Big-time trap game.
Greetings, BBN!
Today we continue our early Kentucky football previews looking at Week 4 and the fourth of four consecutive home games to start the year. Yes—four straight at home to start the season!
The last time the Cats had that luxury was all the way back in 2001 when they hosted Louisville, Ball State, Florida, and Ole Miss and lost to all but Ball State to start the year. The challenger here will be the Ohio Bobcats from Athens (OH) and the MAC conference.
Ohio at Kentucky
- Date: September 21st
- Time: 12:45 pm ET
- TV Channel: SEC Network
- Location: Kroger Field
- Series History: Kentucky leads the series 4-2
The Bobcats will give Kentucky a nice schedule sandwich as they start the year with a non-con game against Southern Miss, host two SEC foes, and then get to hopefully end the homestand on a high note in an easier game against a MAC school.
The Bobcats are coming off two very good seasons, though. Two years ago, they won their division and went 10-3, and last season, they followed things up with another 10-3 season and a home win over Iowa State. So while the Cats aren’t hosting an SEC team in Week 4, they do need to be extra careful—this isn’t just any old MAC team.
The schools have faced off against each other six times, with the most recent meeting and the only meeting of the Stoops Era coming in 2014, when the Cats won 20-3 in Stoops’s second season.
In 2004, Ohio beat UK in Lexington 28-16 while the Cats were struggling in Rich Brooks’s second year, and in 1971, Ohio demolished UK 35-6 in Lexington. All the other times, UK has won with little trouble.
Prediction: I’m not going to sit here and pick against the Cats just because Ohio isn’t just any old MAC team and UK might be caught sleeping. Yet I must keep warning that UK might get caught sleeping—it can happen to anybody. Let’s say they stay awake and show a great defensive effort for a victory before heading into SEC road play.
Kentucky 28, Ohio 14