Kansas football RB Daniel Hishaw Jr. reflects on his college career
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LAWRENCE — The week of Kansas football’s regular season finale, in late November, coach Lance Leipold named a number of the athletes set to play their last home game in Lawrence.
There, of course, was redshirt senior quarterback Jalon Daniels. There was that trio of redshirt senior defensive tackles in Kenean Caldwell, D.J. Withers and Tommy Dunn Jr. There was also redshirt senior running back Daniel Hishaw Jr., among others.
In Hishaw, was someone Leipold couldn’t help but praise for how much growth he’d made across not even the past 12 months. It was fulfilling as a coach to see that, and Leipold would extend this to the coaching staff at large as well, because they stuck with Hishaw and Hishaw stuck with them. To see Hishaw become who he is today mattered a great deal.
And while days later Hishaw acknowledged he was sad postgame, after the season ended with a 31-21 loss against a top-25 Utah team, he also expressed a lot of appreciation for the time he was able to spend at KU (5-7). He loved Kansas, and was proud of the fight his team showed amid that disappointing defeat. He volunteered he was trying to let all his teammates know postgame that they’ll be all right, that life goes on, even as hard as it was to stay positive in that moment.
“My biggest thing is just going to be, like, the smiles in the locker room, just having fun,” Hishaw said Nov. 28 as he reflected on his college career. “Football, college football especially I feel like, is like — I feel like it could be some of the hardest times for a young man, whatever, because it’s a lot of ups and downs and everything. But when everybody can just be happy together — even though somebody might be playing over another person, but when somebody has love for that person playing over them and just be able to have fun and joke around. It’s like you don’t know who’s the starter in that locker room because everybody’s just feeling the same.”
Hishaw allowed it is tough to not just go out on one five-win season, but back-to-back five-win seasons that didn’t result in trips to bowl games. It’s not only that no one wants to come up short of playing in a bowl game, but the reality they also went into those seasons aiming to win more than just six games. But Hishaw also pivoted quickly to talking again about how proud he was of his team, and how the new arrivals bought in to the team’s culture this season.
Hishaw, who had to persevere through injury during his time at Kansas, finished with 587 yards and five scores on the ground in 10 games in 2025. That includes 65 yards and two scores on the ground during an early-November win at home against Oklahoma State, as well as 107 yards and one score on the ground in the loss against Utah. His most prolific season on the ground came in 2023, when Kansas last reached and won a bowl game, when in 13 games he rushed for 626 yards and eight scores.
What the future of the running backs room looked like then seemed uncertain, especially after the team relied upon the one-two punch of Hishaw and redshirt senior Leshon Williams in 2025. It looks even more uncertain in late December after two of the guys Hishaw highlighted as key parts of that future, redshirt freshman Harry Stewart III and redshirt sophomore Johnny Thompson Jr., revealed they intend to enter the transfer portal. But back postgame in late November, Hishaw outlined how much he trusts Leipold to lead KU to success in the future.
“I just see success,” Hishaw said. “I always see success in coach Leipold and our program. I’ve never not, especially once he got here. I’ve never not thought we weren’t going to be successful in a season, and I still don’t believe that even for the next years on. It’s just — I think it just depends on how the players want to attack every day and making sure the players come with the right mindset every day. If they do that, they’re going to be successful.”
Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He was the 2022 National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football running back Daniel Hishaw Jr. reflects on his career
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