I hate the cliches that come with games like this. “Moral victory” sucks. If it were a moral victory, Kentucky would have won the thing. In football, victory isn’t exactly an abstract concept. A team wins, the other loses and it goes in the scoreboard. There is nothing moral about any of that. “Good loss” sucks. It’s one thing to be a really bad team like Duke, Virginia, Stanford or Syracuse, come really close to pulling off an upset, but fall just short. If your team is terrible, then “good loss” might be acceptable. At Kentucky, that doesn’t fly anymore. Three years ago, this would have been a “good loss.” The game that immediately followed the firing of Ron Hudson against Tennessee in Knoxville was a “good loss.” Today, now that Coach Brooks has rejuvenated the program and taken it to consecutive bowl wins, yesterday’s game is no longer a “good loss.” It’s just a loss.
With all of that said, I was very impressed with how the team played once they shook off the initial intimidation period that happens to any young team in their first true road test. I say “first true road test” to degrade the Louisville fans who may be reading this, and I also want to wish all Louisville fans a happy Yom Kippur. Hopefully it won’t have as much of a toll on football attendance this year as it did last year, but I digress. Alabama’s defense is legit, and Kentucky’s offense just doesn’t have enough quality playmakers at receiver to take pressure off of Dicky Lyons and Mike Hartline to connect. That is a problem that cannot be fixed unless Randall Cobb comes back. Cobb actually got in on one play yesterday. A receiver subbed out and nobody came in to take his place, so Cobb somehow managed to sneak past the coaches and run the route. Brooks said before the game that Cobb would only get on the field if there were an emergency situation at quarterback.
Cobb has to come back because Kentucky needs to have one more guy that can line up alongside Dicky Lyons and put a scare into a defense. Kentucky won’t face a defense as fierce as Alabama’s all year because LSU isn’t on the schedule this year, but that doesn’t mean all the rest of the defenses on the schedule will be bad. Only Arkansas will be bad. Still, UK has to have a guy that can catch the football. My beloved Minnesota Vikings have had problems with drops all year, so maybe I’m just numb to all of Kentucky’s drops, but it’s bad. From what little I saw of Cobb at the position, I was very impressed with his play at wide receiver. Eventually, Coach Phillips figured out that the middle screen would work against Alabama, but it took a lot of inconsequential plays to the outsides to open things up towards the middle. I’d also like to see how well Cobb can block from WR, because UK can’t run the ball unless Derrick Locke and Alfonso Smith turn the corner. They can’t turn the corner if the guys in the secondary (or in Alabama’s case, the linebackers) meet them on the outside and tackle them for no gain.
I can’t say enough about the defense. They gave up ONE touchdown to a team that scored 41 points against Georgia, and since nobody mentioned it on TV, I’ll say it here: On that long TD run by Glen Coffee, Corey Peters was held. It was a blatant holding call that would have been very difficult to miss had the game not taken place in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Still, Coffee is a beast, and he runs like Brandon Jacobs, despite weighing 75 pounds less. Outside of that play, the defense was outstanding. They sacked John Parker Wilson at least three times and maybe four. They forced Alabama to commit a significant number of holding penalties that were actually called. I listened to the game on the radio, and the announcers said that at one point in the first half, the eight penalties on Alabama were one third of their total penalties for the season. That is a huge credit to the front seven of Kentucky. They forced Alabama to hold and take the ten-yard penalty, or else they would have given up about a dozen sacks.
Eventually, some of these breaks are going to go the way of the good guys. Mike Hartline won’t have the ball slip out of his hand while he’s getting ready to throw the football. David Jones will fall on that fumble and it won’t squirt out from underneath him like a wet bar of soap. Sam Maxwell and Trevard Lindley will catch those balls that should have been intercepted yesterday. Keep in mind that besides Cobb, UK was missing Micah Johnson, Ricky Lumpkin and Justin Jeffries, all of whom had been having great seasons before their injuries. If you believe Coach Brooks, all of them will be back for South Carolina next week except Jeffries. Because of this defense, I am not scared of anybody on the schedule like I may have been earlier in the year. That doesn’t mean I think UK can run the table from here on out, but I’m not conceding anymore games as automatic losses. Kentucky has to get at least two more wins against South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi State, Georgia, Vanderbilt or Tennessee. Two wins puts Kentucky back in a bowl, in what is supposed to be a rebuilding year. But why not stop at six wins? I see five games left on that schedule where the lines should be extremely close, and I’d imagine that the outcome will be that close. Why not go ahead and win them all, which should get the Wildcats into a New Year’s Day bowl? It can happen, and it starts with South Carolina.
I’ve got a lost treasure tomorrow for the WGCGA. I can finally finish the “Best of 1994” series.
I’m Seth Stogsdill, and this upcoming week is one of the best to be a Wildcat fan.