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Lance Leipold reveals drawback of the timing of his hiring at Kanas

Screen Shot 2024-05-28 at 9.09.17 AMby:Kaiden Smith•09/22/22•

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Lance Leipold has Kansas 4-0 for the first time since 2009, and as the Jayhawks’ head coach is a top candidate for Nebraska’s vacancy.(Zurga/Getty Images)

Kansas head coach Lance Leipold has the Jayhawks off to their first 3-0 start since 2009, as he’s quickly surpassed his win total from his first season with the team, as they finished the 2021 season 2-9. Leipold made a recent appearance on college football analyst Joel Klatt’s show Breaking the Huddle, where he discussed the Jayhawk’s hot start and the challenges they faced early on in his tenure.

“Really proud of our players, our staff, and the progress that we’ve made really over the past nine months really when you look at it. The timing of our hire a year ago was very difficult, but I thought the last quarter of the season, the month of November we started to make some great strides,” Leipold said.

Leipold was hired by Kansas at an interesting time, as the Jayhawks parted ways with former head coach Les Miles in March of 2021 following allegations of misconduct with female students during his time at LSU. Leipold was hired on April 30 of 2021, after the team had completed spring practice, giving him just one month of practice with the team before their first game of the season.

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The Jayhawks ended the season 2-9 in Leipold’s first season, highlighted by a week 1 win over North Dakota State that snapped a 22-month drought of losing for Kansas. The Jayhawks also secured an upset victory over Texas that season, the second time they’d ever done so in Big 12 history, snapping a 56-game losing streak in conference games on the road.

Leipold finally got his first proper, complete offseason with the team this year, and it seems to have paid off for Kansas so far, as they’re already showing drastic improvement from last season.

“We were able to utilize that in the winter conditioning, spring ball, through the summer. And I knew we were getting better Joel, I just didn’t know what strides, and now we’ve gotten off to a good start,” Leipold said. “But we have a big test coming here Saturday.”

The Jayhawks take on another team that is off to a surprisingly great start to the season this Saturday in Duke. Both teams enter the matchup unranked, but unbeaten, as Kansas plans to have a large home crowd for their showdown this weekend at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium in one of the most highly anticipated matchups to date for both programs.