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Season’s twists and turns lead to Senior Day

Photo by Weston White

By Jayson Jenks

Friday, November 13, 2009

Somewhere in Kansas’ football facility near Memorial Stadium — on a nondescript white board — there’s a quote written by linebackers coach Bill Miller.

Sometimes it takes hundreds of words to summarize the ups and downs of a football season. Other times, a simple sentence seems to do the job. He wrote, “Nothing is sadder than what could have been.”

Miller’s quote strikes the heart of Kansas football, offering a perfect description of a rather surprising — and admittedly disappointing — season to this point.

The Jayhawks entered this year with hopes of winning the Big 12 North. And with a talented corps of returning senior starters that goal certainly seemed obtainable.

Instead, Kansas’ players enter Senior Day against Nebraska tomorrow with a four-game losing streak clinging to their backs.

But Saturday also marks the final time Kansas’ highly productive — and highly successful — senior class will suit up inside Memorial Stadium.

“We felt like this was one of our more talented teams we’ve had overall,” senior linebacker Angus Quigley said. “It’s the most speed we’ve had on defense. We felt like our offense was potent. That was our goal all season. That’s what we felt like we were capable of doing.”

“Things just don’t always work out like you want them to. We’ve had some rough stretches, and we’re still in one.”

Before the season, the general consensus was that the game against Nebraska would likely decide the winner of the Big 12 North.

For Nebraska, the game still carries plenty of weight in that category. For Kansas, the game is simply another crack at stopping the bleeding.

“It’s tough because nobody wants to go out their senior year losing four in a row,” Quigley said. “Losing the first one was bad. But four? We don’t even know what to say.”

Kansas’ seniors joined the team at a time when the football program was still mostly considered an afterthought in the conference’s big picture.

The Jayhawks missed a bowl game with a 6-6 record in 2006 — what was then the first or second season for Kansas’ seniors.

But then the 2007 season rolled around and many of the current seniors played a significant role in lifting the program to its first BCS bowl game.

Two years later, the names of those seniors now fill the school’s record books.

“We’ve had so much success here,” senior safety Darrell Stuckey said. “We’ve literally almost broken every KU record in our era. We can’t sit here and think this is a fairy tale or a fantasy. If it was a fairy tale, we would have won all four of those last games.”

Now, rather than zeroing in on the North title this Saturday, Kansas’ attention will instead be on earning one more victory in order to become eligible for a bowl game.

It certainly has been a drastic transformation.

Kansas won its first five games, and the offense piled up big numbers. But Kansas dropped a surprising game at Colorado on Oct. 17 before squandering two solid defensive efforts against Big 12 South tops dogs Oklahoma and Texas Tech.

Then came the big surprise.

Kansas traveled to Kansas State with the goal of flipping this season’s script Saturday. Instead, the Jayhawks stumbled in a 17-10 loss against their in-state rivals.

“It really hit us last week,” Quigley said. “We lost a couple on the road and those were tough. But going down to your in-state rival that’s right up the road— that really hurt. We pride ourselves on at least beating our rivals.”

Quigley’s sentiment bounced around all corners at Kansas’ weekly media gathering, leaving a generally accepted impression:

The Jayhawks have been disappointed with their season and with losses to Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. But the loss to Kansas State stung deeper than the others.

“Any time that you lose more than just a couple games and then you lose to a rival you know you should have won,” Stuckey said, “the gate doesn’t look any shorter to get over… You start to realize you’re finding more ways to lose than you are to win. And it hurts.”

Yet the Jayhawks have been down this road before.

Kansas dropped four of five games toward the end of last year, falling to a 6-5 record before the season finale against No. 13 Missouri.

Coach Mark Mangino’s teams have always prided themselves on their resiliency and their ability to remain levelheaded regardless of the situation during the season.

The Jayhawks will have to do so again in their final three games this year.

“We prepare our kids for those types of things so that they are emotionally prepared to deal with both adversity and success,” Mangino said. “Both can be difficult. And we have faced both during our tenure here.”

— Edited by Jacob Muselmann

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