Kentucky upset Missouri. Can it parlay that into a season to remember?
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Game day: Kentucky vs. Missouri
Click below for more of Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Missouri football game at Kroger Field in Lexington.
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Kentucky defeated Missouri for the fifth straight year, 29-7 at Kroger Field on Saturday night, its longest current streak over a Southeastern Conference opponent.
Rare spot
UK isn’t in contention for the SEC East Division crown, nor is it likely to finish among the top three teams, but its win over the Tigers affirms that the Wildcats are not a bottom-dweller in the league.
Losses to either Tennessee or Vanderbilt — and especially to both — might reverse that opinion, depending on how they were to play out, but Kentucky since its first bye week has looked like a team capable of finishing at least .500 in SEC play for the fourth straight season, a feat that’s been achieved just one other time in program history, from 1953 to 1956.
That stretch happened more than 60 years ago. It kicked off with Bear Bryant’s final season, in which the Cats finished 7-2-1 and a 4-1-1 record in conference (the tie was with LSU, 6-6, and the loss to Mississippi), and ended with Blanton Collier’s third in charge of the program. The SEC wouldn’t integrate for another decade — a lot’s happened since then, including more losing than winning when it comes to the Big Blue Nation’s team of choice.
Mark Stoops with wins over UT and Vandy would become the only coach to, in four consecutive seasons, guide UK to a .500 or better record in SEC play. That says a lot about where Kentucky’s been, but it also says a lot about where it’s been lately.
‘Special’ season?
It’s mathematically impossible for Kentucky to match its 10 wins from a year ago, but don’t let one of the program’s finest seasons ever preclude you from thinking that 2019 can’t be “special.”
That word is relative: A “special” year for Alabama or Clemson begins and ends with a national championship; anything less would be a disappointment. Special for say, Arkansas State, might be a season that ends with a victory in the Mobile Alabama Bowl.
Kentucky has played in only 18 bowl games, fewer than every SEC team not named Vanderbilt (nine total). One could argue still that a season that merely ends in a bowl trip is “special,” given their infrequency. Six-win seasons aren’t common, either — just 34 of the previous 103 ended with the Cats meeting that mark.
After three straight bowl appearances, it’s tough to say that merely making a bowl qualifies as “special,” but you start creeping that way if you win one, or if the stature of the bowl you play in gets enhanced because you finished as one of the nation’s hottest teams. If Kentucky ends the regular season on a five-game win streak — as it well could — and takes an 8-4 record into a bowl, that’d be pretty special regardless of the bowl’s result, especially considering that it would have won the majority of those games with backup quarterbacks.
Bye blues avoided
In the short term, the best aspect of Kentucky’s victory is that it prevented the program from falling into relative obscurity over the next two weeks while basketball season ramps up.
The nation’s No. 2 hoops squad is set to host some Tigers itself for an exhibition Sunday. Had UK lost Saturday, the immediate turn to basketball — even basketball that doesn’t count for anything — might have ended whatever football enthusiasm still existed among the general public after the Cats’ earlier three-game losing streak.
Two weeks for a loss to fester did UK’s players some good headed into Arkansas, but it’s unlikely it would have been anything but poison for fans this time around. There’s another game in town, and it’s the one in which national championships are expected (see: the Alabama reference in the preceding section).
Kentucky football can keep up with the attention and conversation garnered by its roundball counterpart as long as it gives fans a reason to stay invested. As nice as it is to think that a promising outlook can sustain those things — a loss would not have at all been a dagger in UK’s football season — many folks are fickle, and if a choice has to be made between a championship-caliber team or one in the midst of a rebuild that’s lost five of its last six games ... need I say more?
This story was originally published October 26, 2019 at 10:48 PM.
