Kentucky's defense will need to slow down Mississipi State's offense again Saturday like it did last year. (UK Athletics Photo)
Kentucky coaches and players have been confident they would have no lasting setback from the 30-13 loss at No. 1 Georgia Oct. 16 when it goes to Mississippi State Saturday. Kentucky (6-1, 4-1 SEC) moved up to 12th in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls this week. Mississippi State (4-3, 2-2 SEC) is unranked.
Yet the Las Vegas odds had the Bulldogs as a two-point favorite in Saturday night’s game in Starkville against Kentucky before the line shifted to where UK was a one-point favorite by Sunday night. On ESPN’s matchup predictor, the Bulldogs are the favorite to win the game at 53.5 percent.
How could unranked Mississippi State be favored over UK? I could only imagine the fun Kentucky recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow is going to have pointing that out to the Cats as they prepare for the Bulldogs after a week off after the Georgia loss.
But there is one big fact favoring the Bulldogs. Kentucky has not won in Starkville since 2008 and coach Mark Stoops has never beat the Bulldogs in Starkville where the cowbells can make a lot of noise.
Stoops took a team to Mississippi State for the first time in 2013 and lost 28-22. Two years later with a better UK team, Kentucky lost 42-16 at State. It got worse in 2017 when the Bulldogs thrashed UK 45-7. Stoops’ last trip to Starkville in 2019 resulted in a 28-13 Kentucky loss.
Mississippi State coach Mike Leach, a former UK assistant under Hal Mumme, loves to throw the football, and quarterback Will Rogers has thrown for over 2,500 yards and 18 touchdowns this season. He was superb in a win over Texas A&M, the same team that beat Alabama.
State is coming off a 45-6 butt-whipping over Vanderbilt in Nashville. The Bulldogs threw for 463 yards, fourth-best in school history, and fifth 400-yard passing game under Leach. The Bulldogs completed 47 passes to 13 different receivers
Mississippi State kept the ball for 39 minutes at Vanderbilt and ran 50 plays — in the first half. Vanderbilt had only 42 plays in the game and just five first downs.
Obviously, this game is no gimme for Kentucky. However, Stoops has stopped a lot of streaks during his time at UK and I think Saturday night Stoops and his Cats will put an end to that losing streak at Mississippi State.
Just remember UK beat State 24-2 last year and picked off four passes. Jordan Wright returned one pick for a score and Josh Paschal had a 76-yard interception return to set up another score.
Mississippi State threw the ball 70 times but 44 completions went for only 275 yards as UK’s defense avoided giving up the big plays and that’s why I think defensive coordinator Brad White will find a way again to slow down State’s offense.
4 Responses
I was a little surprised when Vegas opened with MSU as the favorite, but I believe this ame figures to be a close matchup on paper, whether UK is favored by a point or MSU by a point.
However, the interesting thing about Vegas and this UK football team is Vegas has undervalued UK in every game this season. In fact, UK is the most under valued team by Vegas in the SEC this season, having covered their spread in every game this season by between 1 1/2 points to 19 points. UK is the only SEC team to have covered Vegas in every game, and all the other teams, except 1, has covered and failed to cover about 1/2 the time, and the only exception to this is Missouri who has failed to cover in all of its games.
MSU has covered 3 and failed to cover 4 times this season. They covered this past week against Vandy.
In addition, the trend suggests the amount UK is exceeding the spread per game is increasing, and that trend suggests a 14 point advantage for UK against MSU.
So, the experts will say this game is close to a pick em, but I expect UK to not only cover, but to win by about 2 TDs when all the dust settles.
I’m for using YOUR crystal ball Prof !!!
Hopeful this team can improve on Stoops poor record coming of of the bye week, which is difficult to understand.
I hope so too Mike
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