Game 1?

As we approach the Ole Miss game on Saturday at 12:21pm est, I feel in some ways like the season really starts tomorrow. Before the year started, I was about 80% sure that we'd be 3-1 going into this week with almost exclusively winnable games left on the schedule. Since then, the plot in the SEC has thickened a little, but we still don't know too much about our Cats. It might be easier to analyze our future opponents than ourselves at this point.

Here is what seems to have shaken loose on that front. First, Auburn (4-0) and South Carolina (3-1, with its lone loss a no shamer at Auburn), look tough to beat. Both have added players who allow them to transcend their recent success. Auburn has a Heisman trophy contender dual threat at QB in Cam Newton, and USClite boasts the most talked about freshman in the SEC, RB Marcus Lattimore. USC is showing some chinks in the armour. Spurrier cannot help himself from creating a quarterback controversy despite having his best signal caller in years and Auburn did manage to bottle up Lattimore after he went absolutely bananas against Georgia.

Auburn has fewer warts, but SEC fans will recall that it started 5-0 last year before settling down to a more pedestrian 7-5 regular season. Of course, UK beat that team on the road.

Georgia looked tougher on the drawing board than it now does. The Bulldogs just got spanked by Mississippi State and are 0-3 in the SEC. AJ Green will be back from suspension and UGa will face a couple of slumpbusters by the time they play Kentucky on 10/23. Still, they are one bad loss away from being in full scale red alert with a coach on a scorching hot seat.

All of which brings us to Ole Miss. The Rebels are 2-2 with embarrassing home losses to Vandy and Jacksonville freakin State already on the resume. They are ranked 100th in scoring defense in the NCAA, having given up 32 points a game (against a very weak schedule). Kentucky has to win this game in order to have a good season. Could we sneak into a bowl at 6-6 without it? Sure. There are other potential wins left on the schedule. But to me, this one is so ripe for the plucking that it would be hard to recover from losing it.

All of which begs the question: Where is our team? A solid win against a weakened rival, two blowouts against clearly inferior competition, and a bad loss in a game we almost always lose badly but which never seems to have much bearing on the outcome of the season. We'll know a lot more after Saturday, I believe.

For me the keys to the game are twofold. One, we need to unleash the Wildcat on Ole Miss. Randall Cobb has only 11 carries in four games, including one or two on reverses. By comparison, he had 94 carries in 12 games last year. Middling SEC teams really had trouble containing him. I think Joker knows this and deliberately hasn't sown much so far. Secondly, the Cats need to hit, wrap and bring guys down on defense. I've decided that we had simply too many holes to fill and our defense has several starters who would not have played at Kentucky in the past 3-4 years. Certain guys, like Jeramiah Masioli, are going to get theirs against us. But when our defenders do get a guy in their arms, they have to bring them down. All in all, I'd like to see some improvement in that area.

More later.