Kansas University was expected to be the worst football team in the Big 12 North this season, and Baylor was supposed to be the worst team in the Big 12 South.

Neither team is in the cellar heading into today’s game at Memorial Stadium.

“They are a team that in a lot of ways is like us,” second-year KU coach Mark Mangino said. “They are trying to get their program rolling. They are doing it with hard work and they are putting their kids in positions where they have the chance to succeed. It’s an important game for us because we are back home now, and we need to keep playing well in conference play.”

Kansas (4-2 overall, 1-1 Big 12) will try to bounce back from a 50-47 overtime loss to a Colorado team that Baylor (3-3, 1-1) defeated a week earlier.

A 42-30 victory over Colorado Oct. 4 at Waco, Texas, gave Baylor a three-game winning streak. But Texas A&M snapped that streak with a 73-10 victory last Saturday at College Station, Texas.

That blowout kept alive a longer streak, Baylor’s 30th straight Big 12 road loss.

“I think we’ll play hard and have a chance to win,” said first-year coach Guy Morriss. “I felt last week we had a great week of practice and went down there to the big stadium, and I thought we had gotten all the jitters out. I felt we came out of the locker room ready to play, but this last weekend, bad things started happening to us and we lost our focus and composure.

“We have to understand that when you travel and go into hostile territory you have to be able to focus. If you let yourself start to slide it’s hard to regain momentum. I don’t think we are that bad of a football team, even though the score was 73-10.”

Baylor is 5-53 in conference play since joining the Big 12 in 1996, but the Bears have beaten Kansas in two of three meetings since the remnants of the Southwest Conference merged with the Big Eight.

Texas A&M' Courtney Lewis (25) runs through Baylor defenders Ahmad Rhodes, left, and Maurice Lingquist, right, for a touchdown. A&M won 73-10 last Saturday.

The Bears defeated the Jayhawks, 35-32, last season in a last-second thriller at Waco. BU scored 11 points in the final 78 seconds and snapped a 29-game conference losing streak that dated back to 1998.

“It was hard,” said sophomore receiver Mark Simmons, one of 16 Texans on KU’s roster. “All my friends and family were there.”

Baylor coach Kevin Steele was dismissed after the Bears finished 3-8 overall and 1-7 in the conference.

Morriss is the program’s fourth coach in eight years. Baylor, which hasn’t one more than three games in a season since 1996, has shown signs of improvement. Senior running back Rashad Armstrong ranks third in the conference and 23rd in the nation with an average of 163.3 yards per game. Junior quarterback Aaron Karas averages 163.3 passing yards per game.

When things don’t work out for the offense, Baylor turns to the Big 12’s leading punter. Senior Daniel Sepulveda ranks fourth in the country with an average of 46.38 yards per attempt.

“They play hard,” Mangino said. “They are doing the things necessary to build a football program. They have their kids playing hard. They have them believing in their system.”

Kansas could find itself in a high-scoring game for the second week in a row. The Bears are allowing averages of 420 yards and 32 points a game, while KU’s opponents average 403.8 yards and 26.2 points.

“We just need to keep growing and throw the brakes on the losing because it can be a snowball effect,” Morriss said. “I just want to see the kids play hard for 60 minutes and not worry about the score. We have to redline it every play; we’ll worry about the score when it’s over.”