Kansas State, KU football teams off to disappointing starts
MANHATTAN, Kan. (BVM) — Both of Kansas’ FBS programs were looking for strong starts to the 2020 college football season this past weekend. Instead, both the Kansas State Wildcats and Kansas Jayhawks were part of a disappointing day for the Big 12, which went 0-3 against teams from the Sun Belt Conference on Saturday.
Kansas State fell to Arkansas State, 35-31, in the final minute and Kansas was routed by Coastal Carolina, 38-23, while No. 23-ranked Iowa State suffered the most surprising loss, a 31-14 upset at the hands of the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns.
The Wildcats (0-1) are hoping to build off of last year’s bounce-back season in which they upset perennial conference powerhouse Oklahoma and finished 8-5 after stumbling to 5-7 two years ago. But Kansas State struggled to establish the run game against the Red Wolves (1-1), finishing with only 91 yards on the ground, and lost its first home opener since 2013 after Jonathan Adams Jr. reeled in his third touchdown pass of the game with 38 seconds left in regulation.
Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman was glad that his team had the opportunity to play its opener at home in front of the over 11,000 fans at Bill Snyder Stadium considering the circumstances of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but he was disappointed in the Wildcats’ performance against Arkansas State. The Red Wolves, who hadn’t beaten a Power 5 opponent in over a decade, were missing nine players due to COVID-19 and other injuries and entered the game as two-touchdown underdogs.
“We didn’t play particularly well,” Klieman said in the postgame press conference. “I know what the guys have gone through over the past month to five weeks trying to prepare to play, and we can’t make excuses. The guys that played, we are counting on to play, have success and make plays when they have the opportunities.”
While the Wildcats were beaten until the final minute, the Jayhawks (0-1) had to battle back to make their loss to Coastal Carolina (1-1) even somewhat respectable. With no fans in the stands at Memorial Stadium, Kansas trailed 28-3 at halftime after the Chanticleers took advantage of several Jayhawk miscues and scored 21 points off of turnovers. The Jayhawks cut the deficit to 28-17 by the start of the fourth quarter before Coastal Carolina answered with a touchdown to put the game away and beat Kansas at home for the second straight year.
“I think we came into the stadium with the right mindset,” Kansas head coach Les Miles said in the postgame press conference. “The issue being, you can’t turn the ball over. If you turn them over like that you are not going to win games. Our guys understood that. We met, as a team, right after the game. It’s not something that one guy has to fix. It’s something the team has to take ownership of and work through.”
The Jayhawks, who reported three positive COVID-19 tests last week and had numerous other players not suit up for undisclosed reasons, will be off until Sept. 26 when they open Big 12 play against Baylor. The Bears have yet to play because their opener was canceled due to Louisiana Tech’s COVID-19 outbreak. Meanwhile, the Wildcats will also have a week off before their Big 12 opener against conference favorite Oklahoma, which routed FCS Missouri State, 48-0, on Saturday.
