Storyline: If Kentucky beats Georgia at home on Saturday and Tennessee in Knoxville next Saturday–and Florida loses to Arkansas and LSU–then the Cats will play for the SEC championship.
SEC East football is turning upside down. Over the summer many analysis, including me, picked Tennessee to win the SEC East. Georgia and Florida were other popular picks.
Courtesy: Wikipedia.com
How many predicted Kentucky, that’s right, UK, to bring home the bacon? This is football, not basketball, after all.
But after a convincing 35-21 win at Mizzou this past weekend, Mark Stoops and his Wildcats are only .5 game behind the Gators. Kentucky has a 5-3 overall record and a 4-2 SEC mark in SEC play. No other SEC East is close to either Florida or Kentucky (the Vols are best at 2-3).
Who would have picked UK after its lackadaisical start? The Wildcats lost, 44-35, to Southern Miss in the season opener and then got run out of Gainesville, 45-7, by the Gators. At that point UK going to a bowl seemed about as likely as a Democratic winning in Texas.
But, since then, the Wildcats have won five out of six with the lone loss coming to top-ranked Alabama. And UK wasn’t dominated by the Tide, either. The Cats held Alabama to just 34 points–the second-lowest offensive output of the season for Jalen Hurts and the Crimson Tide.
In what has been a season to remember, Kentucky has ripped off three straight SEC victories for the first time since I was in diapers. If UK can beat a struggling Georgia team at Commonwealth Stadium this Saturday, it will be the first time Kentucky has been undefeated in league play at home since–get this–1977!
Sure, Kentucky doesn’t have a record of beating top teams and they’ve managed narrow wins against, well, average teams. The Wildcats beat both South Carolina and Vanderbilt by a touchdown and it took a last-second, 51-yard field goal to beat Mississippi State. But, hey, those were wins, not losses.
Long story short: this year Big Blue Nation isn’t just looking ahead to the basketball season.
What has been behind the turnaround?
Courtesy: UK Athletics
Two-headed Monster: Opposing teams had enough to contend with when speedy and All-SEC running back, “Boom” Williams, appeared as the lone threat in the Wildcats’ backfield. But nightmares really started for opposing defensive coordinators when Benny Snell, Jr. arrived in Lexington.
The true freshman didn’t play in the first two games of the season, but had quite a coming-out-party against New Mexico State, rushing for 136 yards and four touchdowns on 17 carries. Against South Carolina he rushed for 41 of the Wildcats’ 65 yards on the game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter.
Then, against Missouri, he rushed for 192 yards and two touchdowns on 38 carries. Williams had over 180 rushing yards. It was the first time in school history that two players had rushed for 175-plus yards in a SEC game.
Courtesy: UK Athletics
QB Stephen Johnson: Drew Barker was named the starter coming out of pre-season camp, but his first two games of the season were, as Donald Trump would say, “a disaster.” Against Florida he completed more passes to the Gator secondary than to his own receivers–THREE interceptions and TWO completed passes.
But then Barker suffered a season-ending back in the New Mexico State game. Enter Stephen Johnson, a JUCO transfer. Johnson had an excellent game against the Aggies, completing 17-of-22 passes for 310 yards and three touchdowns.
While Johnson hasn’t posted numbers like that every game, he has made plenty of plays. In the Mississippi State game, for example, he engineered the drive that set up a game-winning field goal.
Johnson has the ability to scramble and his throwing accuracy has gotten better each week. The Cats have gone 5-1 with him under center, 0-2 before.
Courtesy: Twitter
Defensive adjustments: Head Coach Mark Stoops took over the defense at halftime of the New Mexico State game. Man, has that move paid off! Kentucky has since gone 5-1.
An area of improvement worth noting is third-down defense, which was evident in the Mizzou game: MU was 4-for-16 on third-down conversions. Third down defense is one of the primary indicants of a good defensive team, and the Wildcats are emerging as one of the better defensive teams in the conference.
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A few weeks ago Wildcat fans were wondering if Kentucky would make a bowl. With winless FCS opponent Austin Peay left on the schedule, reaching the six-win plateau is all but done.
Believe it or not, though, Kentucky is looking at a bigger prize–winning the division. The reason? Florida’s schedule. It won’t take a crazy set of circumstances to get UK to Atlanta.
Here’s how. If Kentucky beats Georgia at home on Saturday, then, Tennessee in Knoxville next Saturday–and Florida loses to Arkansas and LSU–then the Cats will be going to Atlanta to play for the SEC championship.
Sure, that’s a lot of “ifs,” but crazier things have happened in college football.
