It’s still early in the college football season, but Saturday’s matchup between TCU and Kansas will involve two teams playing with a sense of desperation.
Both programs had high hopes in the preseason, but have vastly underachieved near the midway point of the season. The Jayhawks are in the midst of a three-game losing streak and blew another fourth quarter lead in an agonizing loss to West Virginia last week.
The Horned Frogs have dropped two straight, including a blowout defeat at SMU that may be the worst loss of Sonny Dykes’ tenure in Fort Worth. One team will feel like its season may already be over on Saturday while the other will regain some much needed momentum as Big 12 play intensifies.
Speaking at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Dykes said he was pleased with how the Horned Frogs have responded since the loss in Dallas.
“The great thing about our guys, they were good in the locker room after the game. They were good Sunday and Monday when they were around the office that day,” Dykes said. “I’ll say it over and over again, I like this team, I like it because there’s some maturity.
“They realize we had a really bad showing and are like let’s get back to work. I’ve been very pleased.”
There’s no time to dwell on the SMU defeat or the collapse against UCF two weeks ago. Dykes said there was a big emphasis on reminding the players that the Horned Frogs still have plenty to play for.
“You have to acknowledge what happened, use it to your advantage of understanding we have to get better in these areas,” Dykes said. “Then find some kind of positive and the positive is that it wasn’t a conference game. There were very few positives, but that was one thing that we were fortunate it wasn’t a Big 12 game.”
The rest of the slate will be against Big 12 foes which means there will be no silver linings in anymore defeats. Each game is a must-win now, not only for any hopes of making the Big 12 title game, but also reaching a bowl game.
As for the difficulty of the matchup, the Jayhawks are more talented than their 1-3 record suggests. Kansas returned most of its production from the last two seasons and started the year ranked in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll.
The Jayhawks have held a fourth quarter lead in each of their last three defeats. Like TCU, Kansas’ main issue has been the inability to finish games due to costly mistakes.
“Their issue has been turnovers, I think that’s their deal,” Dykes said. Giveaways are one of the few things holding the Jayhawks back from being in a much better position than they currently are.
In many ways, Dykes sees similarities between where TCU and Kansas stand right now.
“You could look at us right now and we could very easily be undefeated in the Big 12 with a win against Central Florida,” Dykes said. “It came down a call at the end of the game that could’ve went either way. We didn’t get the call and lost the game at the end.
“That was a millimeter difference and these guys have played three games that have come down to that. One play, they had a 4th-and-1 against UNLV, they get a stop there they win the game. West Virginia, they could’ve won that game. Illinois they could’ve won that game very easily.”
Dykes’ message to the team is clear, don’t pay attention to the record of the Jayhawks, it doesn’t tell the full story of Kansas. Just like Dykes is hoping the SMU and UCF games aren’t whole story of the Horned Frogs’ season.
With pride and position in the Big 12 place on the line, this will be an extreme litmus test to determine how good TCU’s culture really is.
The Horned Frogs have said they’ve flushed the SMU game and are focused on Kansas, but they also said that last week after UCF and played a lackluster half against the Mustangs.
Is the message still getting through? We’ll find out more information Saturday.
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