Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino announced Tuesday during his weekly press conference that senior Brian Luke will be the starting quarterback for this Saturday’s KU-Oklahoma game at Arrowhead Stadium, in Kansas City, Mo.
“We’re going to start Brian Luke. We feel like Brian at this point and time based on our evaluation of the position gives us the best opportunity to win,” Mangino said. “We think that Brian has been in the system the longest and has really shown the most understanding of our offense. We think when protected he is delivering the ball better than any of our quarterbacks.”
Better yet for Luke though is that the KU coach really gave him a vote of confidence.
“I told him I’m looking for you to start, to finish, and to win the game,” Mangino said. “We’re gonna let him play. I believe he can get the job done.”
Mangino said he has not given up on Adam Barmann, but thinks Barmann needs to recover the confidence he had last year as a starter.
“We feel like Adam situation is that Adam has not been able to translate his good work on the practice field to the game field. Why, I can’t answer that,” Mangino said. “That’s a question. My only guess is that he has not regained the confidence he had in the past prior to his season-ending injury last year.
“I don’t know that. I can’t say that’s the case, and were certainly not making any excuses for him,” Mangino continued. “He wouldn’t want anybody to make an excuse for him. We don’t give up on anyone here. Adam is a hard-working guy, he loves this program. He wants to win as bad as anyone in this program. But after evaluating the last two conference games very thoroughly we feel that right now that Brian Luke gives us the best opportunity to do what we want to do — especially in this particular game plan.”
Mangino said that senior Jason Swanson, who hasn’t seen the field yet this season, is likely earning his way into the back-up spot.
“Jason is getting work with the (No.) 2’s right now, and this is the healthiest he’s been,” Mangino said. “I’m not going to start announcing the No. 2-and-3-and-4 quarterback every week, but I think he is perhaps putting himself in position to be the No. 2 guy. We’ll see in a couple of days.”
When asked if he would allow Luke to play through mistakes, Mangino responded that he has already done that this season with Luke and will continue to do so.
“We have allowed him to play through a lot of them. It’s not like he makes an error and we’re yanking him,” Mangino said. “We need to protect him, we need to run good routes and catch the ball when it’s delivered.
“It’s not just the quarterback and I think our offense understands. After watching the tape yesterday our offense understands, our players know they need to do something about it now, and I think they will.”
