photo by: AP Photo/Colin E. Braley

Missouri running back Jamal Roberts (20) races toward the end zone to score a touchdown as he is pursued by Kansas defensive back Jalen Todd, left, and safety Lyrik Rawls, right, during the second half of an NCAA college football game on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025, in Columbia, Mo.

Columbia, Mo. — The Kansas offense had barely touched the ball in the second quarter — in fact, the Jayhawks had held it for 14 seconds compared to Missouri’s 810 — when KU regained possession of the ball with three timeouts and just over a minute remaining in the first half.

The Tigers had chipped away at KU’s 15-point lead with a touchdown, safety and field goal in reasonably quick succession, but KU still led 21-18 with a chance to achieve a more comfortable margin by the break.

The Jayhawks opted for a conservative approach, and it backfired. After Jalon Daniels’ first pass of the drive to Emmanuel Henderson Jr. went for just one yard, forcing Missouri to burn one of its two remaining timeouts, KU elected to burn the rest of the clock with a pair of runs. The only problem: running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. went out of bounds on one such run, saving the Tigers a chunk of time.

Mizzou got the ball back with that chunk — 28 seconds — left on the clock sliced and diced KU’s defense with a 39-yard run and 50-yard pass, and came close to recapturing the lead outright but instead settled for a short game-tying field goal.

“At the end of the day, the ball game was still 0-0 to us,” middle linebacker Trey Lathan said postgame. “We still had 30 minutes left to play, we knew the game wasn’t over. Just holding them to two field goals, that says a lot.”

Indeed, the Jayhawks held them one more time — a fourth-down stop on the first series of the second half — but the defense couldn’t manage quite that level of stinginess throughout the second half. Missouri reached the end zone on three of its next four drives and took a 42-31 victory.

After the loss, head coach Lance Leipold reflected on his strategy ahead of halftime, when KU still led by three. He said the Jayhawks wanted to run the ball because of the extent to which the flow of the game was going against them at that point late in the second quarter.

“A fair question about what we’re thinking, but a little bit about momentum,” Leipold said. “We hadn’t really been doing much, and again, to give them that opportunity by burning timeouts and giving them the ball back with much time left, was not where we wanted to be at that time.”

He did acknowledge that KU didn’t adequately instruct Hishaw to stay in bounds, but added, “I thought he was in bounds. It sure looked like he was.”

Leipold also reviewed the choice he made at a second key juncture of the game, about two full quarters later, and with the Jayhawks still retaining all of their timeouts once again.

With KU down 35-31, and needing to ideally score a touchdown while consuming the game’s final four minutes, the Jayhawks fell far short of that. Daniels’ first two passes of the drive went for three combined yards and his third got dropped by Emmanuel Henderson Jr. Facing fourth-and-7 with 2:54 to go, Leipold sent Finn Lappin out to punt.

Leipold said he thought his defense could potentially come up with a stop against Missouri after the punt — even though, he acknowledged, “You’re probably going to say ‘Well shoot, they’ve run 80-something plays, you haven’t stopped them yet,’ which is probably fair criticism.”

“(What) we kind of thought was if we would have gotten one first down then we probably would have been more in the area to go for it,” Leipold said, “but it was like, in the high-three-minute or just under two (minutes), if it was going to be a three-and-out, between that, the two-minute timeout and our three, (our thinking) was that if we can get a stop … that we’d have a chance then to go win the football game.”

KU didn’t get the stop. Jamal Roberts ran for one quick first down, but the Jayhawks were in a favorable situation entering the two-minute timeout when he got stopped for one yard on first-and-10. However, on the next play he slipped around the left side and scampered 63 yards for the Tigers’ game-sealing touchdown.

When all was said and done, Missouri ran 86 plays to KU’s 48 on the day and held the ball for more than twice as much time.