Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Preparing for Eastern Michigan Edition

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Morning Quickies. I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day holiday weekend.

So the Kentucky football team played their first snaps of the 2019 season this past Saturday, defeating Toledo 38-24 in a game that was, for the most part, closer than the score. Kentucky made the kinds of errors that you’d expect a football team to make replacing so many quality players from the previous season, and those mistakes allowed the Rockets to stay within shouting distance the entire game, if not quite enough to make the Big Blue Faithful descend into panic.

The big issues were exactly what we all expected — young secondary, many new starters at key positions, and an offense that’s still trying to come together into a cohesive unit. Toledo, an experienced team reckoned to win their division. Oh, and I forgot to mention — a mobile opposing quarterback, something that Kentucky has generationally struggled against.

Next up is the Eastern Michigan Eagles, the second MAC team in a row for Kentucky. They are expected to be a similar type foe to Toledo — a test, but theoretically not quite good enough to upset Kentucky in Lexington. Still, we have seen those upsets happen before, and EMU is a team not to be taken lightly. They return a senior QB, Mike Glass III, who ran for over 400 yards and 6 touchdowns last season. Yes, Kentucky fans, another mobile quarterback. Ugh.

EMU lost a lot last year just like Kentucky, but like Kentucky they have talent at key positions and aren’t just coming down to the Bluegrass to pick up a fat check. UK linebacker Chris Oats is going to be riding the pine for the first half for a targeting penalty inflicted against Toledo. But other than that, UK appears to have come out of this game with few if any injuries that could impact game against the Eagles on Saturday.

Related: Eastern Michigan’s 2019 outlook.

Tweet of the Morning

Sounds about right.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Stoops believes Kentucky’s first-game mistakes are fixable.
• The time has come to get Kavosiey Smoke’s name right. The kid has skillz.

Kentucky basketball

• USA Basketball mini-camp being held on the same weekend as Big Blue Madness could affect the recruit attendees.

Other Kentucky sports

• Kentucky men’s golf all shoot even par or lower to vault into 6th place in the Island Resort Intercollegiate.
• Mark Stoops answers a question about Tennessee’s loss to Georgia State this weekend.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• South Carolina’s starting QB suffers an a broken foot, will be out for at least six weeks in loss to North Carolina.
• How interesting is the fact that former Alabama QB Jalen Hurts just might be the top contender to Tua Tagovailoa (current Alabama quarterback) for the Heisman Trophy?

College basketball

• Mike White has his best recruiting class so far at Florida. Can it vault Florida back into contention for the SEC crown?

Other sports news

• Novak Djokovic is unlikely to play for the rest of the year after his shoulder injury in the 4th round of the US Open.

Other news

• Did you know there is such a thing as “quantum Darwinism?” Apparently it’s a thing...
• Faster please: A way to repair tooth enamel.
• Skynet smiles: Novel math could take machine learning to the next level.