Quarterback Todd Reesing flipped a pass to running back Jake Sharp, who lunged into the end zone for a seven yard touchdown to give Kansas an early lead.

The score appeared to trigger a Kansas offense that struggled early to move the ball against Duke’s defense. Then, junior Jacob Branstetter’s extra point attempt was blocked.

Photo Gallery

Kansas Football vs. Duke

A photo gallery of Kansas' 44-16 win against the Duke Blue Devils Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium.

So it went Saturday morning for Kansas. The Jayhawks played sloppy at times and never thoroughly dominated a Duke team that lost its season opener to an FCS team in Richmond.

Still, and most importantly, Kansas left Memorial Stadium with a 44-16 victory.

“There’s a lot of stuff we can learn from this but for the most part we did what we had to,” Reesing said. “It was a home game we were expected to win and we took care of business.”

It was supposed to be a relatively easy Saturday morning for Kansas. Turns out, Duke made it more difficult than expected — at least early on.

After Kansas’ opening drive of the game stalled, Duke capitalized. And the Blue Devils do so in a hurry.

Duke marched 87 yards in two plays before quarterback Thaddeus Lewis’ 21-yard touchdown run.

The drive took 35 seconds.

“That’s never something you want,” junior linebacker Drew Dudley said.

Facing a Duke defense that showed multiple schemes, Kansas’ offense responded to score the next 27 points.

Without senior running back Jake Sharp, who played sparingly because of an undisclosed injury sustained during practice, Reesing shouldered much of the offensive workload.

He completed 28-of-41 attempts for 338 yards and three touchdowns.

“I feel a lot better this week than last week,” Reesing said.” I think we got a lot of things corrected in the pass game. I never had a doubt that our pass game was anything to be worried about, but I think we did a lot better job getting open and getting the ball to the right guys.”

After the game, though, Kansas’ offensive players said that the unit still made too many mistakes, most notably two dropped passes that would have resulted in touchdowns.

“I think we had a chance for a lot more yards,” Reesing said.

Defensively, Kansas held a lesser Duke team in check. True, the Blue Devils finished with 394 offensive yards. But that number is misleading. Many of those yards occurred late when Kansas controlled the game.

Other than Duke’s two touchdown drives, Mangino said the defense played solid.

“The rest of the day,” Mangino said, “the defense played very well except for those two situations."