As we all know, No.1 Georgia football will take on the No. 11 Kentucky Wildcats in Athens on Saturday evening. This SEC East clash will have all eyes on it, as the winner of this pivotal matchup will most likely go on to win the East and play in Atlanta on the first Saturday of December.
Since the SEC broke the conference into an East and West division, two 6-0 East teams will take on each other for the first time. Not to mention, these two teams are the only undefeated units left in the conference.
The Kentucky Wildcats enter this game 6-0 (4-0) in SEC play with two key wins at home against Florida and LSU. But what do we know about this undefeated Kentucky team?
While Georgia fans know all about what the Dawgs bring to the table, here are three things the Wildcats will bring to the table on Saturday.
1. Kentucky will run first, pass later
Before the 2021 College Football season got on its way, the Kentucky Wildcats and their first-year offensive coordinator Liam Coen were trying to search for their identity on offense.
It didn’t take very long to find their identity. In fact, it came during Kentucky’s Week 2 matchup against Missouri. The Wildcats outran the Tigers 332 yards to104. Kentucky scored 35 points, while four out of five touchdowns were on the ground scores.
This team will outrun an opponent to death. Six games in, Kentucky has 1,285 yards on the ground, giving them the No. 23 rushing offense in the country.
Chris Rodriguez leads the team with 768 yards on 120 carries with five scores, and he averages 6.4 yards a touch. Kavosiey Smoke is the second-leading rusher for the Wildcats, with 263 yards on 45 carries, averaging 5.8 yards a carry.
Kentucky will lean on Rodriguez for most of the carries, so the Dawgs need to shut him down to find a lot of success.
Don’t sleep on their passing game either because the Penn State transfer quarterback Will Levis is already at the 1,000-yard mark in passing yards with 11 touchdowns through six games.
They use their run game to their advantage, but they will also try to lull a defense to sleep and then next thing you know, bam, they throw the ball 50-yards downfield to score a touchdown.
Georgia will need to make sure they pressure Levis and find a way to slow down that strong rush attack.
2. The Wildcats are 0-1 in College Gameday features
The Kentucky Wildcats football program has only had one appearance as a featured team on ESPN’s College Gameday.
That one appearance was back in 2007 when the No. 14 Florida Gators came into Lexington to play a one-loss No.8 Kentucky team. That year was the same year the Wildcats knocked off No. 1 LSU 43-37 the previous week, which helped them get the GameDay slot.
Florida ended up knocking the Wildcats off 45-37 in a devastating loss.
So Kentucky will look to change that 0-1 record to a 1-1 record in Athens on Saturday evening, but it’ll take a lot of lady luck to do that.
With back-to-back emotional games against Flordia and LSU, the Wildcats are heading into their third straight matchup with a lot of hype.
However, this will be the Wildcats’ first road test of the season, and it happens to be in the Classic City, where there is something magical brewing.
3. Wan’Dale Robinson
Wan’Dale Robinson is a Junior out of Frankfort, Kentucky. However, he started his college playing career under Scott Frost at the University of Nebraska racking up 914 receiving yards with three total touchdowns over two years.
Now at Kentucky, he has emerged as one of the top wide receivers in the whole country. He has 37 receptions for 527 yards and four touchdowns, beating his career high in scores through six games with the Wildcats.
He is Kentucky’s most lethal weapon on offense. Kentucky will try to give him the ball every possible chance they can through the air. They may even try to run some jet sweeps to keep Georgia’s defense on their toes.
If you are looking for that one key player on Saturday against Georgia, try to spot number one on the field when Kentucky is on offense, and you will find him.