LAWRENCE, Kan. — In the wake of its exhilarating 55-42 overtime win at West Virginia last week, Kansas football is 2-0 for the first time since 2011 and leads the nation in scoring (55.5) points a game.
Quarterback Jalon Daniels stood No. 3 on the “Week 2 Heisman Hype” list of my estimable friend Dennis Dodd, the national college football writer for CBS Sports. And second-year coach Lance Leipold is the object of speculation to be among the potential targets of Nebraska for its suddenly vacant job.
We’ll get back to the considerable matter of sustaining this trend after a decade-plus of alternately dormant and turbulent times in the program.
But at least right here, right now, entering its game at Houston (1-1) on Saturday, KU football somehow has morphed from finding a reason to believe to needing to reel in any inclination toward complacency.
“It’s a nice thing to have it reversed,” sixth-year senior defensive lineman Sam Burt said with a laugh on Wednesday. “It’s a great thing, I’ll say that.”
Especially since Burt knows this: In the never-ending quest to improve daily, Leipold and his staff will demand more now. And Burt says it’s “super-vital” they don’t let up.
In fact, strength and conditioning coach Matt Gildersleeve got right to it addressing the team early in the week:
Are you going to say “we’ve got it” and set your alarm clock later since beating West Virginia? Will you set it the same time as last week, figuring “what we did last week will be good enough?” Or did you set it 15 minutes earlier now and figure, “what we did last week wasn’t good enough, and it ain’t going to beat Houston.”
From the reactions he saw, Gildersleeve reckoned a few recognized themselves and thought, “Whoa, I did set my alarm later.”
Not anymore, he expects.
That very expectation helps tell the story of how far KU has come since Leipold and his staff took over after the Les Miles fiasco came to a merciful end 18 months ago.
Finally, with then-new athletic director Travis Goff, Kansas got it right.
That also helps explain why we can figure the Jayhawks will continue to improve even if that doesn’t exactly assure a long winning streak upcoming in the gnarly Big 12 for a program still in its embryonic phase.
The change, Burt said, has been akin to “rewiring our brain.”
“There’s no gray; it’s all black and white, all pointed towards winning,” Burt said, later adding, “All the small details, all the small things, matter. And all of those lead up to victories.
