KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2010 / SPORTS
3B
FOOTBALL
Football team will look to the past
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Players will look back on last season to make this season memorable for fans
Above: Sophomore quarterback Kale Pick speaks to members of the media after practice last week. Pick is the starting quarterback going into the 2010 season.
Below: KU lost to Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas during the 2009 season. That season went down-hill after the loss to Colorado.
BY COREY THIBODEAUX
cthibodeaux@kansan.com
twitter.com/c/thibodeaux
Glass half full: the Jayhawks started last season 5-0.
Glass half empty: the layhawks ended last season on an 0-7 freefall.
Going into its first game, the team is split between the two perceptions. Talking to coach Turner Gill and players with limited roles last season, the team has forgotten the disastrous 2009-10 season.
"Since we've been involved, that's not even been an issue," Gill said. "We're in 2010 and we're moving forward."
But there's a group of players who are still affected by the lingering memory. Senior wide receiver Johnathan Wilson said the guys who didn't play last year couldn't understand how he and the others feel.
"It's not something I'm dwellin on everyday," he said, "but it's defnitely in the back of my mind."
Senior cornerback Chris Harris has that same mentality. Sure, there is a whole new atmosphere with the team this year, he said, but the players still have their pride.
"We need a win," Harris said. "Bad."
Most of the blame is put on the inner turmoil the coaching staff faced last season. Still, the Jayhawks finished the season with terrible momentum after having a legitimate shot at a bowl appearance.
But the new leader of the team, sophomore quarterback Kale Pick, appears to have the same mindset as his coach. There's a new staff and a new system. There are plenty of fresh faces in the starting lineup and Pick is sure that combination has put the past behind.
"Id say we're over it and ready to go out there and prove people wrong." he said.
Pick played sparingly in a 2009- 10 season that included a fourth quarter benching of Todd Reesing. On the season he had five passing
attempts in seven games of action.
Of all the ups and downs last season, senior lineman Brad Thorson said he and the captains are making sure this season is fun and maybe 2010-11 can hold fond memories.
"We're going to make sure this season is more memorable than last season for the right reasons," Thorson said.
When the Jayhawks host North Dakota State in their home opener, their record will read "0-0." But
that 5-7 record, especially the way it happened, has to be remembered before it can be forgotten.
Wilson said he wants that reminder in the first game for motivation.
"I wish they could put it on the board somewhere so we can see it before we go out on the field," he said.
Edited by David Cawthon
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Coach doesn't let job change him
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A week before he would coach his first game at Notre Dame, before the runaway optimism commingled with actual results, Brian Kelly stood in his stadium and sensed that anticipation was squeezing the oxygen out of his team.
"I can't come to work every day thinking I'm the head coach at Notre Dame," Kelly said this week, recalling his message. "There are just too many
To dissolve the apprehension, Kelly applied nine months of on-the-job learning. He urged a task-by-task approach. He tried to sandblast the big picture. He spent the offseason forging a
cast-iron Notre Dame identity, but the way to fulfill it was to jettison the burdensome Notre Dame part.
In two decades of success, Kelly never has coached with the stratospheric expectation and unrelenting scrutiny that will follow him with the Irish, beginning Saturday against Purdue.
things out there that you would succumb to all the pressure."
Few understand the toll that exacts, and no one can know how Kelly will react until he does. Those who know the challenge intimately say he can change Notre Dame's fortunes, as long as he does not let Notre Dame change him.
"You have to keep your feet in reality," said Lou Holtz, the last Irish coach to win a national title. "You have to have a faith in yourself and what you're doing and how you're doing it. You have to be able to look in the mirror and know that you're doing the best you can."
When Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick interviewed Kelly last December, he did not want a candidate with even dust-particle-sized doubts about his approach.
Swarbrick says he encountered "a guy who said, 'This is what I do, this is how I do it. I know it works, and that's what I'll do if I'm your coach.'" Kelly followed through in everything from conditioning programs to redecorating the halls of the Guglelimino Athletics Complex.
LOU HOLTZ
Former Notre Dame coach
"You have to have faith in yourself and what you're doing and how you're doing it."
"He's an incredibly well-
grounded, confident person who has a way he goes about doing things," Swarbric said.
Among former Irish coach Bob Davie's largest regrets was not doing things the way he wanted them, immediately, after he succeeded Holtz.
"Notre Dame can change you," Davie said. "You better do it the way Brian Kelly knows how to do it. You're going to get so much conversation on what's the right way to do it at Notre Dame. Do it the way you did it at Grand Valley State. That's the right way."
Irish tight ends coach Mike Denbrock made previous stops at Notre Dame and with Kelly and says no coach focuses on the process as well.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
"Yeah, it's an adjustment," Holtz said. "But it's an adjustment you know how to make because you've handled it on a much smaller scale."
That micro approach to combat macro demands will be tried when calendars overflow with luncheons and appearances on a nationwide basis.
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
Inseparable Florida brothers play first game without each other
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For the first time ever Saturday, Florida Gators center Mike Pouncey will play in a football game without his identical twin brother, Maurkice.
From Pop Warner to high school at Lakeland High to college at Florida, it's been Maurkice and
Mike anchoring the offensive line.
The two have always been inseparable — they took the same classes, wore the same clothes, and hung out with the same people.
You couldn't tell them apart or get them to part, on or off the football field.
But with Maurkice now playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike is back for his senior year as the
offensive line's leader,rather than co-leader.
"It's weird," said Mike, whose Florida Gators play Miami of Ohio on Saturday at noon. "He's somebody that been there with me my whole life."
The duo always planned to play in the NFL together, as well.
But this past spring, Maurkice decided to enter the NFL draft to
help the family — the boys' stepdad, Robert Webster, lost his leg in a rail-car accident about two years ago — and allow Mike to play the center position, which could help his draft stock after this season.
Mike chose to remain in college to pursue his degree and up his draft stock for this spring.
Now they're apart, an inevitability that the brothers and best
friends decided was for the best.
"We'd become accustomed to it," said Mike, one of six team captains. "But it was going to happen. We were going different ways in life."
The twins always strapped on each other's shoulder pads before each game. They always played corresponding positions: center and guard. They ate together, studied film together and practiced together.
The good news, though, is Mike has spent a whole bunch of time with the other members of the offensive line. Three of the line's starters outside of Mike are seniors; Carl Johnson, Marcus Gilbert and Maurice Hurt. Those guys are all close, maybe not Mike and Maurkice close, but still close.
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