From 1996 until 2012, a span of nine games at Williams Brice, we scored 20 points once time. The other 8 games, we scored less than that. We won a game there scoring 13 points in 2002 and 14 points in 2008.
We had different head coaches, different offensive coordinators, and obviously different QBs during that span. But every year it was the same thing. We’d go over there and it looked like we were playing in sand. The games were ugly and much harder than they should have been. We were a much better team than South Carolina in many of those years, but it was still a 60-minute game that left us with nothing but relief and exasperation. It got to the point where you just expected it.
Lexington is turning into that. I don’t know why. But this is three straight games now where we’ve had the much better team, and it’s still been a slog. Maybe it’s that, internally, we go into Lexington expecting a fist fight. Last night I think was a function of Kentucky having heard for a week how bad they were… you had to know they’d come up with a chip on the shoulder wanting to prove something. Broader than that, I think we’ve just come to expect that kind of game there, just as we did for a long time at Williams Brice.
There has been a lot of talk about how our QB doesn’t have “that dog in him” like the last QB, or how stubborn and uncreative our OC is, unlike the last OC. The last two games up there with the last QB and last OC saw us score 14 points and 16 points. I understand that it was very cold and windy two year ago. That’s a weird thing to point out while speaking of the last QB “having that dog in him” and the last OC being an innovative genius. The fact is, in terms of offensive output, last night wasn’t much different than the last two games there.
I think it goes beyond whatever we think of our QB’s mentality or the OC’s creativity.
Hopefully the “playing in sand” stuff is short lived up there. Either way though, it was evident early on last night that we just had to survive it and I’m glad we did. Wasn’t fun. But I think we see a much different looking offense in Tuscaloosa in two weeks. Heck, we scored more in Tuscaloosa than we did in Lexington in 2020
We had different head coaches, different offensive coordinators, and obviously different QBs during that span. But every year it was the same thing. We’d go over there and it looked like we were playing in sand. The games were ugly and much harder than they should have been. We were a much better team than South Carolina in many of those years, but it was still a 60-minute game that left us with nothing but relief and exasperation. It got to the point where you just expected it.
Lexington is turning into that. I don’t know why. But this is three straight games now where we’ve had the much better team, and it’s still been a slog. Maybe it’s that, internally, we go into Lexington expecting a fist fight. Last night I think was a function of Kentucky having heard for a week how bad they were… you had to know they’d come up with a chip on the shoulder wanting to prove something. Broader than that, I think we’ve just come to expect that kind of game there, just as we did for a long time at Williams Brice.
There has been a lot of talk about how our QB doesn’t have “that dog in him” like the last QB, or how stubborn and uncreative our OC is, unlike the last OC. The last two games up there with the last QB and last OC saw us score 14 points and 16 points. I understand that it was very cold and windy two year ago. That’s a weird thing to point out while speaking of the last QB “having that dog in him” and the last OC being an innovative genius. The fact is, in terms of offensive output, last night wasn’t much different than the last two games there.
I think it goes beyond whatever we think of our QB’s mentality or the OC’s creativity.
Hopefully the “playing in sand” stuff is short lived up there. Either way though, it was evident early on last night that we just had to survive it and I’m glad we did. Wasn’t fun. But I think we see a much different looking offense in Tuscaloosa in two weeks. Heck, we scored more in Tuscaloosa than we did in Lexington in 2020
