• 🏈 KU-Illinois: Game Preview and Prediction

• 🔒 Betting Market Analysis

• 📝 Expert predictions for KU-Illinois

• 📺 Other Big 12 games to watch

• 🆕 KUHearings trivia answer

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Time to Find Out: Kansas-Illinois Game Preview

• 🏟️ Kansas @ Illinois, 6pm CT Saturday

• 📺 FS1

• 💰 Kansas favored by 4.5 points

• 📊 Most recent games:

  • 📈 Kansas 48, Lindenwood 3.

  • 📈 Illinois 45, Eastern Illinois 0.

The Stakes: Defining KU’s Path for 2024

It’s early in the year. It’s not a Big 12 game. No one ends the season thinking about their Week 2 game.

But let’s not kid ourselves — Saturday is a tone setter.

It’s a sellout. On the road. In the B1G.

As the first real test of the season, we’re gonna find out where KU is right now. Let’s understand how good this team is right now and how good it could be moving forward.

Saturday officially sets KU on a path for the rest of the year: Will the Jayhawks meet lofty expectations right away? Or will they need to rebound and build more slowly than we’ve seen in recent years?

3 Things I’m Watching For:

1) How comfortable is Jalon Daniels?

KU’s QB is at his best when he can improvise. He understandably didn’t do that at all vs. Lindenwood.

But is he confident enough to make plays happen with his feet? All Daniels chatter from fall camp was upbeat.

Let’s see how looks against a team he torched last year.

2) Can the defense line hold its own?

Nerd moment🤓 Kansas allowed 3.2 line yards per rush vs. Lindenwood. You are probably asking yourself: WTF does that mean?

Line yards per rush is a metric that measures the offensive line’s blocking on a run play.

In theory, the 3.2 line yards per rush means Lindenwood’s line got a decent push before Kansas could stop the play. Lindenwood also played against backups and ran the ball a ton with basically no success all day.

So, it’s not a huge takeway… but it’s something to watch for Saturday. Can KU’s defensive line hold its own against an Illinois team that ran all over its Week 1 opponent?

3) Is KU’s offense as good as we think it is?

I get fired up whenever I start explaining KU’s offense to a friend who asks, ‘Is KU gonna be good again this year?’

The star QB is back (need him to be healthy); there are two good RBs, one of them being great, four WRs with tons of experience, and an OL that shoulddd be good enough.

No nerd moments here. I’d think KU will pass all over teams if they load up the box to stop the run and vice versa for the pass.

KU’s offense should be great. We may be able to stop saying “should” by Saturday night.

Prediction: Kansas 34, Illinois 28.

The Jayhawks cover in a high-scoring game. I don’t care about pro money.. or Vegas.. It’s wild to say it, but I trust the Jayhawks, the coaching staff, and this offense.

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What the Betting Market Says about KU-Illinois

If this is your first season with KUhearings, I use my background to analyze the betting market as a unique way of previewing KU games.

What this means: I can generally get a sense of what ‘pro bettors’ or ‘smart money’ thinks will happen in a game. Now, even ‘pros’ are only right around 53-55% of the time… so this is just a slight edge on the public market.

My background: After newspaper life, I spent more than five years working mostly behind the scenes at Bleacher Report, including helping launch their betting vertical and even inventing/popularizing ‘MLB’s most exciting bet,’ per USA Today (you can read the article here, I promise I’m not making it up! LOL). Yes, this is a brag.. but I’m really proud of that work.

Why VIP Only: Transparently, it would over 50 $7 subscriptions to break even on the tools I use to analyze the betting markets. It’s not a massive expense… but it does cost a bit and take a lot of time to go deep on the info.

A resource for you to find other predictions and breakdowns for KU-Illinois:

🏈 ESPN’s Bill Connelly is a go-to resource for me every week. His SP+ formula is generally good edge, or at least something to pay attention to. You can see his tweet here (mentions KU), and his entire Week 2 spreadsheet here.

🏈 CBSSports’ national writers give their picks against the spread here. Pick it up, Dennis Dodd! 😂

🏈 Illinois’ 247Sports site gives a comprehensive breakdown with staff picks here.

🏈 Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde gives his pick against the spread.

🏈 You can see the Kansas City Star’s prediction here (it’s mostly paywalled). The Star also did a film breakdown with former KU Carter Stanley on YouTube here (not paywalled).

Notable Big 12 Games 🏈

If we see ourselves as contenders in the conference, it’s time to start paying attention to the rest of the league.

It’s a strong non-conference slate for the Big 12:

• BYU @ SMU (-11.5); Friday at 6pm CT.

• Arkansas @ Oklahoma St. (-10); Saturday at 11am CT.

• Kansas State (-8.5) @ Tulane; Saturday at 11am CT.

• Pitt @ Cincy (-1.5); Saturday at 11am CT.

• Baylor @ No. 11 Utah (-14.5); Saturday at 2:30pm CT.

• Iowa State @ No. 21 Iowa (-3); Saturday at 2:30pm CT.

• Colorado @ Nebraska; Saturday at 6:30pm CT.

• Houston @ Oklahoma; Saturday at 6:45pm CT.

• Texas Tech @ Wazzu (-1); Saturday at 9pm CT.

• Miss St @ Arizona State (5-5); Saturday at 9:30pm CT

Answer from earlier in the week!

Q: Jalon Daniels has thrown 32 touchdowns as a Jayhawk. He’s six away from tying No. 2 all-time. Who would Daniels be tying with the second-most passing TDs in KU football history?

A: Jason Bean is No. 2 all-time in passing touchdowns. Just amazing. Todd Reesing is No. 1 by a more than double Bean.

I’m still working my way through your email replies! Thanks to everyone who played along.

Let me know what you think about trivia — and if you’d be up for shouting out a few winners by their first name and last initial in future newsletters.