Kentucky took care of business in its season opener. Here’s why that matters.
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Kentucky’s 38-24 win over Toledo to kick off the 2019 season makes it three straight years that the Cats have started 1-0, and gives them 11 straight wins against Mid-American Conference schools.
Let’s look at why the victory matters beyond the scoreboard.
1. No Southern Miss redux
The last thing UK football’s program needed was for a repeat of what happened in 2016, when Southern Miss rallied from an 18-point halftime deficit to hand the Cats a 44-35 loss at Kroger Field (then called Commonwealth Stadium).
Kentucky entered this game with a healthy respect for Toledo, and the players who were around for that loss in 2016 leading up to this weekend were reminded about the perils of coming out with a ton of raw emotion only to see it wasted in the end.
“He made it pretty clear, and the people that were here, they understood it,” UK offensive coordinator Eddie Gran said of Stoops’ refresher on the Southern Miss meltdown.
That loss didn’t doom Kentucky. It took a 45-7 shellacking the next week at Florida before reeling off back-to-back wins against New Mexico State and South Carolina and winning five of its next six overall. UK finished with a trip to the TaxSlayer Bowl and a 7-6 record, its first winning campaign under Stoops.
There’s no reason to believe that had UK lost to Toledo, it wouldn’t have bounced back in similar fashion this year. The good thing for Cats fans is our timeline is the one in which they don’t have to fret about that.
2. Quality win
A frequent refrain of Kentucky basketball fans who try to justify the Cats’ weak non-conference slate of home games goes something like this: “Hey, X team could win its conference!”
Toledo, whom the Cats had never played until Saturday, is a team that can win its conference. The Rockets were picked in the preseason to win the MAC West Division and have won three conference championship games, most recently in 2017, along with 11 total MAC titles.
No, it’s not a power-five school, but Toledo has been more of a winner this decade than Kentucky: It’s one of nine FBS programs with a winning record over the previous nine years. The Rockets in that span went 83-37; Kentucky with its win Saturday improved to 50-63 over the same time period (the Cats would have to top last year’s campaign to finish with a winning record in the decade).
UK is now 31-5 all-time against MAC schools with Eastern Michigan on the horizon.
3. Good PR up north
Ohio continues to be fertile recruiting territory for Kentucky; four of the 16 players so far committed in the the Cats’ class of 2020 hail from the Buckeye state — wide receiver Kalil Branham, running back Torrance Davis, athlete Jutahn McClain and cornerback Carrington Valentine.
Toledo has nowhere near the glamour of an Ohio State, but high school players up there (and even in nearby Michigan, from where UK currently has three 2020 commits) are likely to have a better appreciation for the Cats’ victory than many outside state lines, as the Rockets were among the first to recognize them as FBS-caliber players. All of the aforementioned Ohio recruits but McClain have reported offers from Toledo.
“I think they’ve done a great job recruiting the state of Ohio as a whole,” Toledo head coach Jason Candle said during a conference call this week. “ ... Obviously the SEC sells itself, but they’re closer to some of these kids than some of the Big Ten programs that might be recruiting ’em. It’s a good geographical location for those guys to recruit and we’re obviously very familiar with some of the great players they have from the state of Ohio.”
Next game
Eastern Michigan at Kentucky
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
TV: ESPNU or SEC Network alternate channel
Records: Kentucky 1-0, Eastern Michigan 1-0
This story was originally published August 31, 2019 at 3:24 PM.
