Brian Borland held his weekly press conference to talk about Iowa State. He talked about their offense and how the depth has helped the Jayhawks out. Hear everything Borland had to say.

How do you feel about the defense?

Defense. I feel decent. I feel like we've made some strides. We got to continue to make more strides. We're certainly not fully where you want to be yet, but I feel like we're accomplishing some of the things that we thought we needed to do in order to be a better defense. And so, we're on the way, but we're still growing, for sure.

What has stood out?

Well, I think we've done a better job of being a more physical defense, playing better versus the run overall. And where last year we didn't have much defense when things kind of went south on us. I think this year we've got enough going that we can, rally. Come back and obviously be pretty resilient. So I like those things.

Are there one or two things at the top of the list of things that will take this defense to that next level, or get past that progression?

Yeah, I probably mentioned it before in here. I'd still think there's, just from a fundamental standpoint, sometimes a technical standpoint, just really being, continuing to be more on point with some of the things that we're trying to do. We're certainly better in those areas. We probably give up too many bigger plays yet even for me in terms of particularly in the past game. But it's just small details that are a fine line between success and failure sometimes. I think some of that comes through experience, which we're still getting, still gaining and as guys improve. I'm confident that stuff will sure itself up as well.

A couple players today said they feel more confident. Have you seen that and also how important has that been for the progression?

Yeah, I certainly think so. I feel like our players can realize, again, kind of where it was, where it is. So I think that lends itself to being confident. The West Virginia game where we did get down right away and fought our way back and ended up battling through and winning a game like that on the road. I think that did wonders for us and obviously we had to follow that up again the next week and then we just continue to build off that a little bit. I definitely do feel like guys are confident. I feel like they feel like they've worked hard and earned the opportunities that they're getting right now and we're trying to cash in on them.

You talked a lot about depth for the last few months. Do you think this is the time of season when it starts to show up?

Obviously, we're going to continue to need that depth and so we continued. I think we played 23 different guys last week and got in the game. So, I think we're continuing to build that depth and the quality depth. We play eight conference games here coming up versus a lot of good teams. We're going to need some of that because we'd like to think we're going to stay perfectly healthy all the way through, but odds are we probably won't. You've got to continue to develop those next players. They've got to get some meaningful reps and some meaningful playing time. So that if and when that number's called in a more significant way, they're ready to respond, they know they can do it.

There’s a lot of new faces on that Iowa State offense. Is it similar to what you saw from them last year or is it different?

Yeah, they're still good. I know they've lost some kind of marquee players off of that deal, but they're not where they're at without having depth also. Guys have filled in there nicely for them. And they do a lot of similar things that they did last year. Not quite the same, the tight ends and things that they had last year, they could really do some unique things with those players. I don't know that they're doing all the same kind of deals, but they are still in a lot of ways very similar and a handful.