photo by: Nick Krug

The Jayhawks pile up at a field entrance before running out for warmups on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024 at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas..

Kansas City, Kan. — Kansas running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. did not play in Friday night’s game due to an illness, according to KU Athletics.

Hishaw, who had 16 carries for 105 yards and a touchdown through his first two games of the year, typically serves as the complementary back to Devin Neal. In 2023 he played his first full season with the Jayhawks and ran for 626 yards and eight scores.

On Friday night, he was on the sideline in uniform but wearing a baseball cap. Offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes went with a heavier dose of Neal than in weeks past, Sevion Morrison saw action as a second running back and KU also lined up players such as tight end Jared Casey and wide receiver Quentin Skinner at tailback before motioning them out to the perimeter

Several unusual players also received early snaps on defense for KU, including Devin Dye, Alex Raich and Caleb Taylor, with all three serving as starters according to Pro Football Focus. In Raich’s case, he was playing Hawk linebacker in place of Jayson Gilliom, who suffered a leg injury at Illinois and was dressed on Friday but did not go through warmups.

Near-cancellation

When UNLV and KU scheduled their regular-season nonconference matchup for 2024, the schools could not have known then that they would get paired in a bowl game the preceding year — especially a bowl game that does not have a tie-in with the Mountain West — which resulted in two matchups between the Rebels and Jayhawks in the span of four games.

On his “Hawk Talk” radio show on Wednesday night, KU coach Lance Leipold was asked if he had ever been a part of such a situation.

“Probably in Division II, we might play somebody in the playoffs and then had something scheduled,” he said. “I think when I was in Omaha we played Northwest Missouri State in a playoff game then opened up with them.”

Leipold was exactly correct; in 1998 and 1999, when he was the running backs coach for Omaha, his team lost 28-14 to Northwest Missouri State in the postseason and then immediately beat the Bearcats 40-17 the next time it took the field.

The Mavericks also played Minnesota State twice in a four-game period in 1994 and 1995, but no playoffs were involved then.

The arrangement was not optimal for Leipold, nor for his UNLV counterpart Barry Odom.

“We talked about trying to find an option to move this game and move it to a later year,” he said, “but we just could not find the matches that both of us needed to do that.”

Short week

Another logistical aspect of the lead-up to Friday’s game that was not ideal for either program was the quick turnaround after both had played on Saturday.

The matchup was originally set for this Saturday but got moved a day earlier on May 30, constraining both teams’ timelines but also allowing for a prime-time slot on ESPN.

“Traditionalist in me, I think Friday night should be reserved for high school football,” Odom told reporters this week. “I was a high school coach, we’re a high school recruiting program, so part of that, you talk out of both sides of your mouth, I love the exposure for our team on Friday night, I also don’t want to take away from high school football.”

While KU had not experienced a short week in the Leipold era, the Rebels had one as recently as last season when they hosted Wyoming on Nov. 10 after traveling to New Mexico on Nov. 4. That gave them a template to work with ahead of their visit to KU.

The Jayhawks will finally get to settle into a regular routine beginning next week when they face West Virginia, with every remaining game on a Saturday.

“It felt like the schedule (had) been all off since the start of the season, really,” safety Marvin Grant said.

New preparation

KU offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes took an admittedly unusual approach in reviewing last week’s loss to Illinois with his unit: He didn’t show them the game film.

Instead, he took it all the way back to the previous week of practice to demonstrate that “you have to earn the right to play well.”

“I went right to some practice clips from last week,” he said on Tuesday, “and then I shared the quote from Bear Bryant: ‘Everybody has the will to win. That’s not really what matters, though, it’s the will to prepare to win.’ And I said if we want to play better then we’ve got to practice better and we’ve got to earn the right to play better on Saturdays.”

Grimes’ unit faltered at key moments on the road at Illinois, particularly struggling with turnovers. Grimes also acknowledged that he needed to do a better job of giving the ball to his running backs “in crunch time.”

In all, he said it was difficult to tell how much the message to his players had gotten across in the early portion of the week, just because the Jayhawks had undergone fairly light practices on Sunday and Monday.

KU’s offense reverted to its pre-Illinois form in the early stages of Friday night’s game, only to regress in the third quarter.

This and that

Prior to Friday, UNLV had previously played in a Major League Soccer stadium in 2020, when it faced San Diego State at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. Incidentally, KU wide receivers coach Terrence Samuel was part of that team in his lone year in Las Vegas, when he was the Rebels’ receivers coach and passing game coordinator under Marcus Arroyo.

For KU, Friday was the last time in such a stadium for the foreseeable future, as the Jayhawks will move to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, for their remaining four home games of the year before returning to David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium next season.

This story has been updated to reflect that Devin Dye also started, according to PFF.