With the Kentucky Wildcats' not so glowing "victory" over the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, let's take a look at how Kentucky now stands among all of Division I football in several key statistics:
- Scoring offense -- 100: Above UK is SMU, who lost 46-14 to Texas A&M. One below is Memphis, who were creamed by Mississippi St. 59-14.
- Rushing offense -- 93: Fortunately, lots of pretty good teams had lousy rushing games their first outing, so the 'Cats are in decent company. Thank Morgan Newton for that 58 yard scramble.
- Passing offense -- 112: 7th from last, but we do beat WKU in that stat.
- Total offense -- 115: Similar to the likes of Ole Miss, Akron, Kent State and Rice.
The good news after the jump.
- Scoring defense -- Tied for 5th: Near teams like Florida, Ohio St. and Virginia.
- Rushing defense -- 71st: I guess that settles the question, at least for now, if UK is going to be significantly better against the run than last year. A little better, maybe, so far, but not much
- Passing defense -- 7th: Keep in mind that Western was even more inept that UK at throwing the football, though.
- Total defense -- 21st: Overall, Phillips has to be more or less satisfied, if not totally pleased, with the defense.
Others of note:
- Penalties -- 79th: Same story, different year.
- Turnover margin: 30th: Maybe Rick Minter is having an impact on that?
- 3rd down conversions -- 101st: Ugh. Maybe we should just get first downs quicker.
- Punting -- 20th: As many punts as we had to perform, this stat is somewhat reliable.
That's enough, you get the idea. Kentucky simply cannot compete in the SEC this year at this level of offensive output, and you can bet against SEC teams, the defense isn't going to look as good. Kentucky must find a way to produce offensively, and a lot of that has to come from the air. If the Wildcats allow teams to stack the box and dare our passing game to beat them without any consequence, this is going to be a long season of discontent.