Opening statement:

We competed extremely hard and fought. I thought were very physical through the game. I thought we battled all the way through. We just, again left some opportunities out there in all three phases that prevented us from winning the game. And you know, this one stings as much as any of them and. But I told them again, I was proud of the way we fought and competed for four quarters.

You mentioned opportunities in all three phases. Are there ones that come to mind as most significant?

We catch a kickoff return on the one-yard line. We dropped a touchdown pass, we didn't tackle well and had some coverage bus on a couple plays and things like that. I mean, there's things that you guys see as well, that are pretty obvious in there. We miss an extra point, we don't knock it out and they get a safety. All those things can hurt you in the end.

With that play with Jameel Croft in those situations, what are you guys coaching him to do in those spots?

I don't want to get into criticizing a player. Okay. That's not fair. We're not going to tell a guy to go catch the ball as his momentum's taking him out of bounds. Okay, I think that would make common sense. But you know, the young man was trying to make a play, and he lost track of where he was at. Human mistake.

And for you guys on the final drive, just what you see from the Kansas State defense?

A lot of blitzing. A shitload of blitzing. Okay. That's what it was.

How do you fee you bounced back after the safety and the touchdown?

It's a huge momentum shift. You know, when it went to them and then we battled. We had a chance and we ended up getting a touchdown there. We're going in for a possible opportunity to kick a field goal and we threw an unfortunate interception there for the half. It's a game of momentum swings. A lot of them are. Again, I thought we again had pretty good resilience throughout the game. Obviously, we had the lead until the final (drive). They drop a touchdown pass as well. So, you know, things kind of play out in a certain way. But, then they get the last field goal.

You know, we almost have a sack, takes them out of field goal range. Who knows what happens after that, but it didn't happen that way.

Lance, you said repeatedly you're not going to talk about moral victories, but is there anything positive from this…

Yeah, we fought our ass off. It's pretty evident that this is a good football team. And then we lost to a really good football team. But this team hasn't quit.

On that note with the defense, what did you like about what they showed in the second half…

Responded and we got some stops. I don't have all the exact stuff there, but I thought we got some stops, got a turnover. I don't know if we tackled as cleanly as we'd like to. We held them to the field goal when we needed to battle to the end. A 51-yard field goal is pretty long field goal. I thought again, we competed hard.

Trevor Wilson got a lot of action…

I thought Trevor played outstanding. Probably maybe his best overall game as a Jayhawk as he's been here. Made some big catches. He's made a lot of contested catches. He played well.

Lance, I know it's not the time for big picture reflections, but do you think the gap's closing between these two schools…

I don't know. I think the last two years we've had our opportunities to win the game, and we haven't. Like we said, we're not going to get into moral stuff. But again, I think again, for where it was at and where we think we are as a football team. Obviously, we're a 2-6 football team right now and that's not very good. But this team has got a lot of talent and played hard and came up short. We always say winning's tough, winning on the road is even more difficult. And still at the end, I thought we had our chance.

Along those lines, you get the fourth down, stop, take the ball a chance to kind of put it away. What'd you see from your guys before they took the field on that offensive series…

Our guys are really confident on both sides of the ball even after the field goal. Mello Dotson says, coach, we got this and stuff. You know, guys really thought that they were confident in one another on both sides that things could happen. I know Jalon ended up having a couple turnovers but at the end of the day I thought he played extremely hard and well and created a lot of plays for us. I’m proud of the way he's played and led our team. I mentioned Savion. I thought Devin was solid again. Trevor, Luke, all those were, you know were all pretty solid.

I know Quentin feels bad about the one that know he didn't make the play on and as we know, nine times out of ten he will.

So you guys have the bye coming up. Do you follow the one you previously had…

Well, we've got some modifications to it yet. We'll kind of look at some things. What's better for the psyche of this team right now.

Did you learn anything from the previous by week that season that you feel will be particularly important to emphasize during this upcoming one…

Again, you always want to get back to fundamentals and even at the end of them, again we've liked our schedule between giving them some time away. Hopefully you can get some time back in the weight room a little more time than you normally do. Try to work with some of our younger players again will be important. We'll continue to do those things.