Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 14-3 loss to Georgia
READ MORE
Game day: Georgia 14, Kentucky 3
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at Kroger Field in Lexington, Ky.
Expand All
Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 14-3 loss to No. 5 Georgia:
1. Kentucky gained 229 yards of total offense. It is the fourth straight game — Mississippi State (157), Tennessee (294), Missouri (145) — the Wildcats have been held under 300 total yards.
The last time UK went four straight games without exceeding 300 yards of offense was 2012 when Joker Phillips’ final team went for 219 yards (Florida), 243 (South Carolina), 228 (Mississippi State) and 170 (Arkansas).
2. In his first college start, Kentucky redshirt sophomore quarterback Joey Gatewood completed 15 of 25 passes for 91 yards and ran 16 times for 23 yards.
Gatewood was sacked four times and lost a crucial fumble in Georgia territory that ended a UK scoring threat.
Kentucky’s respect for Georgia’s fierce pass rush — the Dawgs also had four QB hurries Saturday — prevented Gatewood from showing off his strong arm.
The Auburn transfer became only the third among the last 14 Kentucky quarterbacks to lose his first UK start.
The other two QBs in the last 14 who lost their initial Kentucky starts were Jalen Whitlow (27-14 to Mississippi State in 2012) and Sawyer Smith (29-21 to Florida in 2019).
3. Two products of Georgia high school football had stellar games for Kentucky against their home-state school.
Linebacker Jamin Davis of Ludowici, Ga., had his fourth straight game with double-digit tackles (13) and also forced a fumble, broke up a pass and blocked a field goal.
Running back Christopher Rodriguez of McDonough, Ga., ran for 108 yards on 20 carries. Based on performance, one would think Rodriguez has earned the right to be UK’s featured back moving forward.
4. With the loss to No. 5 Georgia, Mark Stoops is now 6-17 vs. teams ranked in the AP Top 25 as Kentucky head coach. His six wins over ranked foes are the third most for a UK head man, behind only Bear Bryant (9-10) and Fran Curci (9-19-1).
Stoops is now 0-11 against top-10 teams, 0-4 against top-five foes.
UK has not beaten a top-10 team since its 31-28 victory over No. 10 South Carolina in 2010, Joker Phillips’ first season as Kentucky head man.
5. Kentucky has now lost 11 straight games to Georgia. UK’s last win in the series remains a 34-27 victory in Athens in 2009. The Wildcats’ last win in Lexington was 24-20 in 2006.
The Cats’ most recent victory over a ranked Georgia team was 16-10 in 1988 over Vince Dooley’s No. 11 Bulldogs.
Fashion police
For its sixth game of the 2020 season, Kentucky wore blue helmets, blue jerseys with white letters and numbers and white pants.
Kentucky is now 10-3 since the start of the 2015 season in blue-blue-white.
This story was originally published October 31, 2020 at 3:13 PM.
