Two Steps Back, Kentucky falls 31-24

 

Never good when your head coach looks confused

With representatives from the Peach and Outback Bowls on hand, the Kentucky Wildcats (4-4) laid an egg at the worst possible time, falling 31-24 on Homecoming Weekend to the pitiful Mississippi State Bulldogs (4-5).  Barring an upset win over Georgia or Tennessee, the loss signifies a likely return to the Music City Bowl or Liberty Bowl at best.  At worst, and possibly more likely, the Cats could end up as the odd team out with as many as ten SEC teams becoming bowl eligible.  Some quick thoughts-

1) For every game this coaching staff wins, they seem to throw two away.  For the second time in a month, Rich Brooks’s gameplan cost the Cats a much needed victory to an overmatched team.  Facing the fifth best rushing offense in all of college football, Grandpa Brooks abandoned the run stopping 4-3 defense at halftime for the massively ineffective 4-2-5 nickel package.  Designed to stop the passing attack, the nickel replaces a bigger linebacker with a smaller, faster defensive back.  The Bulldogs took advantage and ran roughshod over the awfully strategized scheme.  Brooks’s errors were not limited to the defensive gameplan.  After a solid first half passing the ball, freshman quarterback had his hands tied by the coaching staff- throwing only two passes prior to the final Kentucky possession.  In quarters where the super-frosh threw the ball more than once, the Cats outscored MSU 17-10; the Dogs pounded Kentucky 21-7 in the third quarter.  These are not the only coaching errors that cost the Cats the win (one deserves its own section) but they do signify this staff’s troubling ability to throw games the team should win.

2) Question to Rich Brooks- why would you not run a single play for Randall Cobb in the fourth quarter?  After accounting for 191 total yards and a touchdown in three quarters of play, the All-SEC sophomore did not touch the ball a single time in the final fifteen minutes.  There is not a single player on the team that has the heart, tenacity, and internal drive to win remotely comparable to Cobb.  The hybrid offensive player won games against Louisville and Auburn this year by himself- his fourth quarter play in the later providing the groundwork for the victory.  So, I ask again- why would you not give Cobb the ball?  In the waning moments, Kentucky had the ball on the MSU three yard line and ran pair of designed Wildcat-style runs with Morgan Newton to no avail before turning the ball over on third down.  That alone may not seem like cause for concern, but consider this- Cobb scored under similar circumstances earlier in the day, the Cats lost to South Carolina because Brooks decided not to use the sophomore under similar circumstances, and defeated Auburn when they did utilize his skill set inside the five yard line.  So it is not as if this is foreign territory for the coaching staff.  Every reasonably intelligent coach forces the opposing team to stop his best player.  Urban Meyer rides Tim Tebow to wins in Florida, Phil Jackson puts the ball in Kobe Bryant’s hands when the game is on the line, and Joe Girardi wants Alex Rodriguez at the plate in a tie game.  So, once again, why Rich Brooks do you not use your common sense?

3) Despite the justified uproar, the game was not a complete loss.  Junior running back, Derrick Locke, had yet another solid outing- rushing for 103 yards and a touchdown.  Despite the stategic blunders from the coaching staff, the team played fundamentally sound football for the third consecutive week and were penalized only twice for twenty yards.  Additionally, the kicking game was rather sound- Lones Seiber made all four kicks and punter Ryan Tydlacka nailed three of his four punts inside the MSU twenty yard line.  The troubling part of all of these superlatives is that read in a vacuum they should signify a well coached football team.  Unfortunately, it seems that this staff cannot get out of their own way long enough for fundamental play to correlate to successful results.

4) Finally, a word on the botched Halloween “blackout.”  On Monday, Rich Brooks encouraged fans to wear their black Kentucky gear for a stadium “blackout,” leading fans and media to speculate that the football team would don black jerseys for the first time.  Of course, the basketball team famously did so twice last year and John Calipari promised that the 2009-10 club would replicate that feat.  Fans love it, the players lobbied for it, and recruits seem to love it as well- so the idea was not so far fetched.  Unfortunately, Rich Brooks quashed the hopes saying “black is not one of our school colors, so I do not see the need for the jerseys.”  Well Grandpa, you cannot really have a blackout without black jerseys.  As every other team that did so this weekend.  Heck, even Tennessee had a blackout and I can promise you black is nowhere to be found in their color scheme.  After the game, some of the players voiced their disappointment with the decision and even stated they hoped the staff would surprise them just before kickoff with black uniforms.  I understand the desire to uphold tradition, but in future the staff should perhaps focus on the best interest of the players and not their own desires.

So now the Cats move on the what should be an easy win against Eastern Kentucky before their biggest game of the year at Vanderbilt.  If Kentucky misses a bowl game, they can look back at yesterday’s loss to Mississippi State to see why.  Sometimes players fail to execute a solid game plan and cost the team a game (as Iowa nearly did yesterday against Indiana), but more often in Kentucky the players perform admirably in spite of a terrible coaching strategy.  Last night  one of the angriest crowds in recent memory was on full display in the waning moments- signifying the collective dissatisfaction with the coaching staff.  During the Auburn game, one of ESPN’s commentators noted the problem with having an extended delay between naming a head coach in waiting (such as Joker Phillips) and his ascent to the top of the program is a shift in the fanbase’s emotional compass.  You are now seeing that in Lexington and I have a feeling things will only get worse for Rich Brooks and his protege.

 

Feel free to use your brain Joker