Undeterred: Beaty, team still excited about season

By Matt Tait     Sep 15, 2015

Nick Krug
Kansas head coach David Beaty pulls off his headset after an offensive series during the fourth quarter on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015 at Memorial Stadium.

At 0-2 heading into its lone bye week of the 2015 season, the Kansas University football team sits in a position that many people expected before the season began.

Youth and inexperience, along with a lack of depth and talent at several key positions, painted the picture of a rough season on the horizon and, so far, with the Jayhawks off to their first 0-2 start since Mark Mangino’s first season in 2002, that painting looks as if it were executed in the studio of Rembrandt, even if the product on the field does not.

Asked if the long faces on the sideline toward the end of Saturday’s 55-23 loss to Memphis were an indication that the Jayhawks were starting to feel the air go out of the excitement that came with the new coaching staff and fresh start, first-year head coach David Beaty remained upbeat.

“Not at all,” he said. “That’s the reason I feel so good about this group. Every one of them are hurting. Every one of them are dissatisfied. They’re disappointed. But from a discouraged standpoint, they know we’ve got their back, they know we love them, and they know this is a process, not an event, and we’re in it together.”

With just one nonconference game remaining before the annual Big 12 gauntlet begins — Sept. 26 at Rutgers — the Jayhawks are staring at the very real possibility of turning in an historic season.

In 125 previous seasons of football, the Jayhawks have finished winless just one time. That came in 1954, when Chuck Mather — who went 11-26-3 from 1954-57 — guided the Jayhawks to an 0-10 finish during a season in which Kansas was topped by an average score of 38-9.

For even more historical perspective, consider that KU has finished a season with one victory just seven times — the most recent of which came in 2012 under Charlie Weis — and the program has gone undefeated four times (1891, 1899, 1908, 1923).

On Monday morning’s Big 12 coaches teleconference, Beaty, who was asked questions for just five of the 10 minutes carved out for each coach, reiterated what he has said since the day he arrived — “Our goal from the very beginning has been to get just a little bit better every day” — and added he believed that would happen in time.

“We’re at a point in our program right now where we have to continue to do a great job of developing these young guys,” Beaty said last weekend. “And we also have to continue to improve our talent overall to create a competitive environment in there that makes us better. We’ve done that to a degree, but we haven’t been able to do it like we completely want to yet. That’s going to take some time. That’s going to take a couple recruiting classes to get those things done.”

And that fact is not lost on any of KU’s opponents.

Memphis, which outscored the Jayhawks 55-13 after spotting them a 10-0 lead early in the first quarter last weekend, plays at Bowling Green this week. And Monday, at his weekly news conference previewing his team’s next game, Memphis coach Justin Fuente remarked that the Tigers were taking “a pretty significant step up in competition this week.”

Seven or eight years ago, such a claim would have been hard to imagine. Today, it’s a fact that is hard to dispute.

Because of the reality of the situation, the Jayhawks are trying to tune in to even the smallest details in their quest to move the program forward. Win a one-on-one battle. Win a play. Win a quarter. Win a half.

The thinking behind that building-block approach is that, eventually, it will lead to the point where the Jayhawks are winning games again.

During the week, when KU refuels and gets fired up for another opponent and a new game plan, that seems to be an easy mindset for the players to have. However, right now, as appropriate as the approach might be, those same players are having a tough time focusing on that silver lining on game days.

“Things like that — we tackled better, we got three turnovers — they get overshadowed by the big thing, which was they put up 55 points,” junior safety Fish Smithson said following the loss to Memphis.

That’s why Beaty believes the bye week, though early by most standards, comes at a good time for this team. It gives Beaty and his staff extra time to break down two real games and take the lessons — good and bad — to the practice fields, where the Jayhawks can continue to grind.

“This bye week’s going to be great for us,” Beaty predicted after the loss to Memphis. “Just walking out of that locker room right there, I’m pleased — if I can say pleased, I’m pleased with their demeanor because they’re disappointed, they know they’re better than that and they’re ready to go to work right away, so that’s good.”

Added veteran linebacker Marcquis Roberts: “We just gotta get better. That’s all we can do is just get better every week…. That’s how I feel about it. I know we have the players to do it. I’ve played in the SEC with great players. I know we have enough talent to win.”

KU-Rutgers on BTN

Kansas officials announced Monday that the Sept. 26 match-up with Rutgers in New Jersey will be televised by the Big Ten Network.

The game, which is scheduled for an 11 a.m. kickoff, will be the Jayhawks’ final nonconference game of the 2015 season and will be the first meeting between the two programs and mark KU’s first appearance on the network.

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.