Yes, Kentucky football can beat Georgia. And there’s no time like the present.
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Preview: No. 20 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 7 p.m. in Athens, Ga.
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After proving it has changed the outcome of one formerly lopsided SEC series, Kentucky football now has another mountain to climb. Call it Mount Athens.
After defeating Florida for the third consecutive year, Athens is where Mark Stoops’ Wildcats will be this Saturday for a 7 p.m. date with the two-time defending national champions and No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs at Sanford Stadium.
Stoops is 0-10 versus the Dawgs. The Wildcats have lost blowouts (52-17 in 2013) and nail-biters (27-24 in 2016). They’ve been battered (42-13 in 2017) and blanked (21-0 in a 2019 downpour). While Georgia was winning back-to-back titles, Kentucky gave the better Bulldogs a game (30-13 in 2021 and 16-6 last year) but not a loss.
Georgia is not invincible. Not this year. The Bulldogs trailed South Carolina 14-3 at the half before winning 24-14 in Athens on Sept. 16. Saturday at Auburn, they trailed 10-0 at the end of the first quarter and 17-10 in the third quarter before Brock Bowers’ 40-yard touchdown catch from quarterback Carson Beck with 2:52 left allowed Kirby Smart’s team to escape with a 27-20 win.
Saturday was not just Georgia’s first road test of the season, but the first road test of Beck’s career. As Stetson Bennett’s successor, the junior from Jacksonville completed 23 of 33 passes for 313 yards and a score with an interception. The nation’s best tight end, Bowers caught eight passes for 157 yards and that game-winner.
Losing its invincibility does not mean Georgia will lose, however. The Bulldogs have won 22 straight. They are gunning for a historic third straight national crown. They are 5-0 this year, including 2-0 in the SEC. Full disclosure: I still have the Bulldogs at the top of my AP Top 25 ballot. Until beaten, they own the throne.
Still, Kentucky is the best team Georgia will have played to this point. In a show-up game, the Cats showed that Saturday in their convincing 33-14 win over the Gators, easing the doubts Stoops’ squad elicited while winning four games over inferior foes.
Ray Davis was spectacular. The running back transfer from Vanderbilt rushed for 280 yards and scored four touchdowns on the afternoon, but he had help. Still a question mark after four games, UK’s offensive line knocked the Gators off the ball while opening holes. Billed as a matchup of physical teams, Kentucky was the physical team.
“We’ve gotten beat around here,” Florida coach Billy Napier said. “I don’t know that we’ve been beat up like that.”
“We needed to go back to establishing the line of scrimmage, that is who we are,” Stoops said after his team rushed for 223 yards in the first half, 329 for the game. “And to rush the ball for that many yards in the first half was really impressive by our team.”
Ranked 22nd in last week’s AP poll, was Florida overrated? Probably. Praise was based on the Gators’ 29-16 victory over Tennessee on Sept. 16. The Vols have lost 10 straight in Gainesville, however. And Florida has been a terrible road team under Napier, now 1-7 as the Gators’ coach away from the friendly confines of The Swamp.
Kroger Field was far from friendly to Saturday’s visitors. Who says you can’t have a party at noon? The “Stripe-Out” worked — blue-clad fans on one side of the stadium; white-clad ones on the other — and Stoops’ Monday assessment that the BBN would “pound beers” before the early kickoff set the tone.
“I hope they behaved well, or Mitch (Barnhart) will give me a scolding,” a smiling Stoops said in the postgame presser. “But we jumped out to such a strong start and, you know, at the end they were kind of quiet. I’m like, ‘They’ve come to expect this kind of win.’”
Few will be expecting Kentucky to win this Saturday, of course. Under the lights at Sanford will be a different setting and a different story. Can Kentucky begin to turn the Georgia series around the same way it did the Florida series? It can. And there’s no time like the present.
This story was originally published October 1, 2023 at 12:22 PM.
