Lance Leipold explains process of rebuilding Kansas through tough losses

It’s hard to overstate how impressive a job head coach Lance Leipold has done at Kansas in a little more than one season — 15 games to date — as the head coach. He’s only won a five games, but seeing as the Jayhawks won just six games in their previous three seasons combined, they’re a far cry from where they once were.

Never has that been more evident amid the 3-0 start that Kansas is enjoying this season, the best start to a season for the Jayhawks since 2009 when they started 5-0 before finishing the year on a seven-game losing streak — which resulted in the firing of Mark Mangino. Speaking on the “Breaking the Huddle” podcast with Fox’s Joel Klatt, Leipold shared how Kansas marked improvement through so many losses in 2021 when they went 2-10 and how it has led to the hot start this year.

“And along the way though, as you said — you can’t be in the moral victory business,” Leipold said. “We know how we’re evaluated. But like you said, there’s a lot of internal steps of accountability, attention to detail, progress in other ways, that you look at that are good measuring sticks that you’ve got to try to reinforce as you build a program that’s been down as long as this one has been.”

CLICK HERE to subscribe for FREE to the On3 YouTube channel

The year before Leipold took over, Kansas went 0-9 against a conference-only schedule during the Covid-altered season. The Jayhawks hadn’t turned in a winning record since an 8-5 campaign in 2008 that ended with an Insight Bowl win over Minnesota.

Leipold didn’t exactly work a miracle in his first season, going 2-10, but it was clear to all by years end that the Jayhawks were trending the right way. After getting walloped by rival Kansas State, 35-10, the week prior, Kansas rolled into Austin for a matchup with Texas and pulled out a result no one anticipated: a 57-56 win in overtime.

“You know, as we started the month of November, at our Monday meeting I started talking about, ‘You know, if you ever want to play in December or January, you need to play well in November.’ And unfortunately we played our rival, K-State, and they took it to us pretty good. We had a couple guys get hurt with broken — we just had the air taken out of us. And I was kind of like, ‘Wow that talk really was worth it,'” Leipold said. “But then the next week we wen’t down to Austin, 1-8, and we know that story.”

That night in November would be the Jayhawks second and final win. They lost the next two games — at TCU and against West Virginia — by a combined nine points.

Despite the losses, Leipold saw the foundation for the hot start to 2022 coming into shape.

“But I think you did a great job of hitting the high points,” Leipold said. “Because to me, even though we lost [at TCU], it was how we went back to work the next week and went down to Forth Worth and how we played and then came back and finished the season, that I think has made this program take these steps.”