Kentucky vs. ULM predictions: Do Wildcats flash fry or slow cook the Warhawks?
It’s almost time for Kentucky’s 2021 season opener!. Here are some final thoughts and predictions about how the Wildcats’ matchup with Louisiana Monroe might play out at Kroger Field on Saturday.
First-game jitters
Fans eager to see Will Levis deal the ball to Wan’Dale Robinson, Josh Ali and whoever steps up from beneath them on the depth chart should get that opportunity. Kentucky is going to throw the ball and take some shots — it needs to get legitimate game reps against an opposing defense that isn’t wearing blue-and-white — and Levis, in particular, needs to demonstrate that oft-mentioned accuracy issues are a concern he left behind in Happy Valley.
While you shouldn’t expect the Cats to get overly cute — why open up the playbook against a team that finished 0-10 last season and that comes to Lexington as a 30-point underdog? — it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Liam Coen, who’s coaching an offense for the first time at the Power Five level, and Levis, starting a season as the quarterback for the first time in college, to use Saturday as a space to feel things out more than one might usually against an overmatched opponent. With this as UK’s only buffer before its matchup with Missouri, there could be even more attention paid to ironing out first-game jitters for all applicable parties.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous, but I also think that’s good,” Levis said this week. “That means I’ve got a big opportunity here and it’s really exciting for me. It’s something I’ve been waiting on for a very long time. At the end of the day, it’s just going out there and playing ball. I’m gonna prepare my butt off, be ready for the game and let everything come to me, and trust my instincts and the schemes that are drawn up for us.”
Growing pains on ‘D’
While the opponent is probably going to be a better-oiled machine than it was in 2020, when ULM ranked near the bottom of the country scoring 16.3 points per game, it’s hard to see ULM putting things together quickly enough to give Kentucky fits. The Cats could start up to 10 seniors on Saturday, all but one of whom (Jacquez Jones) has been in Lexington for their entire career; struggle should not be uttered at all by the UK defense.
Of most immediate and long-term concern to the Kentucky “D” is its ability to generate pressure, which tapered off considerably in 2020. ULM last year gave up 2.7 sacks per game to its opponents, good for 96th in the country. The Warhawks return three starting offensive linemen, including big left tackle Blake Lodes (6-7, 315 pounds), but lost two others to the transfer portal.
Defensive coordinator Brad White on Saturday is looking for “the best version” of Kentucky, which, one imagines, would look like a defense that can manufacture more sacks over the course of the season than it did in 2020 (15, or 1.3 per game). He says that there isn’t a pre-determined snap count in mind that he’d like to get to for younger players behind the starters, some of whom will be playing college football for the first time. It’d be in Kentucky’s best interest, with Missouri on deck, to get those guys as many reps as possible just to get them more accustomed to the flow of a 60-minute, major-level contest.
“They’ll be out there,” head coach Mark Stoops said Thursday. “They have to be. They’ll be out there, and they’ll be out there when the game is on the line, whenever that is. We don’t know how these games are gonna play out, so they’re gonna play significant snaps and they’ll play early.”
Final predictions
Kentucky 56, ULM 7: If nothing else, this contest should serve a message to fans that the Cats are equipped, and willing, to put higher point totals on the board. They’re going to get their 12th straight non-conference win. (The last loss? To Northwestern in the 2017 Music City Bowl). Saturday is more about aesthetics.
Under Stoops, Kentucky has scored 50 or more points just five times, and only three times against an FBS opponent (most recently at Louisville in 2018). Alabama last season scored 50-plus points in seven games, all of them against SEC foes except Ohio State, who the Crimson Tide creamed for the national title. UK isn’t going to become Alabama, especially in a year’s time, but it has to start trying to keep up with the Joneses, and it starts here.
The Cats’ highest points per game ranking under Stoops was 58th, in 2016, at 30 ppg; they’ve only dropped in that metric over the four seasons since, bottoming out at 21.8 ppg (108th!) in 2020. Kentucky has crossed the 60-point threshold only once in the Stoops era, in a 62-42 shootout with New Mexico State in 2016. That was the last Sun Belt Conference visitor UK hosted; the Aggies, who will come to Lexington in November, are now an independent. Expecting 60-plus points is probably optimistic, but if UK puts up anything less than 50 against the Warhawks — who in 2020 didn’t play a single Power Five school and still allowed 42 points per game to their opponents, sixth worst in the country — it’d border on disappointment.
MVP: Chris Rodriguez. Surprise! Despite all the talk about UK’s balanced offense in the offseason, its run game will reign supreme against a squad that gave up 249 rushing yards per game a year ago (seventh most in the country). C-Rod, who this week said he’d like to average 10 yards per carry en route to being the the top running back in the SEC, might be able to do that for at least one week. He scores three times and tops 100 yards.
A good gamble: Bovada on Thursday had even odds for Kentucky covering -18.5 by halftime. If you believe UK’s gonna run away with it, it’s not hard to talk yourself into thinking it’ll happen quickly.
The last word
Bill Curry, then the head coach at Kentucky, offered this perspective on criticism during the lead-up to UK’s first meeting with ULM in 1994, which ended in a 21-14 loss:
“We live in a day and age of ridicule. That’s what our humor is. Turn on any sitcom and what it is is ridicule of other people — public figures, any public figures. It’s not just athletics. (It’s) especially politicians, entertainers. Anybody is considered fair game. And it’s not just the press, but now we have the advent of anonymous people being able to say things out into the public domain on call-in shows. Regardless of what you think of that, whether you think it’s very good or whether you think it’s very bad, it affects teenagers. One of my jobs is to teach them how to deal with that.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 7:58 AM.
