Thoughts on the Cats 26-22 win in Columbia

[bigbluemist]

The game is designed to give offenses advantages to make the game more exciting for fans. The days of 17-14 games are over. UKs defense made plays when they needed to make them. They are young and young only gets better by playing. Stoops has UK moving upward. Enjoy the ride and have some fun.

 

[C1180]

I will explain. Very young team starting 10 freshmen and sophomores on the road, finds itself up by 17 points at halftime. Home team just lost their starting quarterback to a shoulder injury. If smart strategy is used in 2nd half, our situation had W written all over it. Our coaching staff wants a breakout season, and correctly understood they could salt away the school's 1st road win in 5 years by moving the football on the ground and running clock. Running the football had been an emphasis in August, plus South Carolina had shown no indications in the 1st half that they could stop us. It was a sound strategy, but football is a fluid strategic situation. Spurrier pulls unknown Perry Orth right out of his butt, and South Carolina miraculously starts moving the football. Pharoah Cooper gets involved and starts taking over the game. South Carolina's crowd gets louder, and South Carolina's defense suddenly plays a lot better. Meanwhile, Kentucky's offensive line commits a series of stupid penalties that keep putting Towles in bad down and distance situations. Part of that caused by good pressure from South Carolina's defense. Cut to the chase now. Kentucky is 2-0, with 1st road win in a long time. Florida and Missouri struggled yesterday, while Auburn was almost beat by Josh Clemons. Our team has some stuff to clean up. But Hatcher and Flannigan will be back and we are in far better shape than we expected to be. This season is setting up great for us. Our fans should be happy.

I do understand that the UK offense is young. I also understand that it was just as young in the first half as it was in the second half. Another thing is that although young most of the players have a lot of game experience. I just do not believe youth of the offense explains the seeming swooning of the UK offense in the second half of both of its games. IMO they came out of the locker room for the second half for both games for some reason with much less energy than they had to start the games. This team is not talented enough to win mailing it in.

I give the defense credit for saving the game for UK until the offense finally awoke from its slumber and started to move the ball at the end to seal the game.