Volume 125 Issue 26
kansan.com
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Snyder still on top PAGE 6
RIVALRY
COMMENTARY
- Edited by Andrew Ruszczyk
Aggressive offense is new king
By Ryan McCarthy rmccarthy@kansan.com
It's a true display of the times in college football: offense is king.
A weekend with both Kansas and Kansas State on a bye week should have provided some time for local fans to breathe.
Instead, the Big 12 had the highest scoring game you will see all season at any level of college football.
It was early Saturday morning when Baylor and West Virginia managed to score a combined 133 points for the game, a crazy amount of points that even made EA Sports gamers put down their controllers and applaud the two team's efforts.
It's an incredible change to the college football landscape, but it's something that's been anticipated.
Geno Smith of West Virginia put on a display for the ages with 656 yards passing and eight touch downs.
The most impressive stat for Smith is that he only threw six incompletes the entire game. Somehow he finds a way to be accurate through all of his progressions, whether it's completing a short pass for three yards or throwing the long ball to his receivers. He's truly a quarterback with overall efficiency and has the poise to lead the Mountaineers to an impressive bowl game by the end of the season.
Don't forget that Baylor also showed impressive resilience in this game. Despite being down three touchdowns for part of the second half, the Bears continued to fight back and managed to rack up 63 points in the losing effort.
Their quarterback Nick Florence threw for an incredible 581 yards in the loss and was just a mere sidemen in the game. He's not Robert Griffin III, but he shows that the basis for the Baylor offense stayed intact this year, and will be a force to be reckoned with later on as well.
This truly was a game for the ages, but it also explained the age that college football is currently in.
In college football, defenses continue to give up an insane amount of yards and points every weekend. Despite rigorous study by defensive coaches and players in film rooms across the country, offenses are still getting the best of the defenses that line up opposite them on Saturdays.
The fans love this style of play. The way you get people in the seats is to score a lot of points, and so far this season the top teams in the Big 12 have been able to do that. The more points put up in the game, the more people will show up.
With the conference season in full swing, every team is going to have to score a lot of points in order to compete. Without an above average offense, teams will be left in the dust because offense is all that matters in this conference.
Yes, you need to make defensive stops, but for victories, teams will have to outscore their opponents instead of relying on their defenses to make stops.
TYLER ROSTE/KANSAN
Head coach Charlie Weis signals to coaches during pre-game warm ups. This is Weis' second conference game as the Jayhawks coach. The Jayhawks play Kansas State this Saturday.
KANSAS FACE OFF
Weis urges Jayhawk fans to focus more on meeting an in-state rival this weekend
BLAKE SCHUSTER
bschuster@kansan.com
The bye week is over and Kansas football is getting ready to return to action against Kansas State in Manhattan on Saturday.
Both Kansas coach Charlie Weis and Kansas State coach Bill Snyder had an opportunity to speak to the media on Monday's teleconference call where they touched on the upcoming game.
B-RAD IS RAD
Weis gave a good amount of praise for senior cornerback
Bradley McDougald's play this season. To date,McDougald has a team-leading 34 tackles; along with three pass deflections, two forced fumbles and two interceptions.
Weis may have known McDougald was capable of these numbers at the beginning of the season, but until play started he didn't have much proof of it.
"From the day I saw him he looked special," Weis said. "He looks like a heck of a player."
Weis said McDougald's athleticism make him one of the few guys on defense he can count on to make plays citing McDougald's
pass coverage and interceptions.
pass coverage and interceptions.
"He's been invaluable to our group," he said.
STOP HATING MISSOURI, START
HATING KANSAS STATE
It was one of the Weis' pivotal messages from the teleconference. Weis said that since he got to Lawrence he has noticed many fans put too much attention on the Kansas-Missouri rivalry even with the Tigers switch conferences.
Weis urged for Jayhawk fans to direct their anger 85 miles to the west and begin taking the K-State rivalry as seriously as the Wildcats
do.
"If you're at Kansas State it's 'Let's go beat Kansas,' Weis said. "And the last three years they've laid a pretty good whooping on us."
He said with Missouri now playing in the Southeastern Conference the team is pushing its focus to the in-state rivalry.
Kansas State coach Bill Snyder echoed Weis's sentiment, saying that his players are always ready to go for this game and that there is no need to try and push them to get more pumped up to play Kansas.
"I don't think you have to find
ways to motivate young guys because it means an awful lot to them on both sides" Snyder said.
Just like Kansas, the Wildcats will be coming off a bye week. For the Jayhawks, that may prove to be a needed break. However, the Wildcats had been rolling, winning their first four games by a combined total of 162-62. Snyder wasn't upset with the timing of the bye week but instead deferred his judgment of it until a later date.
"The bottom line is how well we play next Saturday," Snyder said. "Next Monday I'll have an answer."
Edited by Luke Ranker
RUGBY
Creation of rugby complex helps team
JOSEPH DAUGHERTY
jdaugherty@kansan.com
The Kansas jayhawks rugby club once struggled to schedule games and practices, but University alumni and former members of the club alleviated these problems with a $350,000 donation for the creation of the Westwick rugby complex.
The rugby club has been playing at the Westwick Rugby Complex since 1997. Before that they played at the Shenk Sports Complex on the corner of 23rd and Iowa Streets, but the team had problems scheduling games and practices there.
"We had so many problems scheduling times to play games and practice," coaching coordinator Rick Renfro said. "So we needed our own place to play, and plus we went overseas and saw how cool it was to have your own clubhouse and field."
Renfro added that they used the donations from alumni to buy the field, which was $200,000, and another $150,000 for the lights and the sprinkler system. Renfro and many other volunteers involved with the rugby club maintain the fields. Renfro himself has been a part of the rugby club since 1975 when he was a player. He has since filled numerous roles with the club. In his words, he has done all of the 101 things that it takes to
run a club.
Rugby is often thought of as football without pads, but Connor Taft, a senior from Chicago and captain of the University rugby club, said if he had to sum rugby up that it would be more like full contact basketball.
"The rules between basketball and rugby are really similar." Taft said. "When you have the ball you're on offense and vice versa and there is continuous play until there is an infraction of the rules. It's all about two on one."
Since rugby is not as popular in America as football and basketball, knowledge of the rules is not as great, so Taft broke down the main points of rugby.
Taft noted that in rugby you can only pass the ball backwards or sideways, unlike football where you can throw it forward. There is tackling involved, so in that regard it is like football, but when you run the ball into the endzone or the tryzone as it is referred to in rugby, you have to touch the ball to the ground. There are also scrims, where the two teams are interlocked and fighting to roll the ball out with their feet. These scrims usually take place when there is a penalty or a dead ball.
The Kansas Jayhawks rugby club is made up of two different clubs: the actual university team and a men's club team.
With both the clubs combined
The University team plays five or six games that count toward its actual college record. They play other men's teams on occasion, but those games do not count toward their record. The club participates in the Heart of America
at the start of a season, there is usually about 50 to 60 guys who come out to play. Taft said that by the end of the season there are usually about 30 to 40 guys who stick around and commit to the team.
Rugby coach Dave Hamill said that the club has been decent over the last few years, but the main draw is the tradition of touring every year, which is when the club go all over the world and plays different rugby teams.
conference and if they win the conference, it competes in what is called westerns. If the team wins the Westerns, there is a possibility it will compete for a national championship.
The team won its first two
matches and lost the third this season. Coach Hamill is looking to build off of their previous results.
"We just got back from Aspen and we won our first two matches." Hamill said. "We beat the Aspen team which is one of the best clubs out there so that is really good for us."
— Edited by Andrew Ruszczyk
JOSEPH DAUGHERTY/KANSAN
Members of the Kansas Rugby team stretches out for a line-out during a practice session. Practices are held at Westwick Rugby complex on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 6:30 p.m.
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