Game Recap UK vs. Central Michigan (UK Wins 27-13)

After last weeks horrible performance against WKU, we all wondered how UK would respond. Many wanted to believe we just got our off game out of the way early and we had nowhere to go but up. Others were a bit (or lot) more pessimistic. So the big question is how did UK perform in their second game of the season and home opener? Well I think we can all agree it was better than the WKU game (for the most part) but still far from where we need to be to compete in the SEC. The notes:

The Offense and Defense switched sides from the WKU game for the first half (sort of)
The summary of the WKU game was that the offense played horrible and the defense played pretty good. Well for this game the defense started off by playing worse and the offense a little better. UK won the toss and decided to kick the ball and then let Central Michigan march all the way to a field goal to start the game 0-3. Our offense started off by playing a little better (compared to last weeks performance) and managed to get a field goal of their own in their first position to tie it 3-3. We then proceeded to let Michigan get a touchdown and another field goal before we managed to get a second field goal which put us down 13-6 at halftime.

The last 20-25 minutes were the best we've played so far this season
The third quarter started off rocky with Sanders fumbling the ball on the kick return and giving Michigan good field position although our defense locked down more and didn't let them capitalize on it. After several positions on both sides that went nowhere, Michigan finally failed on a 4th and 1 play and set us up with good position in their end of the field that led to a 34 yd TD pass from Newton to King to tie the game 13-13. Michigan then had another possession with no results but on our next possession our freshman running back Clemons had an 87 yd TD rush to put us, and keep us, up for the rest of the game. The only other points in the game came from a 1 yd TD rush by Newton in the 4th quarter.

Newton played better but still not great
Newton finished the game 9/18 on passes netting only 114 yards total with 1 TD and 1 INT. He also had 43 rushing yards himself and 1 rushing TD. These stats are by no means where we need them to be to compete in the SEC but they are better than the 7/18 passing and 1 TD to 3 INT from the WKU game. He still takes a long time to make a decision, most of the time longer than he should, which opens him up to sacks and times where he has to rush plays by the time he tries to do something since he waited long enough to give the opposing team time to have people break free and be charging straight for him. We also suffered from several plays where we passed the ball to people right around the line of scrimmage that were covered and had no room to really go anywhere. Newton also kept favoring passes to King even though he kept dropping them at one point in the game. It wasn't always King's fault though since one time in particular Newton overthrew the ball to King when he was in the endzone at which point someone near me shouted "He ain't 10 ft tall Morgan!" which sums up about where he placed it on that play.

Clemons (a true freshman) is going to be a star
We saw some of his potential against WKU but today Clemons showed he means business. He ran for 126 yards, averaging 9 yds a carry and had that beautiful 87 yd TD mentioned earlier. He is already working on the freshman record books and is looking like he is going to have a great season. He is definitely going to be needed for our offense to have any shot of beating an SEC team.

Clemons' play seemed to help Sanders
When our team finally seemed to "show up" in the second half Clemons seemed to help provide a spark for it. There were several plays where Clemons was running and gaining some good yardage then next thing you know, Sanders is running again and playing better than ever for him. Sanders started the game by getting small yardage but it seemed like Clemons performance kind of woke Sanders up to the fact that he has competition and needs to step it up. Another case of friendly competition making things better.

Joker made an un-Joker like play
In the 4th quarter when we were up by 7 we hit a situation where we were 4th and 1 from the goal. Now normally as we have seen in the past, Joker likes to play it safe and would have went for a field goal. In a surprise move, although the one most fans hoped for, Joker went for it and it paid off resulting in a run in TD by Newton. That play sealed the game in our favor.

Cobb and Cousins came by
At one point during the game (when we were losing) everyone's favorite former player who is already making a name for himself in the NFL made an appearance in an end zone to a standing ovation. "We miss you" and "We need you" chants were heard all over. Former basketball star DeMarcus Cousins was also at the game although he was never announced and just roamed the sidelines and took pictures with people on the sidelines such as cheerleaders close to where I was sitting.

The new scoreboards are pretty cool
Not only was this the first game of the season in Commonwealth Stadium but it also marked the official unveiling of the new scoreboards. As you may recall hearing about, UK decided to update their outdated scoreboards before today's game. According to a Kentucky.com article, the new boards are approximately 37 ft high by 80 ft wide making them the 15th largest boards in college basketball. The University of Texas has the largest boards at 55.5 ft high by 134 ft wide each. In comparison to the old boards which had a screen that only made up about 1/4 the size of the entire board with the other space taken up by advertisements and fill in the blank score and stat boxes, the entire space of the new boards is a screen that can display whatever content they want to put on there. This is especially nice on a few occasions when they used the entire space of the screen and thus board to display a recap scene which basically turned it into a gigantic TV. The name banners that used to surround the upper spaces of the stadium have been replaced with a screen that wraps all the way around the stadium and can be used to display ads and "Go Big Blue" type content. In response to complaints, a small part of this wrap around screen near the two scoreboards are used to display closed caption content for the hearing impaired. The names that were on the banners are now displayed with the SEC team flags at the very top of the stadium.

This wasn't the "beat down" many of us had hoped for but in the end it's another win, Louisville lost last night, and therefore an overall good weekend to be a Cats fan. Hopefully were playing well enough (and them bad enough) for us to be able to beat Louisville at home next week but whether we have any shot at beating an SEC team remains to be seen.