College Basketball | KU one big surprise
So you wonder about this lunatic brand of college football?
The profile of the new game looks like this: It’s not overly tall, but as wide as a barn door. To call Mark Mangino stout is to call Gary, Ind., grimy.
It’s come to this: Kansas might have as good a chance to do big things in college football as it does this season in college basketball.
“We have some really talented players, we’re not denying that,” Mangino said this week, discussing a team that’s 9-0. “But we don’t have an entire cast of huge playmakers that would be considered the prototype of outstanding Division I players.
“We have a bunch of kids that play hard. I don’t have to coach them too much. They stay on task and do the right things.”
Mostly, they keep winning. Yes, they beat nobodies for four weeks - after all, Mangino worked for the renowned cupcake baker, Bill Snyder - but then they’ve added five consecutive Big 12 victories. They go to Oklahoma State on Saturday with a chance to match the best start in KU history, in 1899. (That was the one and only Kansas season directed by Fielding Yost, the future great Michigan coach.)
Here’s how you get to be No. 4 in the BCS standings in the year 2007: Kansas hasn’t beaten anybody that’s currently ranked or even getting votes in The Associated Press Top 25. Nor does it have either Texas or Oklahoma on the schedule (unless it’s in the Big 12 title game).
Not that Mangino is apologizing. A season like this is what he envisioned when he came to Kansas from an offensive-coordinator position under Bob Stoops at Oklahoma in 2002.
A Pennsylvanian, Mangino’s first college job came as a grad assistant under Jim Tressel at Youngstown State in 1986. Mangino was married with two kids and moonlighted as an emergency medical first responder on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
“He was probably unlike anyone I’ve ever had,” Tressel said this week. “He worked on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from midnight until 8 in the morning. He was going to school in the morning and early afternoon, finishing his teaching degree, and then was with us from about 2 in the afternoon until 10 or 11 at night. I knew right then he was going to be something special.
“I don’t know when he slept.”
Sleep? Who needs it? Life? Who has time? Remember, Snyder, who hired Mangino for an eight-season run (1991-98), took one meal a day in season - at midnight or 1 a.m., when he got home from work.
“He’s just a really detailed, excellent football coach,” said Mike Stoops, the Arizona coach, who was on staffs with Mangino at both K-State and Oklahoma. “He’s a great guy and a good person who’s really earned it. He’s really persevered through some times that aren’t easy.”
On a team without many headliners, the most compelling player is gritty quarterback Todd Reesing, a Texan who has 23 touchdown passes and only four interceptions. At 5 feet 10, he was overlooked by recruiters who justified skipping him despite his junior-year 41 touchdown passes.
The last undersized guy from Austin to prove people wrong was Drew Brees.
Kansas has some other things going, notably a defense that’s second-ranked against scoring, a plus-16 turnover margin and a couple of other hidden allies - it leads the nation in kickoff returns, and with just 34 penalties, has committed six less than anybody else in the country.
This is not a year to look very far ahead, but if Kansas can beat Oklahoma State and Iowa State, it might produce a stranger-than-fiction matchup with Missouri with national-title implications Nov. 24. That would take on added controversy because Kansas agreed long ago to move it from its campus to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, thereby surrendering to more Mizzou infiltration.
That prospect is a lot like the Jayhawks’ dream season: Who knew?
Sizzling in Michigan
The Michigan-Michigan State rivalry, always occupying a back seat to Michigan-Ohio State, just got a lot hotter, although the Wolverines have dominated the series and Saturday won their sixth consecutive game in the series.
It began back on Sept. 1, when on his postgame radio show, MSU coach Mark Dantonio asked if there should be a moment of silence for the Wolverines, who had just lost to Appalachian State.
Saturday, after the game, Michigan players gathered at midfield and had a moment of silence, apparently mocking Dantonio’s comment.
Running back Mike Hart told The Detroit News he “thought it was funny” that MSU players were excited leading 24-14 entering the fourth quarter, saying, “Sometimes you get your little brother excited when you’re playing basketball and let him get the lead, and take it back.”
Dantonio was not amused, saying, “If they want to mock us, I’m telling them, it’s not over. They can print all that crap they want all over their locker room. It’s not over. It’ll never be over here. It’s just starting.”
Then he twitted the 5-9 Hart, saying, “Does Hart have a little brother? Or is he the little brother?”
Responded Hart, “I guess he couldn’t say anything else about me, so he had to comment on my height.”
Said State quarterback Brian Hoyer, “If anybody hadn’t taken this personal, it’s personal now.”
Ah, got to love those rivalries. As for Michigan-Ohio State, remember how Buckeyes fans were buying up Appalachian State T-shirts early in September? Now you can expect to see Wolverines faithful wearing “Findlay” shirts. The Division II Oilers, a school between Toledo and Columbus, dropped the NCAA-runner-up Buckeyes (what’s left of them, anyway) in a basketball exhibition Tuesday night.
And what’s more …
In four of the past five seasons, Oklahoma State had leads of 9, 28, 19 and 21 points against Texas. Then the Longhorns outscored the Cowboys by a combined 159-0 to win every game.
• A year after Paul Posluszny set a Penn State career tackles record at the linebacker-rich school, Dan Connor broke it Saturday with 379.
• Darren McFadden is going to be sorry there’s no South Carolina in the NFL. In three games against the Gamecocks, the Arkansas standout has 727 rushing yards on 91 carries.
Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com