Some thoughts….from Arrowhead Stadium

Ryan Wood, Journal-World KU football beat writer

“Kansas showed a few flaws it hadn’t shown in the past, and that’s not good when playing the best team on the schedule.

Simply put, though, Missouri is a better football team than Kansas. The Tigers will make a fine Big 12 North rep and possibly play for the national title. All is not lost for KU, however: A great bowl game awaits and the possibility of a 12-1 season is still there. This is still a wildly successful season.”

Tom Keegan, Journal-World sports editor

“We’ll never know which team would have won the 116th rendition of the Border War had it been played in Memorial Stadium, home field of Kansas University, 36-28 loser Saturday night to Missouri at sold-out Arrowhead Stadium.

This much we do know: The more deserving team advanced to the Big 12 title game and kept its national title hopes alive.”

Ryan Greene, KUSports.com editor

“Missouri committed 14 penalties, which docked the Tigers a total of 141 yards, and in the end it really didn’t matter. How is that so? It’s because Chase Daniel went out and completed 40 – yes, 40 – passes en route to a performance that had to turn the head of any Heisman voter.

KU is 11-1 and now has to play the waiting game. Jayhawk fans should be pulling for MU next weekend in the Big 12 title game since a Tiger win would help solidify KU’s case over Oklahoma’s for a BCS at-large bid.

The rest will be good for KU, though, who had several players – such as trench stalwarts Anthony Collins and James McClinton – hobbled and playing in what looked like ridiculous pain late in the game.

Todd Reesing also deserves a tip of the cap. Kid played like a warrior in the second half. His regular season totals of 32 touchdowns to six interceptions aren’t too shabby either.”

Inside the numbers

40: Chase Daniel’s 40-of-49 performance was littered with examples of the junior Heisman candidate consistently bailing out his offensive teammates after they made repeated mistakes in racking up a chunk of the team’s 14 penalties. Daniel looked so routine in making play after play.

42: Kansas’ offense was put even moreso on the shoulders of Todd Reesing than it normally is since the Jayhawks had such a tough time establishing a running game. Of KU’s 42 rushing yards, Brandon McAnderson accounted for 41 of them, and Jake Sharp, who at a time had a shot at a 1,000-yard season, only carried the ball once for no gain. Reesing attempted 40-plus passes for just the third time this season, and the final tally of 49 was by far a season high. His streak of 213 straight passes without an interception also ended in the first quarter.

200: Mizzou do-it-all Jeremy Maclin, who set a D-I record for all-purpose yardage in a season by a freshman this year, totaled 200 yards on the final stat sheet. He did it in a multitude of ways, with 43 punt return yards, 66 kick return yards, 22 rushing yards and 69 receiving yards. The receiving yards came on a team-high 10 catches, as he was a priceless safety valve for Daniel all night.

15: While Marcus Henry had been the go-to target of the past couple weeks, against Mizzou it was the combination of two guys who will still be around in 2008 – Dezmon Briscoe and Dexton Fields – combining for 15 grabs on the night. Briscoe had a highlight reel-worthy diving grab of 34 yards to set up KU’s first touchdown of the game, while Fields caught a flurry of passes late. Both were key in KU’s effort to claw back into the game in the second half.

11: Now the million-dollar question is: Are 11 wins opposed to just one loss enough for the Jayhawks to secure a BCS at-large berth? Representatives from the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls were all in attendance, and KU making the game close late couldn’t have hurt. A lot will depend on the outcome of next weekend’s Big 12 Championship game in San Antonio. If Oklahoma wins, KU’s chances of getting an at-large ahead of Mizzou are pretty much nonexistent.

Just in case you missed it…

KU, still one of the nation’s least-penalized ballclubs, followed suit in being flagged just twice on Saturday night. If you look at the stat sheet and don’t see the score, you’d figure that if one team was flagged 14 times and the other just two, the cleaner of those two clubs would come out on top. Wasn’t the case on Saturday, but KU at least didn’t shoot itself in the foot too much.

Hopefully, you didn’t miss it…

KU still outscored MU 28-22 in the second half and showed some serious heart after everything went against the Jayhawks in the first half. Todd Reesing was still a bit inconsistent in the second half, but he played like a warrior in repeatedly leading the Jayhawks down the field during a late comeback effort. That’s something positive to build on going into a five-week hiatus before what will likely be a New Year’s Day bowl game.

They said it…

Mark Mangino on his offense’s slow start: “Go back and look at our offense, we’re not fast starters. We’ve hardly started a game this year quickly on offense. Kids take time to get into sync and get a feel for things, and it’s kind of how we’ve been all year, to be honest with you.”

Mark Mangino on Todd Reesing’s gloved throwing hand: “It’s not an issue. He has really small hands, and we knew when cold weather came, it was something he was going to do because he just has small hands. He threw the ball very well, so that’s not an issue.”

Mark Mangino on whether it would have been a different game in Lawrence: “That’s hindsight. I don’t get into hypotheticals, and I’m not one to look over my shoulder. The game was played here, that’s the agreement we made, we had a chance to win the game just like Missouri did, and they won. I’m not a second-guesser, I’m not a guy who looks over my shoulder at all. As I say all the time, I’m focused on the present and mindful of the future.”

Mark Mangino on the benefit of a month-plus off before a bowl game: “We have a number of kids that desperately need a rest. No excuses, they beat us, and I’m not into that, but we need that rest. But for a couple weeks now we’ve been a banged-up football team, and I think the time off before a bowl game will help us immensely.”

Brandon McAnderson on how Mizzou stymied KU’s running game: “They did a lot of late blitzing and stemming and they caught us in some plays and got some tackles for loss…just moving into spots that put them at the advantage instead of us…something they did more effectively (than other teams this year), later and harder to notice.”

Justin Thornton on how difficult going against Mizzou’s offense was: “Most of the time we were out there on defense, it seemed like they had a beat on us and knew what we were in. Everytime we’d call one coverage, they’d hit us and counter with something else. Chase Daniel had an outstanding night tonight. Just outstanding. It’s hard to win when a quarterback plays like that.”

James McClinton on whether he thinks KU will be in a BCS game come January: “I believe so. 11-1, man. There’s no other team out there that’s really 11-1. I understand the teams that win their conference, automatic bids. But you can’t overlook the Jayhawks. We worked it hard, we beat some tough teams, and I say we do deserve it.”

Todd Reesing on his team’s heart: “I think despite the mistakes we made, despite the fact that we lost, our team bounced back. We came back from down 21 points, maybe if we get an onside kick there that we can go down and score and win the game. So the fact that our guys didn’t give up, we were in a place we haven’t been. We were not used to being down in the fourth quarter, we fought back and played that hard, and it’s something special. It’s awesome to be a part of a team that fights like that and plays like that.”

Todd Reesing on whether he thinks KU should get a BCS at-large berth: “That’s politics that I have no control over. That’d be awesome. It’d be a real privilege to play in a game of that magnitude. That’s really out of our hands. We’re gonna hope for the best, and you can leave that up to the people who deal with that.”

Todd Reesing on his gloved throwing hand: “It didn’t have any effect. I just felt it gave me a better grip on the ball when it was cold. It had no effect on good or bad throws. I felt it was the same to me, so that didn’t really play a part in anything.”