Leipold on pooch punt, clutch defense, emotions after beating BYU

Kansas knocked BYU off the undefeated ranks Saturday, beating the Cougars 17-13 in Provo. Lance Leipold spoke to the media after the game about the pooch punt that helped the Jayhawks take the lead, a defensive performance and his team’s emotions after the win.

Practice makes perfect with pooch punt

Early in the fourth quarter, Kansas elected to have Jalon Daniels kick a quick punt after the Jayhawks were in no man’s land on fourth-and-long. The punt hit the helmet of a BYU player and Quentin Skinner was able to land on it.

After the lucky break, the Jayhawks scored the game-winning touchdown. Leipold said they have always practiced this and it worked to their advantage.

“We’ve done it every Thursday since I’ve been the head coach and I think we’ve done it three times and two of them have worked really well and this was one of them,” Leipold said. “So it’s something we’ve been working on. It’s something to have just in case. We obviously didn’t intend for it to work the way it played out there, but it was huge. And again, Quentin Skinner, who is on the punt team to begin with, does a great job of covering things, really paid attention to the situation and landed on the ball.”

It was the second time Kansas has had an opportunity to recover a muffed punt this season. Against Illinois, it was called back, but the same umpiring team let that call stand.

“I said something to the officiating crew,” Leipold said. “That’s the same crew we had at Illinois when we had the chance to recover. It was a fumble and they got the ball back. It ended up being a big play. This one went our way.”

The defense comes up the stretch

Kansas allowed just 13 points Saturday, the fewest BYU has scored in a game this season. The defense was strong for most of the game and made big plays when it mattered.

As halftime approached, it looked like BYU would take the lead and have the ball coming out of halftime. Mello Dotson picked off Jake Retzlaff in the end zone as the Cougars drove to tie the game at 10-10 at halftime.

“Well, as you can see, it was a huge play,” Leipold said. “For Mello to make another big play like that was big. They chose to throw the fade route and he made a play to get the turnover, especially with that one, I’m sure they were aggressive in their minds knowing they had the ball out in the second half.”

BYU scored on a marathon 17-play, 10:26 drive to open the second half. But the Jayhawks limited the Cougars to three instead of seven. Leipold said it was one of the longest drives he’s seen in his career, and holding BYU to a field goal was “huge.”

It also looked like BYU would take a late lead and sneak out with a win and have the ball inside the red zone with under two minutes left. However, a false start forced a fourth-and-long, and the Jayhawks came up with the stop and the win.

“We had a plan, they can try to run it twice and then the penalty gave us some room to work with and were able to make plays and made some good solid tackles,” Leipold said. “Some of our better tackling that we had done was probably in the later part of those drives. So that was big to see.”

Excited, proud of his team

This season hasn’t been the easiest for the Jayhawks. They got off to a rough start but never gave up and put themselves on track to finish the season strong. Leipold continues to emphasize how proud he is of his team’s ability to stick together.

“What you have heard me say for many weeks in a row is that this group has stuck together and continued to work. And it really has. I’m very proud of the way they’ve done it,” Leipold said. “The way our management has really led this team, our coaching staff and the work they’ve done. And for us to get back-to-back wins over ranked teams says a lot about it and where it’s at.”