See if any of this sounds familiar.

A football team suffers through the 2002 season with one of the worst defenses in the country, attempts to rebound in 2003 after making several changes and hopes to regain the status it achieved in the mid-1990s when it ever so briefly was considered a national power.

Kansas University?

Good guess. How about Northwestern, KU’s opponent in today’s 6 p.m. season opener at Memorial Stadium.

“You can’t take them lightly,” said Kansas senior offensive lineman Danny Lewis. “They’re a lot like us. They feel they have a lot to prove. They didn’t have the kind of season they expected last year. It’ll be a good test. It’s a good way to open the season and see where everybody stands.”

In recent seasons, KU and Northwestern have stood at the bottom of the Big 12 and Big Ten conferences, respectively.

The Jayhawks and Wildcats both peaked in 1995 with identical 10-2 records. Northwestern was 9-3 the following year, but it was mostly downhill for both programs.

Five of six below .500

Aside from an 8-4 record in 2000 — Randy Walker’s second year as head coach — the Wildcats have been losers in five of the last six years.

Like Kansas, which slid into the abyss after Glen Mason’s penultimate season in 1995, Northwestern has faced the challenge of rebuilding in the nation’s tougher conferences.

“We want to be like the great teams, the teams of the ’95, ’96 seasons,” quarterback Brett Basanez told the Chicago Tribune. “We want to go to a bowl game.”

Basanez (6-foot-2, 200 pounds) could be just the man to get them there. He finished his red-shirt freshman year with 2,204 passing yards despite playing with a broken leg late in the season. His 220.4 yards per game ranked first in the nation among freshmen.

Complete back

Senior running back James Wright (5-10, 210) ranked fourth in the nation with 2,013 all-purpose yards last year. He also was a first-team Academic All-American.

“Jason is as complete a back as I’ve ever been around,” Walker said this week during the Big Ten teleconference. “He catches the ball extremely well out of the backfield. He does a nice job blocking. That’s something that’s not always a standard part of a running back’s repertoire. He has really all the tools it takes to be a very good football player. You take him off the football field and they don’t come any better.”

But Wright’s accomplishments — and those of Basanez — were overshadowed by a defense that allowed an average of 41 points and 502 yards per game last season. Northwestern’s defense ranked 116th out of 117 Division I teams last season. KU was 112th.

“Obviously we haven’t played the kind of defense here, really the last couple years, that we’d like to play and believe we’re capable of playing,” Walker said. “First and foremost our kids have done a great job. They’ve worked extremely hard in the offseason. We’re a bigger, stronger, faster unit.”

Northwestern finished 3-9 overall and 1-7 in the Big Ten, but Walker is confident his team will improve after relying on underclassmen last year. The Wildcats return nine starters on both sides of the ball.

Both KU and Northwestern lost starting linebackers to knee injuries in last year’s season opener. KU’s Banks Floodman and Northwestern’s Pat Durr (6-1, 235) will be back on the field tonight.

“It is going to be emotional, there’s no doubt,” Durr said on Northwestern’s Web site. “After not playing for so long, I have a lot of pent-up frustration, especially with a lot of what happened last year. … I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

Familiar faces

Walker will rely on many of the same players who struggled on defense last year.

“We’re looking forward to having Pat make the kind of plays we always thought he could,” Walker said of the senior linebacker. “I think he’s an all-Big Ten caliber player. You surround him with a lot of improvement, and I think we can make some real positive steps as a defense.

“We’ve been prolific here at times with offense, and we’ve been successful with different aspects of our offense. But you win with defense. It always has been that way, and it always will be.”

• Notes: Northwestern spent the first 12 days of preseason camp at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., where the Wildcats have trained the last 11 years. … Offensive linemen Greg Lutzen and Donnie Baskin are expected to miss several weeks because of knee injuries.