Kansas defensive coordinator Clint Bowen was asked about his team’s defensive success, and his mind wandered back to a quote from Tom Osborne.
The longtime Nebraska coach used to always say, “You can enter a donkey in the Kentucky Derby, but he’s never going to win, no matter how hard you train him.”
Bowen has always taken the underlying message to heart: You can’t ask your players to do something they’re not physically capable of doing.
Start from that, and it becomes easier to see how Bowen has helped turn this defense from the worst in the conference to a respectable unit in just one season as KU prepares to face 11th-ranked Baylor on Saturday.