photo by Mark Cornelison, Lexington Herald Leader
So much for a new era for Kentucky football as Joker Phillip became the fifth Kentucky coach in a row to go 0 for Florida in his career. True, Joker has had just one shot at Florida, but his squad fell victim to the same things that have plagued his predecessors that have failed to beat Florida: Billy Curry, Hal Mumme, Guy Morris, and Rich Brooks. Join the party and welcome to the swamp.
After a week of unusually high expectations that “this may be the year” and rumors of Florida being vlnerable, this game started about the same as most of the games in the series. UK started on offense and had a very uninspired three and out and Florida took the ball over and basically had their way with the Wildcat defense on a 6 play, 64 yard drive which was capped by freshman QB/WR Trey Burton scoring out of the wildcat offense and UF was up 7-0. Kentucky actually got a first down on the next drive, but then Florida went on a 12 play, 85 yard drive to go up 14-0 in the first quarter. This time, it was Trey Burton catching a pass for the touchdown and all of a sudden it was like deja vu all over again. Mercifully, the first quarter ended with Kentucky seemingly in the game at 14-0.
In case you are keeping track at home, this now means that Kentucky has been outscored 73-0 in the first quarter of the last three meetings vs the Florida Gators. So 14-0 was a godsend. Not so fast.
Midway through the second quarter, Jeremy Brown intercepted a Mike Hartline and returned it 48 yards for a touchdown to make it 21-0. Kentucky did put together a nice drive at the end of the half and used a Randall Cobb to Chris Matthews TD pass on a fake FG attempt to give UK a bit of hope at halftime. Granted, after the 14-0 start, Kentucky did outplay the Gators in the second quarter and I was actually hopeful we could have a decent defensive stand to start the second half to make the game interesting.
Not the case. The Gators went on a 11 play, 85 yard drive to start the second half. Kentucky blocked the extra point, but hope was getting lost with a 27-7 deficit. In case you were wondering, Trey Burton scored from the Wildcat option again. Kentucky actually responded well, with a 7 play, 77 yard drive, capped by a Chris Matthews TD catch, but unfortunately that was the last hurrah for the Wildcats. On the next drive, Trey Burton scored on yet another TD run and Gator fans started to take down the Tim Tebow plaque and put up a Trey Burton one.
Burton went on to score two more touchdowns to make that 6 TD’s in the game for the new Gator wunder kid and the new, improved Wildcats really looked no different from the old Wildcats of the last 23 seasons. So in the spirit of my if-you-can’t-say-something-nice-about-the-Wildcat’s-don’t say anything-at-all nature of my site, I am going to sat that’s that and the final score was Florida 48-14.
To be honest, I actually do have some optimism for the Wildcat’s offense, even though the score was not indicative. but Kentucky did wrack up 352 yards of total offense, Mike Hartline passed for 253, and Chris Matthews emerged as a go to target with 6 catches for 114 yards and 2 TD’s. Derrick Locke went over a hundred yards again and Randall Cobb caught 7 passes. But Kentucky repeatedly shot itself in the foot with penalties and some questionable play calling to put themselves into a hole they could not recover from.
To be fair, I had this game pegged as a loss when the schedule came out, so in all reality, it does not matter if Kentucky lost 48-14 or 24-21. Yet this one still stings. But hope is not lost for Kentucky’s season. What they need to do is put this loss behind them, regroup, and get ready to go on the road to face the Ole Miss Rebels next week. If the Cats can learn from their mistakes in this game and regroup from this loss, a lot of the sting will be gone. But for now it hurts.
I don’t see the point in rehashing and point out blame in a total team loss, so I will just say that this has to improve. And if you want game stats, they are here.
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