First Scouting Report: Kentucky going for a rare football win over No. 8 Alabama
More praise for UK quarterback Devin Leary, this time from SEC Network’s Marty Smith.
— Cameron Drummond (@cdrummond97) September 29, 2023
Smith also added that he plans to finally take up Mark Stoops on Stoops’ offer to try his bourbon pic.twitter.com/TJgLROzGVH
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Game day: Kentucky 24, Mississippi State 3
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Mississippi State football game at Starkville.
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An early look ahead to the Kentucky Wildcats’ next football game:
The opponent
Kentucky (6-3, 3-3 SEC) will play No. 8 Alabama (8-1, 6-0 SEC) on Saturday, Nov. 11, at Kroger Field (seating capacity 61,000) in Lexington.
The game will kick off at noon (EST) and be telecast by ESPN.
Coach Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide defeated No. 13 LSU 42-28 Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.
Series history
Alabama leads the all-time series with Kentucky 38-2-1 and has won the past seven contests in a row.
The Wildcats’ only two wins over the Crimson Tide came in 1997, 40-34 in overtime, and 1922, 6-0, both in Lexington.
UK coach Mark Stoops is 0-3 vs. Alabama — and the Wildcats have been outscored a combined 145-16 in those three contests.
Crimson Tide head man Nick Saban is 5-0 vs. UK as Alabama coach and is 8-0 against the Wildcats overall.
Saban, who has coached at Alabama since 2007, and Stoops, the UK head man since 2013, are the two longest-tenured head coaches in the Southeastern Conference.
Most recent meeting
Soon-to-be 2020 Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith caught nine passes for 144 yards and two touchdowns as Alabama throttled Kentucky 63-3 on Nov. 21, 2020.
In a season played amid the coronavirus pandemic, Kentucky was without key players such as running back Christopher Rodriguez, linebacker Jamin Davis and All-America punter Max Duffy for reasons related to COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.
Know your foe
1. Over the two seasons prior to this, Alabama had shown some vulnerability in SEC road games. The Crimson Tide lost a combined three times — at Texas A&M (41-38) in 2021 and at Tennessee (52-49) and at LSU (32-31) in 2022 — in league play in away games in the previous two seasons.
This season, however, Bama is 2-0 in SEC road games, having won at Mississippi State (40-17) and at Texas A&M (26-20).
The Crimson Tide will close their 2023 regular season with an SEC road game at archrival Auburn.
2. After Jalen Milroe threw two interceptions in a 34-24 home loss to Texas on Sept. 9, the Alabama quarterback was benched. However, after the Crimson Tide offense struggled mightily with Milroe on the sideline in a 17-3 win at South Florida the following week, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound redshirt sophomore from Katy, Texas, was reinstalled as Bama QB — and the Tide has subsequently gone 6-0.
Through Alabama’s first five SEC games, Milroe was completing 66.7% of his throws (72 of 108) for 1,168 yards with eight touchdown throws versus three interceptions.
Against LSU, Milroe ran for 155 yards and four touchdowns and completed 15 of 23 passes for 219 yards.
3. Alabama edge rusher Dallas Turner is one of the most disruptive pass rushers in college football.
Entering the LSU game, the 6-4, 242-pound junior, a product of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had eight quarterback sacks, 11 tackles for loss, 10 QB hurries and had forced two fumbles.
Turner had four tackles and was credited with a defended pass vs. LSU.
This story was originally published November 4, 2023 at 11:06 PM.
