Early Kentucky football preview: Missouri

Greetings, BBN!

As we wait for the start of the 2022 Kentucky Wildcats football season, we’re continuing our march through the schedule to scout all the opponents

This time, we look at Week 10 when Kentucky travels to Colombia, Missouri to take on Mizzou in their ninth game of the year. Missouri has only beaten UK one time since 2015 —the Cats have won six of the past seven and are looking to continue their domination this year as well.

Let’s dive into this matchup.

Missouri Tigers

• When: November 5th, 2022.
• Where: Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri.
• Active Streak: Kentucky won at home last year in Week 2 by a 35-28 margin.
• Active Stadium Streak: Missouri beat the Cats 20-10 two years ago in Colombia.

Missouri was an interesting team last season, going in with a lot of hype behind Connor Bazelak and a 5-5 record in the 2020 all-SEC schedule but started 2-3 with a loss to Boston College in 2021.

That, of course, included their Week 2 road loss at Kroger Field with Chris Rodriguez’s 4th quarter touchdown march and J.J Weaver’s key 3rd-down sack on Mizzou’s final drive. They improved a bit as the season went on and scored back-to-back home wins against South Carolina and Florida to reach bowl eligibility (the latter win also was the end of the line for Dan Mullen at Florida) but got pounded at Arkansas and lost a narrow contest with the Army to close out the year at 6-7.

Missouri isn’t a bad team like Vanderbilt but isn’t exactly standing out either. The Tigers probably shouldn’t head into this season with hype or big expectations, but they’ll more likely than not be able to go bowling again and either post a winning record or break even.

Connor Bazelak is gone, though, after he transferred to Indiana. The Tigers will need someone new to step up.

By the time this game rolls around, we’ll know if they found someone good or not.

Prediction: One of the biggest ways UK football culture has changed is that now beating Vanderbilt, Missouri, and South Carolina is almost every year viewed as “taking care of business” and not “ooh, boy this could be a big win!” They’ve been very successful in taking care of this business since 2014, and I think it’ll continue this year even with this game on the road.

Cats win 24-16 ahead of their collision course with Georgia.