Three takeaways as Kentucky football cruises to bowl-eligibility
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Gameday: Kentucky vs. Tennessee Martin
Click below to view more of Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s University of Kentucky football game against Tennessee Martin at Kroger Field.
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Three takeaways from Kentucky football’s 50-7 victory over UT Martin at Kroger Field on Saturday:
1. A bright outcome on a miserable day/night
Miserable as in the weather. Again. For the third time this season, the Cats played in wet, cold conditions, mimicking the weather for Kentucky’s 21-0 loss at Georgia and the Wildcats’ wet 29-7 win over Missouri in a Lexington monsoon. “This one wasn’t that bad,” said more than one Wildcat afterward.
Not that the Cats seemed to pay much attention to the conditions. They set a school record with 462 rushing yards. Quarterback Lynn Bowden rushed for 129 yards on 11 carries. A.J. Rose rushed for 105 yards on just six attempts. Travis Tisdale ripped off a 53-yard run. Walk-on Tyler Markray scored on a 45-yard run. You get the picture.
And defensively, head coach Mark Stoops and defensive coordinator Brad White also got to play a ton of young players. The Cats recorded six sacks. They also held the visitors to 204 yards, the fifth consecutive game in which the UK defense has held the opponent to under 300 yards. That tops last season when the Josh Allen-led Kentucky defense held four opponents under 300 yards.
Yes, the Skyhawks are an FCS team out of the OVC. Yes, the Skyhawks began the game by snapping the ball over the quarterback’s head in each of their first two possessions. UK scored a safety on the first one, a touchdown off a fumble recovery on the second. But Kentucky took care of UT Martin the way an SEC team is supposed to take care of an FCS team.
2. Mark Stoops says his heart is in the Bluegrass
Saturday morning we awoke to a report from 247Sports that UK’s head coach had been interviewed for the open Florida State job but that he was staying in the Bluegrass.
Stoops addressed that question in the postgame press conference. He didn’t confirm or get into any specifics about an interview with FSU, where he was the defensive coordinator for three seasons before becoming the head coach at UK. He did state that he’s staying at Kentucky.
The coach said he had been getting a lot of questions from recruits about the Seminoles’ opening and thought it was important to answer those questions honestly. It is, after all, about three weeks until the early signing period. And while UK’s 2020 signing class will be smaller than previous years, the coaching staff believes it has an excellent group of commitments it wants to keep together.
Having Stoops stay on board is big, especially for a program that is now going bowling for the fourth consecutive season. Which leads us to our final takeaway . . .
3. Bring on the Birds and then the bowl
The first is Louisville, of course. That’s next Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving at Kroger Field. Under first-year coach Scott Satterfield, the Cardinals improved to 7-4 with a 56-34 victory over visiting Syracuse on Saturday. While it’s true there’s not much to the ACC outside the monster that is Clemson, Louisville is a good football team capable of coming into Kroger Field and beating the Wildcats.
Stoops knows that. And he wants to make sure his team knows that. But Kentucky does have a lot of momentum heading into the rivalry game. After being down 14-3 in the first quarter at Vanderbilt last week, the Cats have outscored their last two opponents 85-7. Better still, the blowouts allowed Stoops and staff to rest some regulars while younger players gained experience. The hope is that rest pays off against U of L.
Then after that comes a bowl game. We don’t know when or where, we just know that the Cats are going bowling for the fourth straight year. It won’t be anywhere as heady as last year’s Citrus Bowl, the fruits of the labor of what would be a 10-win team. Still, it’s satisfying for this team to reach a bowl game considering the injuries and adversity it has faced.
Start with a defense that lost so many starters off last year’s team. Add injuries to quarterbacks Terry Wilson and Sawyer Smith, which led to offensive coordinator Eddie Gran moving Bowden from wide receiver to quarterback and committing to a heavy run-oriented attack.
It worked. Kentucky is 4-2 with Bowden behind center. It’s two losses were to Georgia on the road and Tennessee at home in a game in which UK dominated in yards and time of possession, but couldn’t score on a fourth-and-goal from the 2 on its final possession.
“With this group, definitely very special, because they really did hit some adversity and really looked it right in the eye and moved on,” said Stoops in his postgame press conference Saturday. “And they’ve been really a lot of fun to coach. And I think through the tough times, through the adversity, it created some identity to this team. So they’re very special to me because of the way they’ve handled things, the way they’ve practiced, the way they prepare, the way they compete. They’re an extremely tough group. And I greatly appreciate them.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2019 at 8:54 PM.
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