Before disaster hit, KU had its moments
TAMPA, Fla. | It’s all still out there, a berth in a BCS bowl game, an opportunity to crack the top 10 again, a shot at proving that last season was no fluke.
Yeah, Missouri fans are giggling today. Mark Mangino and his Kansas Jayhawks blew a 17-point lead, collapsed in the third quarter and threw away a road victory over a ranked team by tossing a last-minute interception with the score tied.
Kansas State fans are chuckling, too. The only thing better than Wildcat elation is Jayhawk suffering, and Kansas fans are surely suffering this weekend trying to figure how and why the Hawks lost 37-34 Friday night to the South Florida Bulls.
Gary Pinkel, Ron Prince and the rest of the Big 12 coaches, well, they’re not laughing. Not at these Jayhawks, 2-1.
Pinkel, Prince, Stoops, Brown, Leach and all the other coaches left on Kansas’ schedule saw what Jim Leavitt saw from the South Florida sideline.
“We beat a very, very good football team tonight,” Leavitt said. “They are an outstanding team, and their quarterback is as good as I’ve seen. They’re just a very disciplined football team.”
That’s what I saw, especially in the first half when the Jayhawks dominated and charged to a 20-3 lead.
No doubt, football is a game of two halves, a 60-minute test of wills. Kansas crashed for 15 minutes, the entire third quarter. South Florida scored 17 of its 31 consecutive points in the third, and used the quarter to erase KU’s advantage and build a 34-20 edge with a minute gone in the fourth quarter.
I was as impressed by Kansas’ recovery as its quick start. Somehow, the Jayhawks rediscovered their composure, intensity and precision, rallying for two straight scores and a 34-34 tie with 5 minutes, 32 seconds to play.
Angus Quigley rumbled 14 yards into the end zone with Todd Reesing’s third and final touchdown pass of the evening. At that point, I knew the Kansas defense would deliver one more stop, Reesing would deliver a few more big plays, and the Jayhawks would dance off the field with a scintillating victory.
Sure enough, the Kansas defense held, forcing the Bulls to punt, turning the ball over to Reesing and one of the most explosive receiving corps in the nation. And sure enough, Reesing marched the Jayhawks from their 7 to first and 10 at the Kansas 40 with 41 seconds to play.
With two timeouts and a sizzling quarterback, the Jayhawks were 30 yards from reasonable field-goal range, 30 yards from legitimizing their tissue-soft nonconference schedule, 30 yards from potentially moving into the AP top 10.
Damn it. Disaster struck.
South Florida safety Nate Allen cut underneath Raymond Brown’s skinny post and picked off Reesing’s floating, first-down pass. Allen dashed 40 yards the other direction, setting up South Florida at the Kansas 27.
Leavitt called for one running play to move the ball into the center of the field, drained the clock to 2 seconds, called timeout and then waved unproven freshman kicker Maikon Bonani onto the field to whack a 43-yarder through the uprights. The ball barely slipped inside the right upright.
So am I now supposed to believe the Jayhawks are frauds?
No way. This was a terrific game between two programs on the rise.
I know the heavyweights clash tonight in Los Angeles — Ohio State vs. Southern Cal. I highly doubt they’ll match the slugfest staged by these two lightweights inside Raymond James Stadium.
Call it “The Thrilla with No Vanilla,” another early-season reminder why college football is superior to college basketball and every other team sport. The 13th-ranked Jayhawks and the 19th-ranked Bulls both recovered from savage beatdowns before going toe-to-toe in the final 5 minutes for the right to keep their BCS bowl hopes alive.
To reach Jason Whitlock, call 816-234-4869 or send e-mail to jwhitlock@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.
