There’s no getting around the importance of Kentucky football’s September SEC games
To use an Olympic track analogy, Kentucky football can’t be left in the starting blocks.
You know the deal. No soft early-season schedule for Mark Stoops’ troops this time around. The Wildcats do open against underdog Southern Miss in three weeks, but after that it’s bam, bam with a pair of SEC foes walking down the tunnel onto Kroger Field. Archrival South Carolina arrives Sept. 7. The big, bad Bulldogs of Georgia come calling Sept. 14.
True, Kentucky won’t pack it in for 2024 if it loses both those games, but a pair of early losses would have the Cats playing catch-up the rest of the way. And the “rest of the way” includes games at Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas. An 0-2 SEC start activates scramble mode.
So here was my question: With that in mind, are the Cats approaching this training camp any differently?
Brad White didn’t bite. In his sixth season as defensive coordinator, White took the take each step one-by-one approach.
“Nope, I don’t think so,” the defensive play-caller said after Thursday’s practice. “It doesn’t really matter who you play. In camp, you’ve got to approach it as this is the time to work and get our team set.”
Luckily for me, Bush Hamdan played along. UK’s new offensive coordinator answered the query with a “good question” nod but explained the change had more do to with the coaches than the players.
“I think it does,” the offensive player-caller said after Tuesday’s drills. “Not as much as how we approach it with our players but certainly from a staff standpoint, staying ahead, our self-scouts.
“By the end of summer, we put away some of those game-plan thoughts for week 2 and week 3 so we can quickly get back to them. Certainly I have a lot of those game plans in, so we can be practicing some of those things towards the end of camp.”
The good news: This year’s grid calendar is nothing new. Not really. Not for the Cats, anyway.
“If you look at it,” White said, “I don’t know many years it is now, probably three of the six that I’ve been here we’ve played Florida early in the season — two times we played Florida on the road, ‘18 and ‘22. We’re used to having to play some SEC games early.”
And the Cats have done well in those early conference games. Speaking of Florida, the Cats have beaten the Gators three of their last four September meetings. Remember, that’s the Florida that once boasted a 31-year series winning streak over Kentucky.
In fact, since arriving at UK in 2013, Kentucky is 13-9 in September SEC games, compared to a 22-46 record in October and November SEC games. Over the last three years, Kentucky is 5-0 in conference matchups played in September. Its last September league loss was 29-13 at Auburn on Sept. 26, 2020. That was the season opener in the 2020 COVID year in which all 10 regular-season games were conference games.
As for Georgia, Kentucky has never played the Bulldogs in September. Not in the modern era (1950-plus), anyway. For years, the Cats played Georgia in October. And every other season during that stretch, Georgia fans loved to experience the “Keeneland Double” — horse racing during the day; football at night.
Whether Kentucky plays Georgia on July 14 or Sept. 14 or Dec. 14, the Cats are likely to be sizable underdogs against Kirby Smart’s Dawgs.
Meanwhile, South Carolina has been a September staple. Under Stoops, the Cats and Gamecocks have tangled six times the first full month of the season with Kentucky winning five of those six. South Carolina has won two of the three contests played in October and November, including the last two — 24-14 on Oct. 8, 2022 and 17-14 on Nov. 18, 2023.
There’s no escaping the importance of this year’s game so early on the slate.
“But it doesn’t change your mentality,” White said. “It still comes down to we’re playing Southern Miss on Aug. 31. And that’s what we’re building up to. That’s sort of that crescendo of camp, that first game.”
