Kentucky fans praying for an upset.
I wanted to argue that the upsets this year were a result of the media ignoring the talent on lesser teams, such as Andre Woodson and Rafael Little at Kentucky. Then Stanford beat USC, and I realized that literally anything can happen, especially if you lose half your team to injuries, as was the case with the Trojans last week. To be fair, I believe Pete Carroll took Stanford lightly, believing that he could beat Stanford with his second team, and keeping some of his better players out of the game to heal up…and he almost succeeded. I don’t think Les Miles will make this mistake against Kentucky, a team that is 5-1 this year (4-1 against I-A competition, and 1-1 in the SEC), and a team that has an offense roughly equal to the one we just faced at Florida, but only because they have a running back. However, their defense is not as good as Florida, or South Carolina, in my opinion. Judging from last year’s performance, we still win this game 35-0 if you take away TD’s scored by Tigers last year that are no longer with the team, but that assumes a healthy Early Doucet and Matt Flynn, and also assumes that Kentucky didn’t improve at all year over year.
For those of you unfamiliar with Kentucky, Andre Woodson is probably one of the top 5 quarterbacks in the country. He’s more accurate than any quarterback we’ve faced, and a better passer than even Tim Tebow, although he’s not as mobile, being sacked for -72 yards in SEC competition this year.
Oh shit, I have to play LSU this week?
Andre’s favorite targets are Steven Johnson who had 111 receiving yards against Arkansas, and Keenan Burton, who had 76 yards against South Carolina. Running the ball, Kentucky has a capable running back in the ever-shifty Rafael little.
Kentucky has a solid run defense lead by Jeremy Jarmon and Wesley Woodyard. Although Jarmon leads the SEC with 6 sacks, he actually only has 1 sack against SEC competition.
Monica Says: n order for Kentucky to win this game, LSU has to tackle the same way they did against Florida during the 1st half, Jarmon and Woodyard need to stop LSU’s rushing attack, and Woodson needs to be mistake-free, which isn’t that much of a stretch considering he’s thrown 18 TD’s and 2 interceptions. Coach Rich Brooks also needs to mix up the play calling and utilize Little and not rely on Woodson as much as he has this year.
Jana Says: On LSU’s side of the ball, we need to CATCH THE FUCKING BALL. Seriously, Lafell and the Mitchells have dropped more balls than Ron Jeremy against Florida, Tulane, and South Carolina. We desperately need a healthy Early Doucet back. Les Miles said this week that “we would probably see Early in the Kentucky game but it wouldn’t surprise him one bit if we didn’t.” I’ll take that to mean that Early is doing everything he can to get healthy, and depending on how our WR’s do in practice, Early may or may not dress for the game.
Our rushing attack should be stellar as always, as Kentucky’s rush defense is ranked 91st in the country.
As always, the strong part of our team is Defense, and although Kentucky has a solid offense, if we do the things that we were able to do in the first half of this year, we should be able to shut them down.
Score Predictions:
If Early Plays: 37-25
If Early is Out: 30-25
