Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - FEELING BETTER OR WORSE? Jalon Daniels, Game Management & More Takeaways from Jayhawks' Mizzou Loss

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Kansas Jayhawks football shows promise despite Missouri setback. Can they bounce back against West Virginia?Host Derek Johnson analyzes KU's performance in their recent loss to Missouri, highlighting both encouraging signs and areas of concern. Jalon Daniels' impressive 92-yard touchdown drive and some of the defense's standout plays take center stage. Johnson dissects the Jayhawks' running game struggles, missed tackles, and Coach Lance Leipold's conservative approach. With a crucial bye week ahead, KU sets its sights on a pivotal matchup against West Virginia.Tune in for expert insights on KU's path to bowl eligibility and potential Big 12 contention. Will the Jayhawks capitalize on their upcoming opportunity?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!5-Hour ENERGYTee up that trip! Enter for a chance to win a dream golf trip for two to any golf tournament* in the USA. Visit https://5HEWIN.com for full rules and entry. No purchase necessary. Excludes the Master’s tournament. Ends October 31, 2025.The Game CapGrab your team’s classic bar or retro circle designed hat and use code LOCKEDON for an exclusive discount. Head to Because legends wear The Game. Head to https://thegamecaps.com DoorDashWith DoorDash Streaks, you save every Saturday you order — stack it up all season and you could save up to $250. Order this Saturday. Keep the streak alive. Fuel your gameday — only with DoorDash. Terms apply. Promo period through 11/18.MazdaIt’s the small details that make the big plays. And just like there’s more to every player, there’s more to a Mazda vehicle. Mazda. Move and Be Moved. SupplyHouseJoin the free TradeMaster program today and score serious perks like priority shipping, lower prices, and a dedicated support line. Visit https://www.supplyhouse.com/apply-for-trademasterto sign up for free and use promo code SHCOLLEGE5 for 5% off your first order. GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE at https://www.monarchmoney.com/lockedoncollege for 50% off your first year.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

There's actually reasons to feel better about KU long term after they're lost to Missouri. Also some reasons, though, that you might feel worse about them. We're going to break them all down. And what do we think it means for the future of the KU football season? We get to go to the game for the Missouri game and plenty more coming at you on today's Locked on Jayhawks. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. What is going on? Derek Johnson here.

This is Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day. And thank you to the everydayers catching each and every episode of the show. We are free and available anywhere you get your podcast, including on our YouTube page where you can like and subscribe. And again, thank you. The everydayers who catch all our episodes, including our recap from the KU Missouri game, which you can still check out on today's episode.

We're talking our biggest takeaways from the game, including really the positive and negatives that you could look forward to the rest of the season for this team because of the game. We'll get to our goats of the game, good and bad, and an early look at West Virginia after KU has the buy week. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase with GameTime.

So Kansas Falls to Missouri, 42 to 31, and I do think there's actually reasons you can feel better about the team for the long term, and there's reasons. the point to to feel kind of worse. I think honestly, overall for me, if I'm just adding a quick summation, I do feel, I don't, I don't know that I'll say that I feel better about where the team is at because you still did lose the game and there are some things that could bother you later in the season, but I feel good about where the team is at in kind of a weird way. Like, I almost feel validated that, yes, this is a good football team, but, you know, they're going to have to kind of figure some things out. Let's start with the positives.

take away from the game things to feel good about for the rest of the season if you're KU even after the 11 point loss because it was a game where you know you had an opportunity to win um and I think that's kind of where I went like you look at ESPN FPI for instance Missouri's now ranked 12th on ESPN FPI and I don't know where Missouri is going to finish and turn I mean when you're playing in the SEC it makes it difficult for you know could you end up being the seventh best team but that's I don't know the top 20 team in the country or something I will say Missouri does have, like they avoid Georgia on the schedule, but you're looking at it. I mean, South Carolina, Alabama at home, the Alabama one might not be as tough as you expected.

A&M, they get at home. Oklahoma, that'll be a tough one, an Auburner on the road. I don't know. There's a chance that Missouri could end up winning eight or nine games, which if you win eight or nine games, maybe even ten, you know. And if you win that many games in the SEC, you're going to be ranked really highly. You win ten, you're probably making the playoff out of the SEC. So point being, Missouri's a talented team, the top 15 there. So you look at some of the estimations on Missouri coming into the year, some of the preseason prognostication, some of the preseason magazines. And a lot of them mentioned Missouri has a lot coming back on defense. This should be one of the best defenses in the country, but they have questions about the offense. You know, what is the offense going to look like? Well, based on that game that I watched, I don't really have questions about the Missouri offense. They got some really good dudes as skill players, and I was really impressed with Bo Pribula. And, you know, Caden Green, who made the move to left tackle, he didn't allow any pressures. He was really good for them.

So I look at it and say, hey, Missouri is a good football team. I know that sounds horrible for me to admit, but like they just are a good football team. And from that perspective, if you look at it and say, okay, Kansas's body of work right now, which is still just three games, is a close loss on the road to a good football team. And you beat Fresno State, who since that point has blasted Georgia Southern and then one on the road against Oregon State this past weekend. And this Kansas team, I do think, is going to be pretty good when it's all said and done. And Missouri is as much, if not more talented than anybody else, the KU is going to play in what is going to be the hardest environment KU will have played in this season. And you still competed and hung with them.

Those are good signs moving forward. And again, if you're talking about the preseason magazines, loved Missouri's defense, but had questions about the offense, Kansas was able to score on that defense, right? So that's pretty impressive there. I also thought Jalen Daniels was good. Yes, there probably throws that Jalen wants back. There's a couple deep balls that he just missed. But I've talked about this, like deep balls are fickle.

You're going to hit some, like the Levi went once, you're going to miss others. You just want to be on the higher end of things. And obviously the interception at the end of the game, but with the score of the way it is, like you just have to kind of make things happen in those situations. If Emmanuel Henderson catches that pass, it's a different situation. He was the one who led the 92-yard touchdown drive. Again, he misses a pass. Daniel Hyshaw a bit, and Hysha probably could have caught it, but it was a bit of straight.

But then he immediately responds by throwing darts down the field to get him into the end zone, 92-yard touchdown drive. Jalen did enough for you to win this game. He was good in this game. And that makes me feel because he had a good start to the air in his first two games, but this was the toughest contest and situation. And I thought he did everything. I mean, you had no running game, too.

So it's like you were all reliant on Jalen in the passing game. And he did enough for you to have a chance in the fourth quarter to win that game. And that gives me even better feeling about the rest of the season, you know, as long as Jalen can stay healthy that you have that guy. I actually did think, like if you look at the pro football focus grades, it didn't like what KU did in pass blocking, 49 pass block, which I feel like that is low. I don't know, man. They give up two sacks to Missouri. I thought overall against a talented defensive line, like there were some plays where Kansas had a pocket, man. Jalen had time.

Jalen had days to throw. And I thought it was actually a good pass blocking game for KU. Like, again, there wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a decent game there. So I don't agree with that PFF grade, though. I will say when we get to our goats, you'll see there actually were a decent amount of highly ranked individuals for KU. It was really just a couple guys kind of taking the grade, but still a point being there. And then I will say, like, as bad as it wasn't a good defensive game, obviously, you couldn't get a stop at the end of the game. He couldn't get a stop for really a majority of the game.

But he didn't feel like you were helpless. either. Like, I guess the best way of me describing it would be, you go to like the 20-22 game against Arkansas and the Liberty Bowl. It felt like you were helpless on defense in that game. Like, you were never going to stop them. You think back to some of these games, like that Oklahoma game in 2020, that have been 22 as well. Yeah, I think that was 2020 as well. There have been some games that KU has played where, heck, the Baylor game at the end of last year, where it just felt impossible for KU to get a stop. And it felt that. way when KU was punting away at the end of the game at that point. But to that point, even with

Missouri scoring the 42, it still felt like KU made some plays. You know what I mean? It felt like they at least had some moments. And that at least is encouraging to me that it wasn't just like, like you, it took Bo Pribula having an excellent game. And even in the throws that were tighter windows, he was pinpoint accurate. You know, it took them making a couple like contested grabs on third or fourth downs. Um, the lineback record. me is legit. The defensive line had flash play. So is this going to be a top 30 defense in the country? No, it's not. But I still actually do believe this is going to be the best defense of the Lance Leipoldera. And I saw enough there that was like, okay, you have a young secondary. They're

giving up some stuff. They're making some place later in the season. I think some of that stuff's going to be even better for KU. Now, some of the things you feel worse about, I mean, in general, being 0 and 5 in rivalry games, hard not to feel worse about that. And just puts even more pressure on winning the K-State game, especially with K-State struggles early in the year. I think the game management stuff and the close game issues, like those feel like at this point, they're not getting fixed. And I was trying to think about this more of the weekend. Lance Leibold for so many years was cutting his teeth as the coach at a Division III school where

he ended up turning them into a powerhouse and made them the best team in the country. And so when you are the best team in the country, you probably do want to play a more conservative style of football because you were forcing the other school to play their own. A plus game and the other school playing their A plus game still might not be enough. So like that conservative approach, that can work if you're at the best school in the country. If you're out of Georgia, if you're, you know, if you are Nick Saban and Alabama, you still got to mix stuff in nowadays, but that can work a little bit better. It doesn't work as well when you're at Kansas because you have to win on the margins and

you're not the most talented team in the country. And so that's where it's frustrating, but also you have a coach who's in his 60s here. That approach isn't going to change. And, you know, it does feel like it limits KU's ceiling. Then again, I think about it. And I think about a guy like Kirk Farrantz at Iowa. And, you know, Iowa is as conservative as they come with their approach there. And they have some seasons every now, then with Kirk Farrants where they win 10 games.

Then again, maybe that's in the past. And maybe with how heavily analytics factors into stuff now, that's going by the wayside at this point. But it definitely felt like Missouri had the talent, you know, advantage. it felt like KU out executed them for a little bit of the game and at moments of the game and was going to find a way to win and KU still did have, you know, talent at certain positions, but it felt like Eli Drinkwitz coached the game like Lance Leipold should have coached. And I do, like, there is a part of me that wonders if Missouri's kicker isn't hurt coming into the game, would that have actually been a net positive for KU, given what Missouri ended up doing on some of those fourth down

plays? I don't know. But it's something where it's like KU should get more aggressive, but I just don't think they're going to. And that scares me for the rest of the, because it basically means that your one score record, like maybe you'll get back to being 500 in one score games the rest of the way, but like you're never going to be just an elite team in one score games playing like that, in my opinion, uh, with where Kansas is at. Uh, what if KU just sucks at running the ball? That, that's a little bit of a worry. Now, it wasn't an issue for the Fresner State game, but it also didn't feel like you just completely gashed them. I do think Kansas really misses Devon Neal and his vision. I think that's something that they're definitely missing on this year's

team. But that's going to be an interesting one of what they can do running the ball in Big 12 play. I also will say like something you might feel worse about. You were out yarded by like 300 yards. So was it actually a bit of a mirage that you were even as close as you were? I don't, I lean toward not thinking that way because again, you think of like having a defensive touchdown. That just inherently is going to take away the ability for you to get yards. If you call a more aggressive game at the end of the first half like you should have, if you, you know, catch that Emmanuel Henderson pass. If you make a stop on one of the fourth downs,

they would get like a hundred less yards. You would be getting more yards kind of in return. So there's ways that you can kind of flip around that in both directions. But I will also say this. One other worry that I think I have for this team, and this would be kind of a big picture matchup thing, I think when you look at it, because I think about this team, Missouri, a very athletic team.

I think about last year, who was the team, who were the two teams that beat the, you beat Kansas the most handedly, I guess. The two teams that beat Kansas the most handedly last year, it was TCU, which you still led that one in like the late third quarter, but TCU won that game by 11 points. Most of KU's losses were one score. And the other one you lost most handedly was Baylor.

Those were arguably the two most athletic teams you played on your schedule last year, and you lost both. Speed and athleticism. That's kind of the Achilles heel for you for Kansas. So when you look at the rest of schedule for KU, the good news is you don't play team. ECU or Baylor this season. Now, maybe you would say Texas Tech, maybe it's a UCF, but UCF might just not be very good overall to be able to take advantage of that. So I don't know that you're

going to play a team as athletic as Missouri, except maybe Texas Tech, that would be the only one you look at. Like Utah might end up being a better team than Missouri or as good as Missouri, but that's a little bit different in how they get it done. There's just more like brute force and strength and how they do it. So I do find that a little interesting as we look to future games and prognosticating for KU, are they playing a really, fast and athletic team, that might be advantage for the other team in a lot of ways. All right. Let's get to our go to the game. Next, this is Locked on Jayhawks. Today's episode of LOJ is brought to you by Supply House. When the opening whistle blows

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dot com real people real service today's episode of the show is also brought to you by game time college football's back and the tailgates the rivalries the energy in the stands just nothing like it man we're about to get in the fall weather too where oh man it just the crisp fall weather in the air but let's be real actually getting tickets can feel like a little bit more of a battle than the game itself sometimes especially you know you go in you think you got the tickets for pretty good deal and then all of a sudden you get to the checkout and it's like pop up of ticket fees and all this things that they're like wait what why do i have to pay this what is this that i'm paying for and it feels like some of that stuff can end up being like more expensive

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listen every day don't forget to make locked on college football your second listen every day as well. So Goats of the game. If you're new to the segment, we get our good goats, good iteration of the word, the newer age, the greatest of all time. Bad goats is kind of the old iteration.

You know, when I was growing up, being a goat was bad. He was like the sacrificial goat, I guess, so to speak. Okay, good goats. Let's start there for KU. Like I said, I thought Jalen Daniels had a good game. I know there were a few missed passes here,

there. But like, come on, guys aren't going to go 20 of 20 for the game. And overall, if you look at the 20 plus yards down the field, he went three for six for the game you know um most guys are completing like the good ones are completing like 40% of passes that far down the field um so i i thought it was a good game from jalen daniels he did enough for for you to win the game and again if if manual henderson

catches that pass who knows maybe they engineer a four minute touchdown drive that doesn't leave missouri enough time and kansas wins 3835 right like that would have been entirely possible so i i was impressed with with jalen in the game um overall for KU. DeShon Hanukah gets a good goat here for KU. He, a couple touchdowns. Like, it's amazing to me coming off the injury that he had,

how effective he has been already in the early part of the season. It doesn't seem like he's shaking much rough, the rust off. In fact, actually, in pro football focus, there's only one KU offensive player who's graded a 70 or above. That seems a little not right. But anyway, 88.4 is the grade for Hanukkah there on that one.

Our next good goat is Jim Zabrowski. I thought he called a really good game. I didn't necessarily love the, I think it was the first drive of the game. We get to third and one and Kansas runs a shotgun run with Hyshaw. That I wasn't really a fan of, especially when you'd have questions on the office line out to Zabrowski's credit. He didn't know at the time just how bad the rushing game was going to be for KU. But I think from then on, like, I thought it was a really good game called by Jim Zabrowski overall, you know. And if you want to argue that, oh, they should have been.

been more aggressive at the end of the half. Like, I don't think that's a Jim Zabrowski call, you know? I think the argument there for the end of half would be, I guess you could say, why are you doing an outside run with Hyshaw? But I don't know if Hyshaw just bounce that there himself or what kind of happened on that play. But, yeah, I mean, I thought overall, like Zabrowski called a really good game for KU to deal with, you know, the defensive line for Missouri and not have it just completely take over

the game in the passing game like you did in the rushing game. And you basically put a point if you're Zabrowski where. you're not getting anything from the run game. You do become more one-dimensional, and you still cause problems for Missouri to stop you, even though you were more one-dimensional. Defensively, for the good go tier, Blake Harold had the highest PFF grade for a KU defender,

77.5. He had a 75 tackle, and he wound up with four tackles for the game. Played a lot of snaps, 49 snaps for KU. They're playing a lot of these 3D tackle looks is KU. which I found interesting with D.K. McDonald, you know, get your good talent on the field. And KU certainly has a lot of talent D tackle. I also thought Tommy Dunn. I said this, I think, last week, it feels like just every week we're going to get like a different D tackle or two that kind of breaks out, so to speak, or has like a flash level performance.

And it felt like it was Harold and Tommy Dunn in this one. Dunn at a 73.6 pff grade, 81 in pass rush. He had four pressures. Really good pass rush game for Tommy Dunn. So that was good to see. And yeah, he definitely flashed in this one for KU. Leroy Harris, speaking of pass rush, Leroy Harris also had four pressures. He wound up with just a 63 PFF grade, 67 in pass rush.

I don't know how you get a 67 when you have four pressures. That seems kind of ridiculous there. But yeah, I mean, Leroy Harris definitely flashed. I think KU got a steal in that youngster who's really, really good already. Trey Lathen gets a good goat for KU. He finished with a 75.4 pff grade. He racked up double-digit tackles for the day for KU. and in a day where KU missed a lot of tackles,

he had a 13% mistackle rate, which actually is on the better side of things. So, yeah, Trey Lathen continues to really produce for KU. That was a big time addition from the portal out of West Virginia there. And then, like, overall, I was impressed with the linebackers and I was impressed with the toughness of Bengali Kamara. I'll just put Bengali Kamara minus the mistackles because I thought Bengali Kamara played a good game.

I mean, he had 74 coverage grade. on pf he had a 62 overall grade though and you're like okay he had like nine 10 tackles for the game he had a good coverage game why did he only have a 62 pff grade it's because he missed four tackles for the game so there's your reason why that was the case but you know you're also playing injured i thought bengali kamar overall was really good and then you add to it the gritting through the injury good goat for bengali kamar you just missed you know you just wish maybe one or two less miss tackles there are the bad goats of the game game management we've discussed that at ad nauseum so don't need to get much further into that.

The KU running game in general, I mean, you can put a lot of blame to, it just kind of gets divvied out here, right? The offensive line struggled in run blocking for KU. Like, this was their worst run blocking game of the season. I'd have to go back and look, but probably one of their worst run blocking games. I don't know, the last couple of years, certainly. The only player at above a 61 run block rate on PFF was Emmanuel Henderson, who continues to be a really good run blocker for a receiver.

but KU had four offensive linemen who were below a 55 in run blocking. That's not good. And at the same point in time, KU didn't do themselves any favors with, like I said earlier, I think you missed Devin Neal's vision, but also you miss Devin Neal's ability to constantly like fall forward. It felt like Missouri had that in this game. It felt like Missouri had plays where, okay, it feels like you're going to limit them to zero yards.

They pick up two or three. It feels like you're going to limit them to four yards. They pick up six. And Devin Neal was so good at doing that. finding the hidden yards for KU. And this is actually really interesting. KU averaged 1.3 offensive line rush yards. Missouri averaged 1.7. That basically means the amount of rush yards they were averaging before getting contacted. Missouri's was better than KU's, but by less than half a yard, that means that a majority of the big difference in the running

yardage overall was actually done by just the jimmies and the Joes more than the offensive linemen and the X's and O's, I guess. so to speak. So I do think that was a big advantage for Missouri in this game. And KU needs to get more out of Daniel Hyshaun and Lashon Williams. Just moving forward. They want to run the football. You know, you got to take advantage of that.

So that wasn't great for KU. Also bad, not a good game for Calvin Clements and Bryce Foster, which is unfortunate because we come into this one being like, okay, how is the offensive line going to perform for KU? What about the guys who are rotating in at guard and tackle? And it actually wound up being the guys you were counting to be pillars who had the biggest struggles because actually KU five offensive linemen who were 70 or better in pass blocking. The only two who weren't were

it were Clements and Foster and both of them rated very low on that pass block grade. It was a 9.1 pass block grade for Calvin Clements who had a 30 overall grade. Bryce Foster only a 38.7 in pass blocks. So that was really rough for KU there. They didn't necessarily expect that. Missed tackles for KU overall 24 missed tackles. for Kansas. They had 14 from the secondary. So while the young secondary is talented, not totally secure in tackling yet. And that was an issue for KU. They missed 12 total tackles in their first two games combined. The secondary missed more than that in this one game. And overall, Kansas missed double that as a team in this one game with 24. So that was not great

for KU. Obviously, it becomes harder when you're playing a team who has good skill players who make you miss, but Kansas needed a more secure tackling game in this one and they didn't get it. I'm tempted to say past defense overall and coverage, but I don't know, man, there were a few plays, at a few catches that Mizzou, that it was just a good athlete making a play or a pinpoint accurate throw from the quarterback dropping it into a bucket. It certainly wasn't a good game, but I'm not going to bad go to it either. I guess the proper thing that I would say here would say past defense specifically on third and fourth down. Did you know KU had a smaller third down and distance average and their stop rate was 22 percent.

Missouri's was at 24%. So not that much of a difference there. KU also created one more havoc play, had more tackles for loss and sacks, but on late downs, Missouri had 15 successful plays. Kansas had five. So Kansas actually was holding up on first and second down comparatively. It was those third and fourth down plays that wound up being the difference. Let's finish up early look at West Virginia.

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That is the game caps.com. The game caps.com. Grab your team's classic bar or retro circle design and use code locked on for an exclusive discount because legends wear the game. Thanks to join us on this episode of Locked on Jayhawks and making it your first listen every day. So an early look at KU's next opponent. First of all, they'll have the bye week. That's probably going to come in handy after a physical and emotional game against West Virginia.

It also is going to be helpful for the guys who are banged up. Obviously, you think of Bengali Kamara trying to play through stuff. You think about the guys who maybe didn't play or, you know, I don't know, warmed up at the very least. It's going to be very helpful for KU right before the start of Big 12 play. So West Virginia is one in one. They actually, they blew out their FCS opponent, Robert Morris, 45 to 3. They just lost to Ohio. Ohio is a pretty good team.

17 to 10, though, is the score. The interesting thing is KU plays Pitt, who is their biggest rival. And that becomes interesting because while Kansas has the buy week to move off emotionally from their rival, West Virginia does not. That makes it very difficult for them in terms of like getting up high. coming down low all those sorts of things so uh that'll be very interesting now jeheme white has been a really electric runner for them i thought i saw he got hurt in the ohio game um and so i think he's injured and i don't know if he's supposed to be out for the year um but it's i'm pretty sure it's a bad

injury so that obviously hurts them coming into it so you look at west virginia there are team under rich rod which you typically think is going to be running the football going to be running you know read option, speed option, triple option type of stuff. So far this year, they are 126th in total EPA passing, but they're 36th in rushing. So it's going to be key for KU to stop the run. Defensively, West Virginia has been really good to start this year, though. They're top 10 in EPA against the past, top 30 against the run. Again, a little bit of a schedule help for those two things.

We'll learn more in the Pittsburgh game. But point being, this is a game that is a winnable one for KU. And, you know, you need to bounce back after the Missouri game, right? If you want to be back to being a bowl team, if you want to be a team, I mean, this is a new season now, right? You're starting Big 12 play. You want to contend for the Big 12. You win a game at home like this against West Virginia.

But it's not going to be easy because we've seen it. Last year, KU loses to West Virginia. A couple years ago, you win, but it's a very close game in Morgantown. And so that's going to be the nature of the beast in the Big 12. You're going to have to win close games. You're going to have to figure out winning those close games. Are they going to be able to do it against West Virginia in Lawrence in a couple weeks? That'll do it for this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks.

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