Kansas head coach David Beaty gives a pat on the back to Kansas wide receiver LaQuvionte Gonzalez (1) after Gonzalez fumbled a punt during the second quarter on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2016 at Memorial Stadium.

Keeping players from hanging their heads on a team with such a lopsided losing record counts as David Beaty’s greatest strength as a coach.

As evidenced this week by his landing two huge, non-binding verbal commitments from the junior-college ranks — quarterback Peyton Bender and cornerback Hasan Defense — recruiting counts as another Beaty strength.

As Beaty is the first to acknowledge, he does have areas to fine-tune, one game shy of two full seasons into his college career as a head coach.

Clock-management issues have cropped up here and there, and he has to do a better job of having a play ready to send in when in fourth-down situations so that he doesn’t burn timeouts. He got away with burning a precious one Saturday, but it could have become a major issue had Kansas not pulled off the victory in overtime.

Hiring an offensive coordinator or promoting one from within his staff will help with some of those issues.

Beaty has shown another tendency that isn’t necessarily all that unusual for young football head coaches. He gets so wrapped up in what he sees in practice that he puts too little emphasis on what the rest of us see in games. That’s a particularly dangerous habit to fall into when evaluating players’ ability to perform the two most difficult jobs in football, punt returner and quarterback, in that order.

Nothing in practice can simulate processing a ton of information quickly while on the brink of potentially getting rocked into next week or next season. Both positions require that either-you-have-it-or-you-don’t skill.

Thinking a problem is “fixed” in practice can delude a coach into thinking it’s fixed in a game.

LaQuvionte Gonzalez has fumbled four punts, losing three of them. He fumbled two in one early season game, one vs. Iowa State, one in the Texas game. The footsteps in games are so much louder, but not loud enough to drown out over-coaching on the sideline, which it looked as if Beaty might have been guilty of Saturday when Gonzalez fumbled. It looked as if the head coach might have been hollering, even positioning Quiv while the punt was in the air.

Beaty finally is moving on from Gonzalez as a punt returner, a good move, albeit one that took far too long to form.

“It’s hard to fix something that you don’t see in practice,” Beaty said. “Man, that guy is — Quiv, at practice, he is by far the most solid, steady, he’s done a terrific job.”

He’s moving on, but not necessarily properly prioritizing the search for a replacement.

“We’re going to have to continue to work to find explosive returners,” Beaty said.

The coach is getting ahead of himself in trying to find an explosive punt returner. The search should be for an efficient return man, and if he happens to be explosive, all the better.

Connor Embree did not pass the explosive test, but he was a darn good punt returner for the Jayhawks. In 2013, Embree returned 16 punts for 182 yards, an average of 11.4 yards per return.

Gonzalez has returned six for negative-10 yards, an average of -1.7 yards. Asking him for too long to do a tough task that doesn’t match his skills might even have hurt him as a receiver, where he has produced 57 catches and two touchdowns with an average of 10.6 yards per catch. His kick return work has been solid with an average of 21.2 yards and a touchdown.

At quarterback, Montell Cozart and Ryan Willis were more impressive in practice, Carter Stanley better at moving an offense in games, limitations and all.

Beaty still is in the growing-pains stage, still putting his hands in too many places, but the huge triumph over Texas, KU’s first since 1938, should fuel him with the confidence to let his coaches coach and to turn the offense over to someone else. A big part of a head coach’s job is to put his players in a confident, aggressive state of mind. Beaty appears to have done an impressive job of that under trying circumstances.