What an odd game of two completely different halves. When I was watching the film, I thought after the first half that South Carolina was completely inept in all facets of the game, and that Kentucky was going to mow them down on their way to a dominating win. As I watched the second half unfold, I started to wonder if Kentucky could tie its own shoes on the offensive line without getting a holding penalty and killing the drive.
Since this is the first time I'm covering two SEC teams, I'm going to go a little bit more in detail on Kentucky since I covered a good bit of South Carolina's issues in my Week 1 breakdown of their game with UNC. But for starters, Connor Mitch still sucks as a QB for SC. The bad(good) news is that he got hurt in the first half, and he likely won't win his job back even if he was healthy. Instead, SC had to go with Perry Orth as their QB, who did a much better job. More on that later as I talk about the second half of this game.
I had yet to watch Kentucky this year until I turned on this match, and I was surprised by a few things. First, their QB #14 Patrick Towles actually looks like he knows what he's doing (21/29 with 191 yards, an INT, and a rushing TD). This is a RARE thing in SEC football right now, as you may have noticed from all the crazy upsets in the SEC this past weekend. A good QB is hard to find in the conference at the moment, but a guy like Towles looks like he can not only make the short and medium level throws, but he can also run a great screen game and take you deep if you try and check up at the line. Oh and he can run for TD's and first downs as well if the sea parts in the middle. I like the kid, and I think he played probably the star player for Kentucky in this win.
The other thing I noticed about Kentucky is the funky formations they run. A lot of the time they are in what I would call a modified diamond formation offensive set. That means QB is essentially in a shotgun, surrounded on both sides with RBs, and then another RB about 3 steps behind him. The effective use of the formation seems to be both misdirection in the running game and blocking. The downside is that you leave only 2 WR's on the outside, meaning a good defense can put 4-4 in the box and cover the wideouts with single coverage and a safety. No real razzle-dazzle out of the passing game there, it's a straight running offense.
And that worked well in the first half. #18 for Kentucky Boom Williams (his real name is Stanley but Boom is much cooler), and #3 Jo-Jo Kemp (whom I remember from his HUGE game against SC last year) led the charge with the running attack and did very well. But that only lasted a half. Even so Boom ended up with 107 yards on the ground, and Kemp had 78 with a TD.
Up 24-7 in the second half, Kentucky did the unforgivable. They started making drive-killing penalties. First possession? Holding call that led to a 3-and-out. Same on the second possession. Third possession was a 4 yard fumble that they recovered but set them back to another 3-and-out. In fact, Kentucky didn't even have a single first down in the second half until their FIFTH possession when they finally cracked the barrier, and even then they never scored a single offensive point the entire half.
Instead, Perry Orth started to rally the troops. As a UGA fan getting ready to play them next week, watching Connor Mitch struggle gave me hope. Watching Perry Orth suddenly come in and turn the tide around for this South Carolina offense has me worried again. Orth didn't do anything complicated, he just made sure that he tried to find SC's best player (#11 Pharoh Cooper) on every single throw. Sounds simple right? But Kentucky kept letting him get open, and Orth kept finding him. And if they double-covered Cooper, Orth would find the wide-open man standing by himself. He did a great job in recollecting the offense.
The problem was they had dug too much of a hole in the first half, and SC kept getting bogged down in the red zone against Kentucky's defense. Not once, not twice, but thrice they made it inside Kentucky's 20 yard line and had to settle for a FG. If they had just capitalized on another of those, they likely win this game. Instead, when they finally did score a TD on a great Orth throw to the tight end, they went for 2, down 24-22, and didn't get it. Worse, Pharoh Cooper fumbled it and Kentucky rumbled for the scoop and score 2 of their own, making the final 26-22.
South Carolina had once last shot at the game, but Orth finally made his rookie mistake, throwing late across his body on the run. It was an ugly pick too, the kind you just shake your head and say, "Kid you can't make that mistake there, you just can't." Kentucky iced the game away with some good first down running to kill the remainder of the clock.
So what did I learn? I learned that South Carolina is likely in a better place with Orth than Mitch at the QB spot, and I wonder if they wouldn't have won the game outright if Orth had simply started. I questioned Mitch after last week's game and I stand by it. He's awful. I also learned that SC's offensive line is going to have fits with anybody who can run a blitz package effectively. At one point #51 their RT tried to cut block a blitzing corner, whiffed completely, and then stood around looking ashamed as his QB got planted like a lawn dart. It was like watching a really good matador or a really terrible football play all in one.
I learned that Kentucky is no longer the pushover you might think in today's SEC. Chalking up easy victory on this team is anything but with a guy like Towles throwing the ball. He looks more settled than ever as a Junior, and his 3-headed running attack takes a lot of pressure off him. If teams try to play too tight on the run, he can go over the top. If they get too soft, he can swing it to a WR screen. But the downside for Kentucky is their run defense simply isn't going to be good enough against the better teams unless they sell out. And in an SEC where the strength of most teams is pounding you with the run, they will have a hard time playing catchup as teams dominate the ground.
I also learned that if you want to beat South Carolina, their secondary is one step above complete garbage. It's all you can eat off these corners, and any team that can throw the ball around will eat their lunch all year long. Fortunately for them, none of the teams in the SEC East actually know how to throw the ball around except maybe Missouri and Kentucky. But Clemson does, and that game may cause Spurrier to retire.
All in all, I think Kentucky absolutely earned this win, and this was no accident. If they'd cleaned up the stupid mistakes in the second half, it wouldn't have been close.
And that's going to drive Steve Spurrier nuts.
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