Contributor Keith Peel wonders if Kentucky football could bust another streak this week

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Mark Stoops UK Football Preseason Practice 2020 Photo by Brian Moriarty - UK Football

With less than a week to go before Kentucky starts its 2020 football season in Jordan-Hare Stadium against the Auburn Tigers, it’s time to take a look at a few interesting notes about the Wildcats and their SEC rivals for this season.

One interesting note to kick it off (notice the pun there) is that with Mark Stoops at the helm the Wildcats continue to knock down the old losing traditions built up in the past. In the modern history of Kentucky football the Wildcats have only had three seasons with nine plus wins. Those would be the Fran Curci-led 1977 team that finished 10-1, a  1984 Jerry Claiborne team that was 9-3 and the most recent Mark Stoops team that went 10-3.

Historically the Cats have always played poorly the next year. In 1978, the year after that 10-1 record, Kentucky stumbled to a 4-6-1 record. Jerry Claiborne’s 1985 team didn’t do much better by finishing 5-6. The lone exception has been Mark Stoops’ teams. After that monster 10-3 season in 2018 the Kentucky 2019 team looked like it was headed the same direction as previous Kentucky teams after a huge winning season.

They could have ended up in the same boat as those previous UK teams when they lost three in a row after a season ending injury to quarterback Terry Wilson in the second game of the season. But they didn’t. They regrouped, looked at their talent which was still plentiful due to good recruiting, and matched up guys in the right spots to pull off  four wins in a row to finish the season strong at 8-5. That assured the Wildcats a place in UK history as the only team in the modern era to have a winning season after a 9 plus win season the year before.

So that jinx is gone. It follows the losing streak to Tennessee and the one to Florida and the one concerning winning seasons in the SEC. Plenty of other “firsts” since 1977 occurred for Stoops and Company during that historic 2018 season and last year as well. So maybe this should be the year to break a few more jinxes.

Speaking of jinxes and this year’s schedule Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruit recently said that with a 10-game SEC schedule this year he didn’t see how any game — regardless of which team won — could be considered an upset. Pruitt said any team in the SEC can beat any other team on any given Saturday.

There may be some truth to that but it may also be “whistling in the dark.” Pruitt knows that he has Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Missouri and South Carolina on his schedule and three of those games are on the road — the lone exception being Missouri. Don’t forget that Pruitt’s Tennessee Volunteers lost to Georgia State in a huge upset in Knoxville to open the season last year. 

One other interesting bit of news that might interest Wildcat fans came out of Knoxville last week. It was announced that former freshman All-SEC offensive lineman Cade Mays — a transfer from Georgia — has been given a waiver to play immediately by the NCAA. May’s played in all 14 games for Georgia last season. He is expected to be a starter on the Tennessee offensive line this season. He is still waiting on a waiver from the SEC to allow him to play this season.

As most UK fans know Kentucky is still waiting on an official decision from the NCAA and the SEC on former Auburn quarterback Joey Gatewood’s request to play immediately for UK this season. It appears that the NCAA had cleared Gatewood to play per a quote from Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio this week. He said, “That has been true for awhile (that the NCAA has cleared Gatewood) but they’re waiting on the SEC”. Travis Graf of Rivals was also reporting this week that it appears that Kentucky has a “gentleman’s agreement” with Auburn to not play Gatewood against the Tigers in the season opener should Gatewood be deemed eligible.

A couple of interesting points from all this jockeying around by the SEC. If Kentucky has an agreement to not play Gatewood in the season opener is SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey ensuring that UK can’t play him by delaying the Gatewood decision? If that is the case will they also delay the decision on UT’s Cade Mays so that he can’t possibly play against the Georgia Bulldogs — his former team from last year? It will be interesting to see how the SEC tries to clean up this mess.

Last but not least, since Kentucky is (hopefully) playing Auburn Saturday in a season opener, how have both coaches fared in season openers at their respective schools? I’m glad you asked because here are the facts.

Auburn coach Gus Malzahn is 6-1 in season-openers at Auburn. The Tigers beat Washington State 31-24 in 2013, Arkansas 45-21 in 2014, Louisville 31-24 in 2015, lost to Clemson 19-13 in 2016, beat Georgia Southern 41-7 in 2017, beat Washington 21-16 in 2018 and beat Oregon 27-21 last season. Stoops is 5-2 in season openers with losses to Western Kentucky in 2013 35-26 and in 2016 he lost to Southern Mississippi 44-35. He’s had wins over UT-Martin 59-14 in 2014, Louisiana 40-33 in 2015, Southern Mississippi 24-17 in 2017, Central Michigan 35-20 in 2018 and Toledo 38-24 in 2019.

So both coaches have fared well in opening games although the respective scores of the games for both schools have been closer than one would expect given the competition. I would guess that the score will be closer in this Auburn/UK opener than the 7.5 points most prognosticators have predicted.

So with less than a week to go before the opening of the SEC season there is still a lot going on. Kentucky has a rare opportunity this season to make some noise in the SEC. With games against Auburn, Alabama, Florida and Georgia the Wildcats can show by winning a few that they belong with the big boys or by losing a few they can fall back into the second tier with the likes of Ole Miss, Texas A &M, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Since they are breaking streaks it would nice to see them break the streak of never appearing in the SEC Championship Game. Stoops recently said, “Why not? Why not us?” That would be a nice streak to break.

— Keith Peel

Vaught’s Note: Keith Peel is a regular contributor for vaughtsviews.com.

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