Halftime Musings: Kansas Jayhawks lead Oklahoma Sooners 14-7
The Kansas Jayhawks jumped out to a quick lead over the Oklahoma Sooners, scoring both a defensive touchdown and an offensive touchdown to go up 14-0. Unfortunately, the tide started to turn, and then a lengthy rain delay put everything on ice as the Jayhawks fell behind 21-17 at the half.
So let's take a look at what we learned in the first half of this Homecoming game.
Kansas Defense is Hungry
The big question coming into this game was just how well the Kansas defense was going to be able to hold up the Oklahoma offense. Oklahoma started out with some big jitters, even after their defense got a nice stop on 4th down on the Jayhawk's first drive. But Dillon Gabriel telegraphed a pass early, and Mello Dotson easily picked it and jogged into the end zone. Then they followed it up with a fourth-down stop of their own. Suddenly, Kansas was up 14-0 and fans were feeling pretty good.
Oklahoma has started to move the ball a bit better as they have figured out how to deal with the Kansas aggression. But the Jayhawks are still making Oklahoma work for it. The defense may not be able to win this game on their own, but they probably won't be THE reason this game ends in a loss.
Kansas Misdirection is Deadly
The Jayhawks got off to a hot start thanks to a bunch of misdirection. Fakes and options made it difficult for Oklahoma to know where to focus, and that gave Daniel Hishaw and Devin Neal all the room they needed to pick up some big gains. Things have slowed down considerably after the rain delay, but has still picked up 12 first downs. In fact, it's not hard to argue that the Jayhawks have roughly equaled the Sooners offensively, with the real difference being the muffed kickoff by Trevor Wilson.
Weather is Worrisome
Oklahoma had started to find ways to slow Kansas down and start to move the ball and the hope was that the weather delay would disrupt some of that momentum. But they picked right back up after play resumed, and Kansas started making mistakes. A muffed kickoff lead immediately to a score. Kansas was unable to change directions cleanly to catch up to Gabriel as he ran for a score.
The Jayhawks have shown they are not afraid of these Sooners, but the stadium has pretty much emptied out due to the rain, and the weather conditions are actually making the aggressiveness of the team work against them.
