Bulls bring rain with them

KANAS CITY — It’s raining. Well, at least it’s only in Kansas City — the Missouri side that is. I just checked over on Lawrence, Kan., and it’s clear, but chilly. Game time looks to be in the somewhere in the 50’s. Yikes.
Anyways, just a few things.

Kansas is dead. I think these mid Westerns are in bed by 10:30 p.m. at the latest. It was just odd to me. My photog, Josh Corban, Times writer Greg Auman and I all went out to a bar-b-que place last night, and they were shutting down at 9:30 CST. Heck, we didn’t get in until 7 p.m. Just plain odd, in my opinion.

Should be fun tonight to meet Kawika Mitchell at the game. The Kansas City linebacker had mentioned this week, with the Chiefs bye week, that he might attend the game. At the Oracle, I’ve been meaning to do a feature story on him since I took over as Sports Editor. Hasn’t gone over as well as I hoped. Last year, I was going to go down to Miami to get him at a Dolphins game, but Hurricane Wilma changed the game time on me, and I couldn’t make it. I’ll talk to him a the game and get a story in later this week. Now if I could just talk to his former defensive coordinator.

There are two Big East/Big 12 games today. USF and Kansas, and Louisville and Kansas State. K-State should get destroyed by Louisville. I think most feel that’s a given, even with K-State‘s No.14-ranked defense, since they are facing the nation’s best offense. Louisville is too deep a team, even Michael Bush and Brian Brohm-less. USF and Kansas, on the other hand, looks to be a good game. I love this story about the two freshman quarterback, both of whom beat out seniors (if you want to call Pat Julmiste’s “thigh bruise” getting beat out), to get the starting positions. The Bulls’ have the No. 27-ranked defense, and I have been impressed with the way the defensive line — all nine different lineman they have been using — swapping in and out numerous times in the game and still coming up with the big late play, or containing their opponent’s offense. Two big forced fumbles have basically won the games for them the past two weeks.

Okay, enough for now. I expect Thed Watson to play with the loss of Jake Griffin, and I expect the punting game to have a different feel to it. Even though I reported Leavitt was sticking with Delbert Alvarado, I also think he doesn’t have much confidence in either Alvarado, nor Ilia Petrov.

More to come from Lawrence. Oh yeah, at that's central time I'm posting at.

— Mike Camunas