Well, here we are, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation -- at the end. Today is the end of many things. It is the end of the football season, the end of most of our seniors' football career, and the end of the Joker Phillips era as the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats.
So today, the 'Cats suit up against the Tennessee Volunteers -- long time rival in every sport you can name, former holder of a 26-year winning streak over Kentucky, and now fellow cellar-dweller in the SEC. How times have changed.
This thread will serve as both the tailgate and the game thread, since I simply don't have the time to do both. To facilitate that, I am putting this thread up about 90 minutes early.
Here are the game particulars for today, courtesy of UKAthletics.com:
Kentucky at Tennessee | ||
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Sat., Nov. 24 - 12:21 p.m. ET Knoxville, Tenn. Gameday Information Game Notes: UK | UT | ||
Coverage | ||
TV: SEC Network Radio: UK IMG Live Video via ESPN3 Live Audio Text Updates |
We saw the Wildcats play better on both sides of the ball, albeit against inferior competition last week versus Samford. The 'Cats get to put any new-found confidence to the test against a Tennessee team that is without their head coach, Derek Dooley, who was fired last week after the Volunteers got pounded by in-state rival Vanderbilt, 41-18. Then again, Tennessee did score on Vandy, which is more than I can say about Kentucky.
Personally, I'd very much like to see Kentucky pull out a win for Joker Phillips tomorrow for two reasons: One is that beating Tennessee needs no justification, and beating them at home needs even less. The second is that I would very much like to see that these young guys have not mailed in the season and are eager to show that they have made progress this season. So far, the only people that can really see the progress they've made are the coaches, because in games, they have mostly looked like what we would expect.
Kentucky will have to defend against a serious passing attack today, although it didn't give Vandy much trouble. There is also the possibility that Tennessee's players have mailed it in for the season. I hope not, but if they want to roll over, I suppose I'd take the victory all the same.
I hope to watch this game, although we didn't get the basketball game out here, and I'm not super optimistic about the football game. In any case, Ken will be doing the postmortem, since it usually helps to have actually seen the game before doing that.
Enjoy the game, and Go, "Cats!