photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

The Kansas bench watches on as a pass in intercepted against Kansas State at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025 in Lawrence.

After making the Sunflower Showdown competitive in both 2023 and 2024 but losing in heartbreaking fashion both times, the most conclusive sign of progress for the Kansas program on Saturday afternoon would evidently have been to actually win the game.

Instead, the Jayhawks took “a major step backwards” on Saturday by losing 42-17 to Kansas State, as KU coach Lance Leipold put it.

“We were thoroughly outplayed, and they executed better than us,” Leipold said. “They were more physical than us, and that’s very disappointing.”

The sheer definitiveness of the defeat came as a surprise. This was the first edition of the rivalry since 2009 in which KU had been favored in the lead-up. Kansas State coach Chris Klieman went on to say postgame that some of his veteran in-state players were “pissed off” by the narrative that this was the year the Jayhawks were going to end the streak.

In any event, what ensued at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium wasn’t quite a throwback to the KU teams responsible for the decade of consecutive losses to K-State ahead of Leipold’s arrival, but there were essentially no silver linings from Saturday’s performance and certainly no moral victories. The Wildcats forced four turnovers and won by four scores. KU’s slim hopes had basically dissipated by the end of the third quarter.

“It’s one that stings a little bit more, knowing that we feel like we have the players to go out and win these types of games,” wide receiver Cam Pickett said. “It just hurts to not go out and execute.”

It was a grim last swing at ending the streak for quarterback Jalon Daniels, as much a face of Leipold’s program rebuild as anyone, who in four and a half games against K-State never threw for more than one touchdown or 209 passing yards.

He said he’ll remember his battles with Kansas State as “a lot of games where we had a chance to be able to win, and there’s a lot of games where they played great football” — and just several out of many matchups in which he feels he could have done better.

As for Saturday’s game specifically, his last chance at the Wildcats?

“Of course it hurts,” Daniels said. “There’s no question or secret about it. I’ll never get the chance to be able to go against K-State again, that’s obvious. But (I’ll) always cheer the Jayhawks on, no matter what’s going on post-KU, and (I’ll) always be a Jayhawk for the rest of my life.”

Leipold was asked postgame what his message would be to KU fans feeling “embarrassment or disappointment” about the program’s 17 consecutive losses to K-State. The head coach said he was embarrassed too.

“I’m frustrated that we’ve lost five, because those are the five that I’ve been here,” he said. “I can’t control the past. I can work on the future. So, all of that. But if I was a fan I’d be frustrated as well.”

Leipold said he warned his players about some of what might transpire in the hours, days and weeks ahead.

“A lot of people on the outside now will start chipping away at some of the things that we do within our program,” Leipold said. “And it’s for our players (to) keep working hard, stay focused, believe in one another, not point fingers. If you want to point fingers, you can point them at the head coach.”

Leipold and his players like to stress that their routines and habits in many ways remain the same regardless of results. As a result, resounding loss notwithstanding, the process of building back up toward next Saturday’s game against Oklahoma State will be a familiar one for all involved.

“First of all, when they walk in on Monday, we have to own what’s on film,” Leipold said. “We have to be coachable and understand what we have to do. As coaches, when we’re in here tomorrow, we have to look hard at what we’re doing, and is it working, do we have the right people in the right places? And as we continue to work, the way this conference is set up is that you have a chance that we can win a lot of football games yet, or it could be a very long month or so.”