photo by: AP Photo/Rick Egan

Kansas cornerback Mello Dotson (3) intercepts a pass in the endzone as BYU tight end Mata'ava Ta'ase (88) defends during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, in Provo, Utah.

Provo, Utah — In virtually all of the Kansas football team’s six losses this season, the Jayhawks’ defense had a chance to get one decisive stop and seal a victory.

At Illinois, KU gave up a go-ahead touchdown and then a clock-killing drive that resulted in a field goal. Against UNLV, the Jayhawks let the Rebels crawl down the field for nearly 10 minutes to take a late lead. At West Virginia and Arizona State, they allowed two touchdown drives each. And so on.

All of that came to an end in Saturday night’s stunning 17-13 victory for KU at LaVell Edwards Stadium — even after BYU got as close as first-and-10 on the Jayhawks’ 15-yard line, needing a touchdown to win, with two minutes to go.

“I just knew, I spread the word around, I’m like ‘We need four stops. Four stops,'” safety O.J. Burroughs said. “I was big on (it), I kept saying after every timeout, ‘Let’s get this stop, let’s get this stop.’ And once I knew we had them in fourth-and-long, I knew we had a chance.”

On fourth down, KU safety Marvin Grant said he knew from the way BYU was lining up that the Cougars planned to hit him with the same route they had used against him for a big play earlier in the fourth quarter. He ended up getting the credit for the decisive tackle on receiver Chase Roberts to end the potential game-winning drive for the previously unbeaten Cougars — who had escaped unfavorable late-game situations on multiple occasions this season.

“Really, that’s what we practice every day in practice,” Grant told the Journal-World. “Those types of situations, two-minute situations, critical situations. Staying calm, keeping composure and doing what we do.”

For once, the work showed in one key moment.

“(We) came up with some good solid tackles — probably some of our better tackling that we had done was in that later part of those drives,” head coach Lance Leipold said.

More than one drive, in fact, because it wasn’t just that KU rebuffed one critical series late.

“They had a great day all around, and they kept a really good offense at bay,” running back Devin Neal said.

The Jayhawks’ defense reversed every notable trend that had debilitated the unit throughout the year.

For example, they had been particularly vulnerable to touchdown drives in the final two minutes of the first half; this time, cornerback Mello Dotson picked off quarterback Jake Retzlaff on a first-and-goal fade route to prevent the Cougars from scoring altogether.

“I’m sure they were aggressive in mindset knowing that they had the ball coming out the second half,” Leipold said. “Everybody talks about the middle eight minutes of a ball game, and when you look at it, to come up with an interception and hold them to a field goal where there’s probably opportunities for two touchdowns was probably a big, telling point of this game.”

The field goal in the third quarter that Leipold referenced came after what could have been a reprise of the UNLV game — a drive of more than 10 minutes that ended up giving the Cougars the lead, as KU’s offense watched helplessly from the sidelines.

“You come out (of halftime), you warm up, and then it’s like ‘OK, we’re sitting,'” receiver Luke Grimm said. “And then you’re like ‘All right, we’re getting ready to go.’ And then they do another media timeout. And you’re like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s been like 40 minutes since I’ve moved my legs. I feel like I have frostbite on my toes and my fingers.'”

But crucially, thanks to key stops by Grant, Taylor Davis and Jereme Robinson, BYU could only muster a field goal to cap off the drive.

“That might be one of the longest drives I’ve seen in my career, almost,” Leipold said. “Seventeen plays. But to hold them to that field goal was huge.”

The result even emboldened KU’s offense: Quarterback Jalon Daniels said, “I feel like our defense being able to make those plays definitely gave us our offense the confidence to be able to try to go out there and be able to waste as much clock as BYU was doing.”

So what was different from the disastrous, interminable drive against UNLV? Burroughs, for his part, credited the result to, in line with Grant’s remarks, “just staying calm, keeping our composure after they made a couple good plays.”

“I feel like our will just increased,” Grant said. “Right now we’re real hungry, you know, trying to get to a bowl game.”

To do that, the Jayhawks will almost certainly need to beat red-hot Colorado on Saturday, then earn an elusive road victory at Baylor.