game, but the defense suffered through several rough stretches early in the game. Nebraska, which had relied on its strong running game all season, threw Kansas a change-up by going to the air early and often. In the first half alone, Nebraska junior quarterback Joe Ganz threw for 266 yards and two touchdowns, leading two solid scoring drives in the first 12 minutes of play.

“They threw the ball a lot,” Kansas coach Mark Mangino said. “We did not anticipate them throwing the ball as much as they did because they had not done that all year. We were caught a little bit off-guard.”

By the opening minutes of the second quarter, it was clear that high-powered offense would be the theme of Saturday’s game. The teams combined for 35 points in the first quarter, and neither showed any sign of slowing down early in the second quarter. Every time Kansas looked primed to pull away and stretch its lead, Nebraska used its most potent weapon, senior wide receiver Maurice Purify, to crawl back into the game.

Trailing 28-14 early in the second quarter, Ganz connected with Purify, who was streaking past Kansas junior cornerback Kendrick Harper, for a 60-yard gain down the middle of the field. After the long pass, the Kansas coaches adjusted the defensive secondary to keep junior cornerback Aqib Talib on Purify at all times. The challenging match-up did not faze Purify. Two plays after the 60-yard pass, Ganz lofted the ball into the air to Purify in the corner of the end zone. Purify, at 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, muscled his way through Talib and to the ball to put six points on the scoreboard. With 9:44 to play in the first half, Nebraska and Kansas were tangled in a 28-21 shootout.

From that point on, Kansas patched up its imperfections and performed like the undefeated powerhouse the way it has all season.

Sophomore quarterback Todd Reesing led the Jayhawks on a four-play, 61-yard drive that lasted only one minute and seven seconds to extend his team’s lead to 14 points. The defense stiffened and allowed just 15 yards on the next two Nebraska drives combined and held the team dormant long enough for the offense to score three more touchdowns before halftime.

After yielding four touchdowns on the Cornhuskers’ first nine drives, the Jayhawk defense made adjustments in the third quarter, intercepting three passes and recovering a fumble. Sophomore safeties Darrell Stuckey and Justin Thornton had momentum-killing interceptions in the second half that set the offense up with prime field position, and Nebraska scored only one touchdown in the game’s final 25 minutes. By that time, the reserves were on the field, and the game was all but over.

“We went right back to our fundamentals and focused on our responsibilities,” junior linebacker Mike Rivera said. “We tried to keep it simple, just reading our progressions and dropping into our spots. We came in at halftime and talked about that and got some things corrected.”

Fortunately for the Jayhawk defense, the offense kept the team in the game during the first half by scoring three first quarter touchdowns and 48 first-half points. The Nebraska defense, which entered Saturday as the nation’s worst run-stopping unit, stood helpless against an energetic and creative Kansas offense. Kansas gained 23 yards on an end-around run by Henry and 11 yards on a flea-flicker pass to freshman wide receiver Dezmon Briscoe.

Reesing executed offensive coordinator Ed Warinner’s creative schemes with near perfection Saturday and finished with the most impressive statistical line of his career. The quarterback recorded 354 yards on 30-of-41 passing and set a new Kansas single-game record with six touchdown passes. Briscoe caught three touchdowns, and Henry gained 101 yards on six receptions.

“We have a lot of different things we can do on offense,” Reesing said. “We’re not really limited by one thing so, depending on what the defense is going to do, we’re going to pull out whatever we have to. They were moving the ball and we needed to counteract that and move the ball too.”

Using a mix of daring deep passes and standard off-tackle runs, the Jayhawks engineered impressive drives throughout the game and put together one of the finest offensive performances in the program’s history. The Jayhawks scored the third most points in a single game in school history, and at one point, they scored touchdowns on 10 consecutive drives.

“We just said, ‘Let’s keep running the offense; let’s just see if we can keep rolling with our offense and run our system and let the kids continue to make plays,’” Mangino said. “I didn’t think we’d score 76 points, but by the time we got to the middle of the third quarter, I knew we were going to score a lot of points.”

The Jayhawk run game also showed little room for improvement, topping 200 rushing yards for the third time in the last four games. Senior running back Brandon McAnderson piled up 119 yards and four touchdowns and sophomore running back Jake Sharp added 44 yards and a touchdown. Most importantly, the Kansas offense did not turn the ball over, forcing Nebraska to start drives from an average position of its own 27-yard line.

“We aren’t beating ourselves,” McAnderson said. “In the past, it had been one of our huge problems. This year we have a different mentality, and we’re more mature.”

Nebraska entered the game in a tailspin and left Lawrence still spinning. The Cornhuskers extended their losing streak to five games and fell into a tie for last place in the Big 12 North standings. To add insult to injury, Kansas’ 76-point outburst marked the most points Nebraska has ever allowed in a single game.

Despite Nebraska’s status as one of the most disappointing teams in the nation, Kansas’ decisive victory was impressive because the team did exactly what it needed to do: stay undefeated and make a positive impression on pollsters and media around the nation.

A decade ago, Nebraska was the team routinely scoring more than 50 points and rolling to 9-0 starts. In 2007, Kansas is that team.

—Edited by Chris Beattie

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