Kansas wide receiver Nik McMillan (5) stretches to pull in a deep pass against LIU during the second quarter on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026 at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Photo by Nick Krug

Lawrence Arnold’s 782 receiving yards in 2023 are still the high-water mark for a Kansas receiver since Lance Leipold took over as head coach.

If Nik McMillan wants to reset that record this year, he’s off to a roaring start. The Buffalo transfer, who cleared the 100-yard mark in six consecutive games to close out last season with the Bulls, continued in his usual form with six catches for 130 yards and the first touchdown of quarterback Isaiah Marshall’s career.

All that came in the first half of Friday night’s 51-6 victory over FCS foe Long Island.

“Just knowing that I can trust him is huge,” Marshall said, and there was no limit on Friday to the variety of ways in which Marshall demonstrated that trust.

He targeted him on his first pass of the game, which was also Marshall’s first as the Jayhawks’ starting quarterback. He gave him the ball in space for what turned into a 19-yard screen pass on third-and-18 at a time when the KU offense hadn’t quite kicked into gear in the first quarter. He hit him for a toe-tapping catch along the sideline, a 46-yard deep ball, a contested catch over the middle through contact that McMillan called his favorite of the night and then of course the touchdown in the back corner of the end zone.

“I’ve made the same plays all during fall camp,” McMillan said afterward. “It ain’t like I did anything that was out (of) the ordinary tonight.”

McMillan didn’t face the stiffest of competition on Friday night. While LIU has some solid players in its secondary, it’s still an FCS foe whose defensive backs generally won’t compare to those McMillan will see in the Big 12 — a level at which he hasn’t yet played in his career.

On the flip side, even with his wide range of accomplishments, KU certainly didn’t deploy McMillan against the Sharks in every possible way the inventive associate head coach Andy Kotelnicki could dream of using him.

“Out of all my years in college, this is the most that I’ve had to actually know as far as alignment, assignment, movement, motions, all types of stuff,” said McMillan, a Buffalo, New York, native who first got to know Leipold’s staff when they were still at his hometown school.

The wideout may have a particularly large workload in the near future. Cam Pickett, one of KU’s top receivers last year and one of this year’s primary returning playmakers, missed the opener after battling injury late in preseason camp. His status for the Jayhawks’ next game — Friday night at home against Missouri — isn’t yet clear.

“We need somebody that can step into some of that role, and Nik has done that,” Leipold said. “To make the catches he made on the boundary, and staying in, and then also going up and getting one, he can do a lot of different things. A night like this just helps build his confidence and again, build confidence between him and Isaiah.”

To hear McMillan tell it, the process of developing that rapport with his new starter has taken place in several stages.

“Over camp, I feel like I had a chemistry with both him and Cole (Ballard) because they was rotating throughout the whole camp,” McMillan said. “Once they officially announced him the starter, I feel like we kind of just took more of a role in building our chemistry because we knew that he was going to be out there with us. We’re still coming along, nothing (is) going to be perfect, but it was definitely a good start today.”