A less confident team would have folded. ‘But that wasn’t the case’ for UK.
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Game day: Kentucky at Vanderbilt
Click below to view more of Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s 38-14 University of Kentucky football victory over Vanderbilt at Nashville, Tenn.
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With 4:36 to play in the first quarter, Kentucky trailed 14-3 at Vanderbilt. The same Vanderbilt that one week before lost 56-0 at Florida and entered Saturday’s game with a scoring average better than only four FBS schools.
Good thing Kentucky stuck to its guns: the Wildcats, committed to run-oriented attack since the installment of Lynn Bowden at quarterback a month ago, piled up 401 rushing yards and scored 35 unanswered points to leave Tennessee with a 38-14 victory.
It will host its final two regular-season games — Tennessee Martin next week and Louisville two days after Thanksgiving — in the friendly confines Kroger Field but Kentucky, effectively, will have played its final five games of the season at home. The announced crowd of 23,288 was predominantly blue, especially as the game wore on and UK’s rushers repeatedly wore down Vanderbilt’s defense.
With its most recent memory being the back-to-back failures to punch in a last-minute score against Tennessee, Kentucky’s offense could have buckled when Vanderbilt’s Allan George recovered a fumble and returned it 67 yards for the touchdown that put the Commodores up 11 points.
UK stayed the course, and as a result picked up its third and final Southeastern Conference win of the season.
“It would be easy for the guys to panic if they didn’t have confidence in what we were going to do because, let’s face it, we are methodical right now and there’s not a ton of explosive plays,” Stoops said. “Now, we created some and we created some big yardage again and controlled the clock. However, when you go down 14-3, if you’re not a team that has confidence in what we’re doing, you could flinch right there because you know points have been hard. But that wasn’t the case.”
UK matched its season high for points scored this year, and it was the Wildcats’ first time scoring 30 or more points since a 38-17 win over Eastern Michigan.
Bowden finished with on 17 carries for 110 yards, his fourth time going for more than 100 yards, despite not playing in the fourth quarter. He’s the first Kentucky player to ever rush for 100 or more yards against three consecutive SEC opponents. Bowden was also 8-for-10 passing for 104 yards with a touchdown.
Kentucky finished with 400 rushing yards for at least the sixth time in school history (UK’s published records cut off the top five rushing performances at 409 yards). The single-game record has stood since 1951, when the Cats rushed for 446 yards against Tennessee Tech on Sept. 15 of that year.
It was Kentucky’s second-best rushing total under Mark Stoops, and its most in a victory. His 2016 Cats rushed for 443 yards at Tennessee in a 49-36 loss.
Redshirt runners
Chris Rodriguez topped 100 yards for the first time in his career. He led the Cats’ big day on the ground with 129 yards and two TDs on 15 carries. Kavosiey Smoke “chipped in” 95 yards and a TD, also on 15 rushes.
Both are redshirt freshmen.
“I noticed it today, a little bit of growth,” Stoops said of the pair. “And you probably did, too. Just some of the runs they made today, I haven’t necessarily seen. You’ve seen flashes, you’ve seen ’em do some really good things, but today I saw a couple of runs they kind of took over. Pretty determined, tough runs.”
It was the second straight week that Rodriguez, who found himself on the short end of carries after a rough start to the season, finished with a career-high rushing total.
“Just trust in my o-line,” Rodriguez said when asked about his improved play the last few weeks. “They make great calls. Shout out to them, man, they played their butts off today.”
Notes
▪ Middle linebacker DeAndre Square was injured trying to tackle Vanderbilt’s Ke’Shawn Vaughn on what ended as 5-yard TD run to put the Commodores up 7-3 with 5:21 left in the first quarter. Square was evaluated for a shoulder injury and did not return to the game.
Sophomore Jamin Davis, who absorbed some of Square’s snaps, finished as UK’s leader with six tackles (three unassisted).
▪ Lexington native Walker Wood, a quarterback, played for the first time in his career. Wood, a Lafayette High School graduate, entered the game with 5:39 to play. He finished with 12 yards on two carries and threw one pass for a 7-yard completion to Bryce Oliver.
▪ Sawyer Smith also saw time at QB on Saturday. He converted a third-and-1 run early in the drive that resulted in UK’s first TD and relieved Bowden for an offensive series in the fourth quarter. He finished threw for 16 yards on 2-for-4 passing.
▪ Cornerback Yusuf Corker recorded his first career interception, which led to UK’s final TD: a 27-yard run by Rodriguez with 3:51 to play.
Next game
Tennessee Martin at Kentucky
3:30 p.m. Saturday (SEC Network)
This story was originally published November 16, 2019 at 8:40 PM.
