No more tickets: Kansas officials announced Thursday that Saturday’s KU-Kansas State game is a sellout.

The remaining 1,000 or so tickets were gobbled up the last few days, meaning a crowd of better than 50,000 is expected.

Good news for Kansas: The last three times attendance exceeded 48,000 at Memorial Stadium, the Jayhawks won – victories over Kansas State in 2004 and Missouri and Nebraska in 2005.

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On the mend: It’s been a month of growth for KU freshman safety Darrell Stuckey.

After starting the season on the sideline with an ankle injury, Stuckey played his first collegiate game Oct. 7 against Texas A&M in a reserve role.

Since then, he slowly has shaken the rust off and now is KU’s starting free safety heading into Saturday’s game.

“It felt like I started from scratch all over again,” Stuckey said. “it felt like i just got here. I just got back and had to get reacquainted with my teammates and the game. Before I felt like I was moving with great speed and really getting used to the speed of the game. I had to get used to it all over again.”

Stuckey feels he’s still not 100 percent physically. But he said playing in KU’s last five games made him a better defensive back than he would be playing at full strength.

“I probably get to places quicker than I used to because I’m smarter now,” Stuckey said.

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Bowl projections: KU coach Mark Mangino doesn’t want to talk about it, but bowl projections are in full swing, as they are every November. Right now, Kansas isn’t invited to the party.

After several publications picked KU to go to the Poinsettia Bowl last week, most have abandoned that thought this week of Kansas even playing in a postseason game.

Some, like ESPN.com’s Mark Schlabach, have replaced Kansas with Arizona, a geographically closer team to the San Diego bowl game than Kansas. Arizona shockingly beat Cal last week to improve to 5-5. Kansas also is 5-5.

The Jayhawks need one more victory to be bowl-eligible, though six wins doesn’t guarantee a bowl invitation.