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After 3 straight clunkers, Kentucky’s defense answered the bell in a 24-3 win over Mississippi State that clinched UK’s 8th consecutive bowl berth. Mississippi State played without starting QB Will Rogers and RB Jo’Quavious Marks, and Kentucky’s defense left the undermanned Bulldogs offense scrambling all night. Kentucky racked up 8 tackles for loss, including 5 sacks in holding State to just 218 yards.
While Kentucky’s offense didn’t have one of its most stellar performances, the Wildcats grabbed a 21-3 halftime edge and coasted home from there for their 6th win of the season. Kentucky has emerged from its first SEC West road win since 2009 with legitimate momentum for an interesting last 3 games of the regular season.
Player of the Week: Trevin Wallace
A week ago, Wallace played in a banged-up state against Tennessee and frankly had one of his most disappointing games. The junior linebacker looked much more like himself against State, as indicated on the game’s 1st play from scrimmage, when he buried rusher Jeffery Pittman after a 2-yard gain by dealing a jarring hit that left Pittman popping back up with a large divot of State’s field sticking in his facemask.
Wallace had a team-high 9 tackles, including 1.5 tackles for loss and a sack. On a night when Kentucky’s defense — with the exception of 1 lengthy 1st-half drive for a field goal and a garbage-time trip to the red zone — basically gave State nothing, the resurgent Wallace was a big part of the performance.
Freshman of the Week: Ty Bryant, defensive back
Starting again in a banged-up secondary, Bryant had 8 tackles, which gave him 20 in the past 2 games. Kentucky has continued to be thin, particularly at safety, over the past few weeks, but Bryant has used that time to show flashes of the skills that made him a coveted recruit at local Frederick Douglass High in Lexington. His father, Cisco Bryant, played for Kentucky teams that reached back-to-back bowl games in the ‘80s. Now, Ty has helped assure another bowl trip for the Wildcats in 2023.
Biggest concern: Offensive continuity
On a night when the Kentucky defense could do almost no wrong, the offense struggled noticeably. Granted, some of that came in the 2nd half, with Mark Stoops taking his foot off the gas while giving banged-up QB Devin Leary some rest. The Wildcats’ offense wasn’t exactly bad — Leary followed his best UK performance yet against Tennessee by going 13-for-22 for 156 yards and 2 touchdowns — but it was inconsistent. For instance, Ray Davis had 80 yards rushing, but it took him 21 carries to amass those yards, due in part to several negative rushes.
Kentucky — noted as among the slowest offenses in FBS — ran just 54 plays and gained a pretty hum-drum 271 total yards. It was enough to get the win. But how might it go against Alabama and Louisville, or even South Carolina, which is defensively challenged but can score some points in its own right?
Developing trend: The 8th consecutive bowl berth
There are plenty of programs in the SEC for whom making a bowl — particularly if it’s the Music City Bowl or the (former) Belk Bowl — might not be particularly exciting. But before Stoops, Kentucky’s longest run of bowl appearances had been 5 in a row from 2006-10. For that matter, even counting that run, Kentucky before Stoops had played in 8 bowls from 1985 to 2012.
This season — much like the 2022 campaign — has sometimes bogged down as Kentucky has struggled to prove itself among the viable non-Georgia teams in the SEC East. While some fans don’t get excited by the notion of playing for 2nd place, for a UK program that has historically been an SEC doormat, these are heady times.
Key stat: 3
As in, total points allowed. The last time Kentucky held an opponent to 3 points or fewer in an SEC road game was 1979, when walk-on Juan Portela led the Wildcats to an easy win over a far-before-Steve Spurrier Florida squad. Given the blowback against Brad White’s defense, particularly its work against passing teams, shutting down MSU should give Kentucky a healthy dose of confidence heading into the back of its schedule.
After all, the defense could have literally won this game single-handedly, as D’Eryk Jackson’s 2nd-quarter pick-6 netted double the scoring that UK allowed all night. At his roots, Stoops will always run a system that will showcase a bend-but-don’t-break defense. It’s not always glamorous, but what it generally does is keep Kentucky competitive in SEC football games. And a 3-touchdown victory that lays largely on the defense is worth noting.
First impression about Alabama: Slim chance and no chance?
The Tide might have looked vulnerable at times this season. But that’s probably about as reliable for Kentucky as Georgia looking vulnerable heading into the Wildcats’ trip to Athens. The Tide could be emotionally drained, and they do travel to Lexington a week after their showdown with LSU. But Jalen Milroe seems to have figured out college football just in time to really challenge a thin Kentucky defense.
Kentucky’s thin chances at an upset might be in the training room. UK was without Jalen Geiger for much of Saturday’s game, and fellow secondary starter Jordan Lovett didn’t see any snaps. CB Andru Phillips got banged up against State, and D-line starter Octavious Oxendine was already playing hurt. The Wildcats need good health, a fortunate start and more than a little luck to hope to beat Alabama for just the 3rd time in the history of Kentucky football. But in a season in which UK has largely won the games it should have and lost the games that would have been a reach, Bama still offers a step-it-up opportunity — even if that opportunity comes at the business end of a really stiff challenge.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
