Moments That Popped: K-State 42, Kansas 17

The Jayhawks were favored. The Wildcats didn’t care. And the streak lives on.

For the 17^th consecutive season, the Kansas football team fell to in-state rival Kansas State, this time by the final score of 42-17 in the 123^rd edition of the Sunflower Showdown.

It was a weird game from the start on an afternoon befitting a doom-and-gloom kind of day for the home team.

More from Saturday's Sunflower Showdown

• Notes & Numbers

• Chance Parker photo gallery

Kansas (4-4 overall and 2-3 Big 12) received the ultimate gift to open the game, when K-State’s kickoff return man put the ball on the turf on the opening kickoff after getting popped by Jalen Dye on the return.

That led to Jalon Daniels taking it in on a QB run from 10 yards out to give the Jayhawks an early and surprising 7-0 lead. Daniels fumbled the ball as he went into the end zone, but replay reviews upheld the call on the field and the touchdown stood.

Neither team did much from there until a couple of KU mistakes allowed the Wildcats to build a 21-7 lead on a day when the Kansas offense struggled to get much of anything going.

Despite giving K-State (4-4, 3-2) control for much of the first half, the Jayhawks found a way to crawl back into it before halftime with an 18-play, 85-yard drive that spanned 8:34 and ended with a hard-running touchdown by Daniel Hishaw Jr. to cut the K-State lead to 21-14 at halftime.

The score put the momentum back on the home sideline, with the Jayhawks getting the ball to start the third quarter. But KU went three-and-out on its first drive of the second half and then threw an interception, which led to KSU reclaim a two-score lead (28-14) a few plays later.

It was never close again, and K-State, which brought its full band and plenty of purple despite the weather and the belief by many that this would be KU’s year, outscored the Jayhawks 42-10 in the final 58 minutes of the game.

Tough to end streaks with numbers like that.

Here’s a look back at some of the action, which did not look nearly as rough on the stat sheet but was aided heavily by four Kansas turnovers and very few mistakes by the visitors.

LIKES

• Hishaw ran so hard – There’s no real way to qualify this, but it sure looked and felt like this one wouldn’t even have been close for any amount of time if not for the hard running of KU senior Daniel Hishaw Jr., who finished the day with 67 yards on 19 carries. Those numbers don’t come close to expressing how hard Hishaw ran and how much it meant to him. He was shown on the video board between the third and fourth quarter, trying to hype up his teammates with an impassioned speech before the final quarter. KU was out-gained 371-247 in total offense, with the Jayhawks finished with 137 yards passing and 110 yards rushing.

• Welcome back to motion football – It was clear that the Jayhawks had a plan for how they wanted to test the K-State defense. The first couple of series by the KU offense featured all kinds of movement and motion, which had been a staple of the Leipold offense under both current OC Jim Zebrowski and former OC Andy Kotelnicki. They haven’t done a ton of that this year and they didn’t do it a ton the rest of the game. But, with two weeks to prepare and a big game on the line, the Jayhawks clearly were willing to try anything to give themselves an edge.

• Marjan stays perfect – If you’re highlighting a field goal make that many wish you had never even attempted, that kind of underscores what type of day it was. Still, in these conditions and with these stakes, you have to tip your cap to KU kicker Laith Marjan for staying perfect on the season after drilling a 47-yard field goal late in the third quarter that, at the time, cut the K-State lead to 28-17. Marjan is now 11 for 11 on the season and has made his last 22 field goal tries dating back to last season at South Alabama.

DISLIKES

• Defensive woes – You didn’t have to strain too hard to hear the criticism of KU defensive coordinator D.K. McDonald coming from the frustrated KU crowd. The Jayhawks’ defense didn’t give up 500 or 600 yards like in recent weeks, but it also didn’t do much to bother K-State QB Avery Johnson from start to finish. Not only did Johnson have time to read and throw whenever he wanted to, but he also found soft spots in the Kansas defense, short, long and everything in between. After KU coach Lance Leipold said on Monday that Johnson was an underrated passer, the K-State QB made him look great by throwing for 231 yards and 2 touchdowns on 11-of-17 passing to go along with his 2 rushing touchdowns.

• No time for Jalon – He was not above blame on the issues the Jayhawks had in the first half while throwing the ball, but the Kansas offensive line also had a hard time handling K-State’s pass rush and it really hurt Daniels and the Jayhawks. Whether he was outright sacked or simply did not have time to let the play develop in front of him, Daniels was dealing with different Wildcats in his face for much of the day. He also did his share of running into trouble while trying to move around or escape the rush. Not an ideal recipe for finding any kind of rhythm on offense.

• Accuracy issues – In addition to taking a lot of hits and struggling to find any kind of rhythm for most of the day, Daniels misfired with a bunch of his throws, with the majority of the misses either being tipped or behind his intended receiver. Daniels was visibly frustrated throughout much of the day and he finished with 129 yards, no touchdowns and one interception while completing just 17 of 35 passes on the day. It was one of the worst statistical games of his KU career and drops Daniels to 0-5 against the Wildcats during his 6 seasons as a Jayhawk. He did not play in the 2023 game because of injury. Here's a look at his lines vs. the Wildcats in the other 4 games before today.

2020 - 22-for-39, 207 yards, 0 TDs, 1 INT

2021 - 13-for-19, 105 yards, 1 TD, 0 INTs

2022 - 20-for-32, 168 yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs

2024 - 18-for-31, 209 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT

WHAT THE?

• Special teams gift – If there’s one thing we’ve learned about these K-State games/teams over the years, it’s that their special teams play is usually good enough on its own — if not outright dominant — that you don’t need to help them cause you problems. But that’s exactly what the Jayhawks did on Saturday, gifting the Wildcats their second touchdown of the game when a low snap was not handled cleanly by punter Finn Lappin and, instead, was picked up by the Wildcats’ Ralph Ortiz, who ran 20 yards untouched for a touchdown that gave K-State the lead for good. Here’s the wild thing about Ortiz’s TD… It came not long after he was flagged on the sideline for shoving KU safety Taylor Davis after the action from an incompletion had spilled over onto the KSU sideline. Talk about making up for a mental mistake.

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