Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea that Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino showed his squad “Rocky” earlier this week.
The movie based on a lowly boxer who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to fight the heavyweight champ certainly inspired the 22-point underdog Jayhawks for Saturday’s contest against sixth-ranked Texas.
But just like in the Rocky series’ first flick, Saturday’s game ended with the challenger losing a heartbreaker.
“Probably for me, this is the hardest loss,” said junior quarterback Brian Luke, who Saturday could have stood in for Sylvester Stallone’s character of Rocky Balboa during the Jayhawks’ 27-23 loss to the Longhorns.
Prior to Saturday’s game, Luke, a 6-foot-6, 225-pounder from Walnut Creek, Calif., definitely was down on his luck whenever he filled in as KU’s quarterback.
Luke — who started this season No. 2 on the depth chart but was the backup to third-stringer John Nielsen before Nielsen was injured Saturday — passed for 2,800 yards and 25 touchdowns as a senior at Las Lomas High.
His college career was less stellar.
Sure, there was last year’s career-best performance at Oklahoma State, when Luke threw for 193 yards and two touchdowns. Far too often, however, Luke’s stats seemed like they resembled his performance two weeks ago at Iowa State, where he was 2-for-4 for three yards and a fumble that was returned for a Cyclones score.
Perhaps the perfect example of Luke struggles came against K-State last season when he played only one down after replacing the injured Bill Whittemore, then was quickly pulled for fumbling the football.
But Saturday was different.
Against the Longhorns, Luke was locked on, completing 14 of 25 passes for a career-high 225 yards and a one-yard touchdown pass to tight end Lyonel Anderson that gave KU a 10-point lead with 7:41 to go.
“He did a heck of a job,” Mangino said of Luke, who he said only got about 12 reps a day during practice last week as the backup — but kept KU in contention by completing two big second-half passes to Mark Simmons and Charles Gordon.
“I’m really proud of Brian Luke. He overcame a lot of adversity this season and his career. Today he got some redemption.”
But even when Luke was on top of his game, the Jayhawks could not close out yet another close game.
“What we learned here is going to carry over into life, and I think that’s the big picture,” Luke said. “Coach Mangino really keys on us dealing with adversity. That’s why we watched the ‘Rocky’ video, where he got down but he knew how to get up.”
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