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LEXINGTON — To start the game, Kentucky looked like a team that might be ready to make a splash in the Southeastern Conference this year.
Kentucky drove 75 yards in 10 plays to score on an 8-yard pass to Dorian Baker on its first series. The defense forced a three and out, then the offense came back with an 80-yard scoring drive ended by Stanley “Boom” Williams’ 53-yard run. That made it 14-0 with 8 minutes, 24 seconds left in the first quarter here Saturday against Ohio.
However, after that the Cats made too many mistakes on offense — including missing two short field goals and a dropped touchdown pass — after held on for a 20-7 victory.
Coach Mark Stoops was happy to get the win, but not ecstatic with the mistakes his players made. The offense squandered scoring chances and let quarterback Patrick Towles get sacked five times. The defense shut out an opponent in the first half for the second straight game — something that has not happened since 1988 — but missed some key tackles and plays in the second half.
“Again, it wasn’t just lip service. We have a lot of respect for that team,” Stoops said. “They have good players. They know what they are doing. They put stress on you. They make it difficult for you. Overall I am pleased.”
He said it was important to be 2-0 and admitted he was worried going into the game off a 59-14 win over UT-Martin that players would get impatient.
“Guys get excited and want to prove themselves. You can’t go from 0 to 60. With a young team, they want to get ahead of themselves,” the UK coach said.
He wasn’t raining on UK’s win — even a heavy downpour in the fourth quarter couldn’t do that — but merely trying to be realistic with UK now getting set to open Southeastern Conference play at Florida. For UK to be in that game, the Cats can’t miss key tackles, drop touchdown passes or miss easy field goals.
Yet there is reason for Kentucky to still be happy:
— Kentucky has equalled its win total from the 2012 and 2013 season with two wins.
“We’ll take it. It was not pretty the last three quarters, but these guys (Ohio) had me worried coming in,” offensive coordinator Neal Brown said. “If you told me we would win by 17, I would have taken it and not blinked. After the good start, I wish we could have played better. I was pleased with the way we came out of the game (UK had 187 of its 402 yards in the first quarter). That’s what you want to do in a game like this.
— Ryan Timmons had a career-high 10 catches for a career-high 95 yards.
“The kid is a player,” Towles said.
— Towles ran for 96 yards on 17 carries, but had a net of 59 because of five sacks. Still, he had four runs over 10 yards and showed he could be elusive and powerful on scrambles or called runs. Brown said only seven to 10 of the plays were called runs and that sometimes Towles made a big play scrambling and sometimes he missed a chance to throw to an open receiver.
“He needs to hang in there more at times and we are not calling that many runs for him,” Brown said.
Some of Towles’ runs were on quarterback sneaks to gain first downs. Some were in the second half when Stoops said UK was “milking” the clock.
When he found out Stoops had 22 carries, he said UK “might back off that” some in the future.
“But we w ill do whatever we have to do to win games. Patrick will be glad to do it,” Stoops said.
— Kentucky went a second straight game without a turnover and now is plus six after recovering a fumble Saturday.
“If you look at statistics, that is a good one to start with. I am very encouraged by the way we are taking care of the ball offensively,” Stoops said.
“If you don’t turn the ball over, you win a lot of games,” Towles said.
— Kentucky ran 83 plays, the highest in 14 games under offensive coordinator Neal Brown at UK.
“We could have done more,” running back JoJo Kemp said. “But we all know we can learn and get better. That’s still not all we have.”
As Stoops noted several times, UK is 2-0. For a team and fan base starved for victories, that’s the stat that matters most no matter who the wins came against.
“Maybe it was not as pretty as we would have liked it to be, but we are always going to respect win,” Stoops said.
Why not because 2-0 is a lot better than 2-10.
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