UK’s Terry Wilson faces fellow transfer who was almost perfect in season opener
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UK vs. Eastern Michigan preview
Check below all week for coverage of the University of Kentucky football team leading up to its game against Eastern Michigan on Saturday.
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Eastern Michigan’s football team has at least one thing in common with the Kentucky Wildcats: Both will start former junior-college stars at quarterback.
Each signal caller brings varying degrees of experience to the table. UK’s Terry Wilson, a junior, started every game of the Wildcats’ 10-3 campaign last year. Mike Glass III has been at EMU since 2017 — when UK held off a 24-20 upset bid in the programs’ first meeting — but took a redshirt that season, and last year as a junior split starts and snaps with another quarterback, so he’s just now getting an opportunity to be the Eagles’ main man.
“We put a lot on him,” EMU head coach Chris Creighton said following the Eagles’ 30-23 win over Coastal Carolina, an FCS school, last weekend. “He wasn’t perfect, but I thought had a really good first outing.”
Glass wasn’t perfect in EMU’s season opener but he was darned close: He threw for three touchdowns on 20-of-22 passing, setting a school record for completion percentage (90.9%), and also rushed for a touchdown. It was the most efficient outing by an FBS quarterback through one week of play, earning him co-Offensive Player of the Week recognition in the Mid-American Conference West Division as well a nomination in The Manning Award Quarterback of the Week poll.
Wilson last week against Toledo missed a few more throws than Glass but didn’t show any sign of slippage from 2018, in which he finished as one of the Southeastern Conference’s most efficient passers. He was 19-of-26 (73%) for 246 yards and two TDs; that tied for the fourth-most completions and was the fourth-most attempts in Wilson’s 14 games with the Wildcats. He’s completed at least 70 percent of his passes in six of those outings.
Arguably Wilson’s most befuddling misfire against Toledo was a mistimed lateral to Lynn Bowden that went into the scorebook as a fumble. Bowden recovered but UK lost 8 yards on the play after picking up six on a first down; the drive ended in a punt.
Both head coach Mark Stoops and co-offensive coordinator Eddie Gran have belabored their quarterback’s decision-making since Saturday.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Gran said of that play. “You get to third down and 5 there. Throw the ball away. That’s all we’ve talked about. We’ve got to get that cleaned up fast, because you can’t overcome that against anybody.”
Bowden shared some responsibility for that blunder, Wilson said.
“I was trying to go to my check down, and I scrambled, and I’d seen Lynn there and Lynn’s screaming, ‘Terry, Terry, throw it to me,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, man,’” Wilson said with a grin. “I should have just thrown it out, but it’s all good, I learned from it.”
Bowden said, had he reeled in the backward pass, he probably would have flipped the field and scored. He didn’t shy away from his role in that misfire.
“Whatever he decides to do with it, that’s on him, but I’m always in his ear,” Bowden said. “I don’t really like Terry getting shots put on him. (We want) the least hits on him as possible. I just told him, ‘I’m here with you.’ It kind of slipped out of his hands on the pass but I just made sure it wasn’t a turnover.”
UK in its last meeting with Eastern Michigan allowed five sacks and 10 tackles for loss. Five linemen who played in that game will play Saturday — Luke Fortner, Drake Jackson, Logan Stenberg, Mason Wolfe and Landon Young — and know not to take the Eagles lightly despite their program’s Group of Five status.
Gran won’t let ’em forget it. Film from that game has been in front of their faces all week.
“We absolutely got out tail kicked,” Gran said. “We didn’t play well enough, it was awful.”
Wilson, who’s looking to improve to 12-3 as Kentucky’s starter, was surprised that EMU sacked Stephen Johnson with such ease in 2017. He’s confident the guys up front will be up to the task in this week’s rematch; he was sacked only once against Toledo.
“They were playing really hard, I guess,” Wilson said of the Eagles’ defensive line. “I watched a few clips on those games and saw what they were doing, and we weren’t moving the ball as good as we should have. We just can’t underestimate any teams.”
Around the SEC
▪ Tennessee wide receiver Jordan Murphy and defensive back Terrell Bailey, neither of whom played in the Volunteers’ loss to Georgia State last Saturday, have voluntarily left the program, UT head coach Jeremy Pruitt said during the SEC coaches’ teleconference on Wednesday.
Murphy earlier this week retweeted a tweet that made fun of Tennessee for losing to Georgia State, whom it paid $950,000 to play at Neyland Stadium to open the year.
Saturday
Eastern Michigan at Kentucky
When: 7:30 p.m.
TV: SEC Network alternate channel
This story was originally published September 5, 2019 at 7:00 AM.
