Injuries pile up, costing Kentucky a golden chance against Tennessee

The Kentucky Wildcats started the game shorthanded, and the injuries during the game continued to pile up on them. In a game, that ended up being a fistfight, the injury issue became a real problem for Tennessee actually to pull off the upset. It feels like a game of what could have been since Tennessee showed itself to be vulnerable. Could the Wildcats have pulled off the win if they had a fully healthy team? Who knows, but it definitely would have helped.

Kentucky opened the game without 13 players, and many of them were starters: Maxwell Hairston, Chip Trayanum, DJ Waller Jr., Jantzen Dunn, Quay'sheed Scott, JJ Weaver, Jayvant Brown, Steven Soles Jr., Darrion Henry-Young, D'Eryk Jackson, Gerald Mincey, Jordan Dingle, and Josaih Hayes. This is by far the most amount of players Kentucky has been without to start a game this season.

The Kentucky players came into this game aggressive and truly were playing so hard, fast, and strong. However, it led to bigger collisions and tweaked limbs. The injuries kept coming in the game. Barion Brown went out early in the game with an apparent rib injury. He initially looked like he may have just had the wind knocked out, but he would leave for the locker room. He then came back but stood along the sidelines. However, the training staff took him to the hospital before they let him come back.

Later in the game, Zion Childress was banged up and tried to stay in the game, but the training staff was already on the field, so he had to come out. He would later return but he was clearly nursing an injury the rest of the game.

Oh, and maybe I buried this too far into the article, but Kentucky's starting quarterback, Brock Vandagriff, was injured after a big sack and had to leave the field to be evaluated with a head injury. Gavin Wimsatt, the backup quarterback, came in, and the offense went with six straight runs. He threw an interception when they finally gave him a chance to pass. It would have been a pick-six if it wasn't for Wimsatt chasing him down from the back. Tennesee would go on to score a couple of plays later.

Of course, Tennessee fans were very classy about it all. Oh, wait, not that fanbase. In fact, they were chanting obscene things at the players when they would go down.

Where it seemed to hurt Kentucky the most in this game was actually in the depth. Sure, losing the starter Vandagriff and having Wimsatt immediately throw an interception is like 1b in terms of "most affected by injuries." 1a would be that they were simply gassed towards the end of the game and running out of defensive backs.

Not having reliable depth becomes a problem late in games, and it was obvious, maybe most obvious on this play:

Yes, I agree. The play should have been blown dead, but it was this drive that you could really see how tired the Kentucky players were. That run put the cherry on top of a very gassed and banged-up Wildcat team. Injuries kept Big Blue Nation from seeing what could have been. The game was there to take, but the injuries became insurmountable.