Friday Husker Pick’em — Kansas

Lynell Klassen, M.D., says the Nebraska offense might find some of former Kansas basketball coach James Naismith’s tips useful in moving the ball against the Jayhawks on Saturday. (Andrew E. Nelson, UNMC public relations)

A couple interesting facts heading into Saturday’s Nebraska-Kansas game:

• All three of our regular panelists were happily wrong in their calls for an Oklahoma victory last week; and
  
• In the two years we’ve run the Husker Pick’em series, we’ve had four guest panelists and not one has correctly picked a winner.

Maybe that changes this week as our fifth guest panelist, Lynell Klassen, M.D., takes a crack at the NU-KU matchup.

Dr. Klassen — chairman of the department of internal medicine — is a native Kansan who graduated from the KU med school in 1973.

Records Here’s how our regular panelists stack up after nine games: Jeff Hill, M.D., 6-3 Team Runco/Kelsay (Lisa Runco and Chad Kelsay), 5-4 Rob Zatechka, M.D., 5-4

Dr. Klassen — a high school track star in central Kansas — admitted he wasn’t much of a football fan but his comments below would make a true Jayhawk fan proud.

Dr. Klassen says, “I’m a bit worried about the Kansas point guard and how he will handle the Nebraska defense. And maybe Nebraska’s offense should take tips from the great James Naismith (inventor of basketball and former Kansas hoops coach) and pass the ball four times before shooting.” Kansas 19, NU 10

Dr. Hill is out of town this week but he did send us his score prediction. NU 21, Kansas 17

Team Runco/Kelsay says, “I guess you could say, we can’t stay away from the Kool-Aid. Our defense is pretty darn good and we’re feeling more confident, but we believe that might just be a bad thing. KU’s defense is not very good, which is something our offense needs. We hope our ‘D’ is good for at least one score themselves.” NU 13, Kansas 7

Dr. Zatechka says, “The Kansas offense, while beset by poor execution and a lot of turnovers over the past four weeks, still has arguably the best talent in the conference. NU’s offense did run OK against Oklahoma and did a reasonable job burning the game clock. If they can do the same Saturday and avoid turnovers, our defense should hopefully take care of the rest.” NU 24, KU 13