🏈 Inside Kansas Football: Week 2

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Week 2 of the 2022 football season will send the Kansas Jayhawks to Morgantown, W.Va., to face West Virginia in the Big 12 Conference opener for both programs. KU will make its longest conference trip on Saturday, September 10, for a 5 p.m. CT kickoff.

Saturday’s game will be the 12th all-time meeting between Kansas and West Virginia in the gridiron, including the seventh in Morgantown. The Jayhawks are seeking its first-ever victory over the Mountaineers at Milan Puskar Stadium.

Quotable #1

"There’s more to come. The challenges are going to increase in a lot of different ways, by leaps and bounds very quickly. We have to maintain that mindset as we go through, because this is a challenging schedule that we have to be ready for each and every week."

Coach Lance Leipold

Big 12 Player of the Week – full release
Following a stellar Jayhawk debut, redshirt junior defensive end Lonnie Phelps Jr. was named the Big 12 Conference Defensive Player of the Week on Monday. Phelps, a transfer from the University of Miami (OH), finished with 7 tackles, 3.0 sacks and 4.0 tackles-for-loss in his first game at KU, marking the most sacks by a Jayhawk since 2016 and most tackles for loss by a Jayhawk since 2017.

Week 1 Recap – full release
An efficient night, highlighted by junior quarterback Jalon Daniels and sophomore running back Devin Neal, headlined Kansas’ 56-10 victory over Tennessee Tech to open the 2022 season at David Booth Kansas Memorial Season on Friday, Sept. 2. A crowd of 34,902 saw Kansas score touchdowns on four of its first five drives of the game as the Jayhawks built a 35-3 halftime advantage.

Kansas scored six rushing touchdowns in the win over Tennessee Tech with five different players reaching the end zone. Scoring rushing touchdowns for the Jayhawks were Devin Neal, Daniel Hishaw, Sevion Morrison, Jalon Daniels and Jason Bean in what was the first time since at least 1996 that KU had five or more players with a rushing touchdown in the same game.

Quotable #2
“One person on defense has to set the tone and then we’re all clicking together. We all put in a lot of effort, extra workouts, the overtime we were putting in by ourselves this offseason. We were all making the optional stuff mandatory for ourselves and it’s all going to pay off.” – Lonnie Phelps

Game Preview
Kansas and West Virginia will play the first Big 12 Conference game of the season on Saturday when the Jayhawks visit Morgantown, W.Va for a 5 p.m. CT kickoff on Big 12 NOW on ESPN+. KU and WVU matched up in the season finale of the 2021 season, when the Mountaineers narrowly edged the Jayhawks 34-28. Saturday’s matchup will be a rare back-to-back conference game between the two schools.

Game Notes | Kansas Game Preview

West Virginia enters the contest 0-1 following a 38-31 defeat against Pitt on Sept. 1, in the return of the Backyard Brawl. The Mountaineers had 404 yards of total offense, averaging 5.5 yards per play in the season opener, a game in which it twice in the fourth quarter. WVU is led by Neal Brown, who is 17-19 in his three-plus years in Morgantown, and 52-35 overall as a head coach.

Packed the Booth

Contract Extension – full release
Demonstrating an elevated commitment to the future of Kansas Football, Director of Athletics Travis Goff announced Thursday that head coach Lance Leipold has signed a one-year contract extension with the Jayhawks. Leipold originally signed a six-year contract with the Jayhawks through the 2026 season. The one-year extension now takes Leipold through the 2027 season and gets the contract back to the original length of six years.

Quotable #3
“Continuity and stability is something we’ve talked about and this extension will give us something to add to that. When you are looking at what this program has gone through, those are good signs to the locker room, recruiting, fan base, anyone who is affiliated with this or could be at some time in their life. I think this is all good.” – Coach Lance Leipold

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kansas Football (@kufootball)

Did You Know?
Kansas was one of two teams in the nation to average more than 10 yards per play during the opening weekend of college football, with Air Force being the other. The Jayhawks had 502 yards of total offense on 49 plays, good for 10.2 yards per play. The 10.2 yards per play were the most by a KU team since at least 1995, with the previous high of yards per play being 8.6 against Colorado on Oct. 11, 2003. KU had 205 yards passing and 297 yards on the ground while recording 21 first downs.

@ku_football got it off the muscle💪 #fyp #gameone #collegefootball #flicks ♬ original sound – KU Football

Get Your Tickets
The Jayhawks next home game will be on Saturday, September 24, against ACC foe Duke in the final non-conference contest of the season. Kansas will then host Big 12 opponents Iowa State, TCU, Oklahoma State and Texas at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Single-game tickets can be purchased here, while season tickets are available and start as low as $185.

Up Next
Kansas plays its second consecutive road game on Saturday, September 17, with a trip to TDECU Stadium to face future Big 12 Conference foe Houston. That game will kick off at 3 p.m. CT and be the Jayhawks first nationally televised contest of the season, airing on ESPNU.

Powered by WMT Digital