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KU vs. Sam Houston State

A sellout Memorial Stadium crowd showed up Saturday night expecting to see the 19th-ranked Kansas University football team roll over an outmanned Sam Houston State team.

And the 51,767 fans got what they wanted : kind of.

Despite a potent offensive showing - Kansas finished with 528 offensive yards and finished with its second-highest point total of the season in a 38-14 victory - the Jayhawks' secondary had its worst outing of the season, allowing a season-worst 340 yards and earning the ire of coach Mark Mangino in the minutes after the team's final tune-up before conference play begins.

"We cannot cut people loose," Mangino said of the occasions when Kansas defensive backs got beaten deep. "We can't get beat on a vertical (route) every time someone runs a vertical. In the first two series of the game, (their No. 1 receiver) ran verticals and ran right by the corner. I'd say a couple of those plays, (KU associate athletic director) Larry Keating and I could have gotten underneath the coverage before the corner did."

Without starting cornerback Kendrick Harper, who hasn't played since leaving the team's game against Louisiana Tech on a stretcher, a number of players cycled through the position Saturday attempting to fill the void.

The result was a unit that allowed the Bearkats - an NCAA Football Championship Subdivision team that had played just once this season going into its game against Kansas - to keep things relatively close until late in the third quarter.

Rhett Bomar, the shunned former Oklahoma quarterback who was dismissed from the team after he was paid for work not completed at a Norman, Okla., car dealership, spent a good portion of the evening carving through the Jayhawks' secondary on his way to 340 passing yards and one touchdown (he also rushed for another score).

The senior did his best to keep things close, but made a handful of mistakes - namely, three interceptions - that allowed Kansas to remain in control throughout.

"Having young corners out there doesn't change too much," Kansas safety Darrell Stuckey said. "They're very effective players. They're more than capable of doing it. It's just all about getting their confidence up and their swagger going."

And speaking of swagger, Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing managed to put a little spice into an otherwise bland Saturday evening, turning in the game's most impressive play late in the second quarter.

After scrambling out of the pocket, avoiding multiple defenders in the process, he unloaded a 57-yard bomb that landed in the hands of receiver Dezmon Briscoe for a touchdown that put Kansas up 21-7 at intermission.

There were times, however, that Reesing might have tried to do too much.

On multiple occasions, Reesing needlessly flushed the pocket in an effort to get things going offensively, attempting to make plays with his feet instead of his arm.

"Obviously, somewhere, somebody told him he needs to be the whole show," Mangino said. "He doesn't. There's a good supporting cast there, and he's putting a lot pressure on himself to make too many plays."

Some of that showmanship might come from a desire to compensate for the team's stalled ground game. The Jayhawks managed to eclipse the 150-yard mark for the first time this season, thanks largely to first-time starter Angus Quigley's 61 yards, but didn't appear altogether dominant in doing so.

"We just got to be more fundamentally sound," Quigley said. "They came out with a defense that we really haven't seen, but we've got to be able to adjust. We're football players."

Heading into a bye week, Kansas will have two weeks to shore up its remaining problems - secondary included - before traveling to Iowa State on Oct. 4 in its first step in the quest for a conference title.

"It's a great time for a bye week," Stuckey said. "It's a change of mind-frame, because it's one of those things where you can't go out there and make a lot of mistakes like we make. We can't have personal fouls or penalties that kill us. ... So this is a good time to get all of our errors and all of our (kinks) and iron them out before we get into Big 12 play."