Mark Stoops and Kentucky try again Saturday to end a perplexing UK football jinx
One of the oldest chestnuts in the football coaching lexicon is “you don’t want to let one team beat you twice.”
In the Mark Stoops coaching era, it bears asking: Is Georgia beating Kentucky twice every season?
Since Stoops signed on as UK head man beginning with the 2013 season, the Wildcats have never beaten Georgia. After losing 21-0 to Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs last week on a rainy night in Georgia, UK is 0-7 under Stoops against the Dawgs.
What is more perplexing is what has happened to Kentucky in the week after playing Georgia. Going into Saturday night’s SEC East matchup with Missouri (5-2, 2-1 SEC), UK is 0-6 under Stoops in games that immediately follow Georgia on the Kentucky schedule.
Do the Bulldogs exact such a physical toll on the Wildcats in head-to-head play that the Cats are not at their best the following week?
Or is the fact that Kentucky since 2013 has always lost the game that follows Georgia mostly a coincidence?
As is often the case, the answer seems somewhere in the middle.
The case for coincidence
Four of UK’s six post-Georgia defeats since 2013 have come against Tennessee. Three of those four post-Georgia losses to the Rocky Toppers have come in Neyland Stadium.
As The Long Suffering UK Football Fan knows all too well, beating Tennessee in football has long been a vexing challenge for the Wildcats.
UK has beaten UT only twice since 1984. The Cats have not won in Knoxville since 1984.
So the Stoops era “post-Georgia jinx” is very much co-mingled with Kentucky’s perennial difficulty in beating Tennessee.
It is hard to lay Kentucky losses to Tennessee in 2013 and 2014 — when UK just wasn’t very good — on the fact the Wildcats had played Georgia the week before.
The Cats’ 49-36 defeat at UT in 2016 featured a Kentucky defense getting gashed — but UK ran for 443 yards itself and did not seem “flat” following its 27-24 near-miss loss to Georgia in its prior game.
The case for a hangover
Conversely, last year when a very good Kentucky team (that finished 10-3) lost 24-7 in Knoxville to an eminently mediocre Tennessee (finished 5-7), it seemed an unquestioned example of Georgia “beating UK twice.”
In the preceding week, Kentucky and Georgia had played a game that decided the 2018 SEC East Division champion. The contest was billed as the biggest game ever played at Kroger Field/Commonwealth Stadium.
Georgia’s 34-17 win over the Wildcats denied Kentucky what would have been the school’s first-ever appearance in the SEC Championship Game. The following week at UT, the Cats’ emotional tanks looked to be running on empty.
The 2017 Kentucky season finished with a road contest at Georgia as the 11th game, followed by the home regular-season finale versus intrastate rival Louisville.
In Athens, Georgia hung a 42-13 pasting on the Cats. The Bulldogs physically dominated the Wildcats, outrushing UK 381-124.
For Kentucky, it was the worst possible prelude to facing a revenge-minded Lamar Jackson and U of L the following week.
Jackson had committed four turnovers in UK’s stunning upset of the No. 11 Cardinals in 2016. So with the reigning Heisman Trophy winner playing like a man determined to prove a point, Louisville crushed Kentucky 44-17.
U of L was going to win that game regardless because of Jackson, but the physical beating UK had absorbed the week before at Georgia made the outcome against Louisville worse.
In 2015, Kentucky followed up a 27-3 loss at Georgia with a dispiriting 21-17 defeat at Vanderbilt. That loss ultimately kept the Wildcats (who finished 5-7) from becoming bowl-eligible.
Whether it was a post-Georgia hangover or not, UK produced an epic clunker in the Music City.
Vanderbilt tricked UK with a “hidden end” and scored a touchdown on a pass to an uncovered receiver.
That TD was set up when Kentucky gave the Commodores a short field just before halftime by going for it on fourth-and-1 from the Vandy 49-yard line — and, inexplicably, throwing a long pass on a sideline route that fell incomplete.
Kentucky also “gave” Vanderbilt scores by losing a fumble on its own 4-yard line and throwing a pick-six.
So, whatever one thinks has caused Kentucky’s futility in its game immediately following Georgia, one thing is certain:
With the 2019 Wildcats (3-4, 1-4 SEC) needing at least three more wins to become bowl-eligible, Saturday night against Mizzou would be an ideal time for Stoops and UK to end the “post-Georgia jinx.”
The post-Georgia jinx
Following last week’s 21-0 loss to Georgia, Kentucky is 0-7 against the Bulldogs under Mark Stoops. In the Stoops era, UK is also winless in the game that immediately follows Georgia on its schedule. Below are the year, the opponent and the outcome for Kentucky in the game after it plays Georgia:
2013: Tennessee (Lost 27-13)
2014: at Tennessee (Lost 50-16)
2015: at Vanderbilt (Lost 21-17)
2016: at Tennessee (Lost 49-36)
2017: Louisville (Lost 44-17)
2018: at Tennessee (Lost 24-7)
2019: Missouri (Saturday night)
