You can’t coach speed, and in the dog-eat-dog battle that is receiver-versus-defensive back, it’s pretty hard to combat speed, too.

Well, Kansas University is about to see some serious secondary speed Saturday, when the Jayhawks take on Texas at 2:30 p.m. in Austin, Texas.

“Their secondary is one of the fastest secondaries I’ve seen in a long time,” KU coach Mark Mangino said. “They can literally make a mistake, get out of position, recover and make a great play.”

Which leaves the Kansas passing game with very little – if any – margin for error.

Led by Cedric Griffin and Tarell Brown at cornerback and Michael Griffin and Michael Huff at safety, Texas is eighth in NCAA Division I-A, allowing just 166 passing yards per game. In addition, the Longhorns have picked off seven passes.

KU counters with a wide-receiver fleet led by Mark Simmons, Charles Gordon and Brian Murph – reliable for a catch, but none of which exactly is known for his Wile E. Coyote rocket skates.

So, how does KU attack UT’s fleet-of-feet?

“You have to hit them straight forward,” said Simmons, KU’s leading receiver with 501 yards on 34 catches. “You can’t really go east to west with a defense with a lot of speed. You really have to go north to south.”

For the directionally challenged, that’s up and down the field, not side to side. Simmons, for example, could catch a ball between the hash marks, run laterally and try to break around the edge into the open field, but it might be ineffective because UT’s defensive backs will catch him. So why not just go for the sure gain, instead of taking a risk that’s less likely to pay off?

“I think also, you have to be able to stretch them both horizontally and vertically, especially if they’re in man coverage,” Mangino said. “When they’re in zone coverage, you’ve got to find the holes. That’s not so much stretching. That’s being a smart receiver, understanding leverage, understanding the zone concept and where the holes are.”

There are other strategies just as minor to approach a secondary with jets. But wide-receivers coach Tim Beck said the most critical of them had nothing to do with fighting Texas – and everything to do with preparing Kansas.

“I don’t know if you fight it,” Beck said. “You’ve got to keep working. The biggest thing for us is, do what we do and not necessarily focus on what they do.

“But,” he added, “they’re good, and they can definitely run.”

¢ ABC regional map out: The KU-Texas game will air on ABC regional and be seen by about 18 percent of the country.

In a distribution map released Wednesday, the KU-UT matchup will be seen by all of the Big 12 Conference area and spill into New Mexico, South Dakota, Arkansas, Illinois and Louisiana.

Four games will air at 2:30 p.m. on ABC, and KU’s will be the second-most viewed. The Pac-10 showdown between California and Southern California will be seen by 57 percent of the nation, including the whole West Coast, the Great Lakes region and the Northeast.