‘We’re gonna need to play our very best.’ UK begins prep for No. 1 Georgia.
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Preview: No. 11 Kentucky at No. 1 Georgia
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s preview coverage ahead of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at 3:30 p.m. in Athens, Ga.
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After six weeks of effort, and dozens more in the offseason spent conditioning itself, Kentucky is one step away from sending its program into another stratosphere.
The No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs await UK in Athens. It’s the only school in the Southeastern Conference’s Eastern Division that Mark Stoops hasn’t been able to topple — he’s 0-8 — and is odds-on favorite to win this year’s national championship. Georgia’s allowing only 5.5 points and 203.5 yards per game, the two most basic defensive metrics among the many in which the Bulldogs lead the country.
It’s not David vs. Goliath — at 6-0, No. 11 Kentucky has proved to be no slouch — but it’s the most difficult test remaining for a team that has major, and at this point very attainable, aspirations.
“This week we’re gonna need to play our very best,” Stoops said during his Monday news conference. “There’s no question about that.”
Kentucky hasn’t scored a touchdown against Georgia since 2018, the last time the two met with the stakes at their highest: UK lost 34-17 at Kroger Field with a berth to the SEC championship game on the line. This year’s contest won’t settle the East, but it’ll put its winner in the driver’s seat; Georgia has divisional games against Florida, Missouri and Tennessee left while Kentucky has UT and Vanderbilt remaining.
The Wildcats lost 21-0 in a downpour the last time they visited Athens, and 14-3 last year in Lexington. Both of those games featured an atypical starter at quarterback for UK — Lynn Bowden was making his second start after moving from wide receiver in 2019 and Joey Gatewood started his only game in place of an injured Terry Wilson against Georgia last year — and very little passing by either squad. The Bulldogs were much more efficient in the last two meetings, though; they’ve combined to go 18 of 26 for 161 yards without a touchdown and with two interceptions, both tossed by former walk-on and current starter Stetson Bennett in last year’s meeting.
Kentucky combined to go 17 of 41 for 108 yards in those same games. This year they’ll start a guy who has started every game of the season and who has been gifted with a special wide receiver in Wan’Dale Robinson. Will Levis is coming off his best performance in a UK uniform, going 14 of 17 for 145 yards and three touchdown passes. He also rushed for 75 yards and two scores on 11 rushes, complementing two UK running backs (Chris Rodriguez and Kavosiey Smoke) who crossed the century mark against the Tigers.
“He’s a good football player,” Stoops said of Levis. “With the way he runs, the way he ad-libbed a little bit. We do a lot of different things, as you can tell, with different shifts, motions, different actions in the run game. Whether it’s a bad snap or a bobbled snap, he’s made plays with certain things. The other day we were mixed up on a play and he turns around and runs it for 8 yards or something. He’s playing really good football.”
Georgia’s giving up just 66.5 yards per game on the ground, which is fourth in the nation. It has finished as the top rushing defense each of the last two years (74.9 YPG in 2019, 72.3 YPG in 2020), which is notable here only because Kentucky has been an outlier on the Bulldogs’ ledger in those seasons. UK is the only team in each of the last two seasons to rush for 100-plus yards against the Bulldogs, and last year was the only one to do so other than Alabama. Bowden finished 1 yard shy of having a 100-yard game in Athens, and Rodriguez put up 108 yards on 20 carries a year ago.
Being able to marry even a moderately effective passing game to the level of success it has had running against Georgia in the past would be invaluable for Kentucky in this latest showdown. For it to shock the college football world, that’s one of the boxes that must be checked.
Another? Keeping turnovers to zilch, and creating as many as it can. After building up a nation-worst minus-9 turnover margin through its first four games, Kentucky’s plus-1 over its last two games, each against the most talented teams it has played to date. More importantly, it hasn’t fumbled the ball on offense since the trip to South Carolina.
“I feel like we just kind of lost our mind for a second,” Rodriguez said of the previous ball-security issues on Saturday. “It was just lackadaisical of us. We’ve been working on it.”
Georgia was generous with the ball through its first four games, too, giving it up seven times (five interceptions, two lost fumbles) but was turnover-free against Arkansas and Auburn. The Bulldogs have forced 10 turnovers this year but have only have one (an interception last week) in their last two outings.
It’ll be as physical a game as Kentucky’s played in, and will especially test its depth in the trenches. The Wildcats are already depleted on the defensive line — nose tackle Marquan McCall will be unavailable again and defensive tackle Octavious Oxendine is out for the season after playing the best game of his fledgling career — and had some scares on the offensive line when starting tackles Darian Kinnard and Dare Rosenthal each were sidelined for a spell against LSU. Both are good to go at Georgia, along with Jeremy Flax, who Stoops said was unavailable on Saturday.
Kentucky wants to keep playing in big games, and it won’t get bigger in this regular season than the challenge before it Saturday. Stoops’ team will prepare accordingly — in the same manner it’s done to get to this juncture.
“There’s no laying off the gas,” Stoops said. “We’re banged up. We’re beat up. I don’t give a crap. We’re going hard. We’re gonna be who we are and do the best we can.”
Saturday
No. 11 Kentucky at No. 1 Georgia
When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday
Records: UK (6-0, 4-0 SEC); Georgia (6-0, 4-0 SEC)
TV: CBS-27
This story was originally published October 11, 2021 at 2:28 PM.
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