Kansas’ Week-One Outlier and What It Could Mean Moving Forward

It’s primarily finished out of self-preservation. Don’t get too excited a couple of week-one blowout of a worse staff. Mood expectations.

That’s what you’re speculated to do. The true checks are coming. It’s just one recreation. That is what followers inform themselves and one another. And that’s true. However once you’ve had a decade-plus run like Kansas soccer, even a outcome like that is exhausting to return by.

Listed here are the opponents and outcomes of KU’s week 1 contests since 2010.

2022

Opponent: Tennessee Tech

Rating: 56-10 W

2021

Opponent: South Dakota

Rating: 17-14 W

2020

Opponent: Coastal Carolina

Rating: 38-23 L

2019

Opponent: Indiana State

Rating: 24-17 W

2018

Opponent: Nicholls State

Rating: 26-23 L

2017

Opponent: Southeast Missouri State

Rating: 38-16 W

2016

Opponent: Rhode Island

Rating: 55-6 W

2015

Opponent: South Dakota State

Rating: 41-38 L

2014

Opponent: Southeast Missouri State

Rating: 34-28 W

2013

Opponent: South Dakota

Rating: 31-14 W

2012

Opponent: South Dakota State

Rating: 31-17 W

2011

Opponent: McNeese State

Rating: 42-24 W

2010

Opponent: North Dakota State

Rating: 6-3 L

Take away this yr and within the earlier 12 openers, Kansas has performed 11 FCS groups and gone 8-3 towards them with the common margin of victory in these eight wins being 17 factors. And that was helped by the 49-point victory over Rhode Island in 2016.

So, not solely have the Jayhawks confirmed these openers aren’t positive issues even for wins, they haven’t been blowing the doorways off these groups. Sure, Tennessee Tech is just not a great FCS opponent, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a dominant efficiency that we simply haven’t seen a lot of just lately.

What’s unknown is whether or not this kind of efficiency can carry over into the following recreation. Solely as soon as (2011, a 45-42 win over Northern Illinois) did KU comply with up a week-one victory with one other win in week two. Each different subsequent recreation has been a loss, and solely three have been by single digits. The blowout of Rhode Island, the very best week-one win of that span, was adopted by a 16-point loss in week two to Ohio.

Nevertheless it’s comprehensible that following an offseason of optimism, this kind of efficiency would result in massive reactions. Kansas followers aren’t used to seeing it of late. Now the hope is that they may see one other rarity: constructive momentum from week one to week two. 

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