I was doodling in my notebook, trying to project how Bill Self will divvy up his 200 minutes come tourney time, when all of a sudden Jon Cornish gave me reason to tune back into the football game being played in front of me Saturday night at Memorial Stadium.
I wasn’t alone. Cornish awakened a crowd numbed by a Division I-AA football punching bag visiting Lawrence, which is going to be an annual event. This one was called Appalachian State. Cool uniforms, quick quarterback, not at all big enough or deep enough to take on a Big 12 Conference foe and make it interesting.
Cornish did what Appalachian State couldn’t. He kept the 37,070 paying customers from heading for the parking lot prematurely.
So back to Self’s rotation. What do you think: Julian Wright plays 15 minutes at small forward and 15 at power forward?
Plenty of time to contemplate that. A more urgent issue is at hand. A football issue. Imagine that.
How should Jayhawks coach Mark Mangino divide the workload between running backs Clark Green and Cornish? Green’s the more complete running back, Cornish the better runner of the football. Funny how two weeks can change the perception of KU from a team too shallow at running back to one two-deep.
The easy answer is to play Cornish most of the time, Green sparingly because Cornish gives the Jayhawks that big-play threat they lack. Not so fast. There’s a method to Mangino’s madness, and the presence of the steady Green enables the coach to dangle the carrot that is playing time for Cornish.
The way Cornish can get more carries is to try to block the way Green does.
The Jayhawks still are at the point where they will have at least a slight talent disadvantage against most Big 12 Conference teams. If you don’t have the best players, you have to play the best football to win, and that means having complete players on the field at all times.
Cornish had 10 carries for 103 yards and three touchdowns in the 36-8 blowout of Appalachian State. For the season, he has rushed for four touchdowns on 14 carries and is averaging 10.6 yards per rush.
Brian Murph, who had all 88 of his receiving yards in the first half and seems to be emerging as Brian Luke’s favorite target, issued a you-ain’t-seen-nothing-yet promise regarding Cornish.
“I’ve seen it a lot in practice,” Murph said. “You think he’s down, and he breaks out of the pile with a 70-yard run or something like that. That wasn’t nothing out there today. That wasn’t nothing.”
As the schedule grows tougher, the yards will be harder to compile, but there is no denying Cornish has the look of a bona fide Big 12 back. Mangino said he had come a long way in non-running duties and was “pretty close” to becoming a complete back.
“One thing he does that I like, he runs with a natural lean with his pads down,” Mangino said. “He takes very few blows from defenders in the ribs or in the chest. He has a good lean to him. His feet are extremely quick. He’s just a powerful guy. … He has some power. He’s a well-built, powerful young man.”
He’s also more than a second-string running back.
