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Randy Sanders
The football situation in Lexington is getting stickier and stickier with each passing week.
The latest installment of 2012 disappointment came Saturday with a 40-0 blowout to Vanderbilt, the worst loss by the Cats to the Commodores since 1907. It’s the second shutout of the season that Kentucky has suffered (the first was to Florida), and the Cats’ offensive struggles since Max Smith went down to an ankle injury continue.
The coaching staff continued its plan of splitting snaps between freshmen Jalen Whitlow and Patrick Towles against Vanderbilt, again to no avail. Offensive coordinator Randy Sanders said that Whitlow played “his best game he’s played this year,” but wasn’t quite as complimentary with Towles.
“I told him (Towles) one time on the sideline, ‘You know, you’re a good thrower, but you’re not a very good passer right now.’ A passer completes passes,” Sanders said. “You throw pretty spirals but we’re not completing enough of them. One of the things we talked about with Max (Smith), Max was so much more accurate starting the season than he was last year because he was able to anticipate and know where the guy was and get his body in line so his mechanics were good. Right now, Patrick’s mechanics are everywhere.”
Sanders said Smith struggled with the same concepts last year when he was a freshman. The youth of Towles and Whitlow has continued to play a vital role in Kentucky’s 2012 football season. However, it is not just the two quarterbacks who are young and inexperienced; it is a huge portion of the team, especially on offense.
“We’ve got guys who’ve just started shaving; they’re still trying to figure out why the toilet paper doesn’t magically appear in the bathroom because their mom’s always put it there,” Sanders said. “They’ll grow up and they’ll mature. There’s no question we’ve got ability, we’ve got some talent. We’re just really young and we do some stupid things that young players do.”
With that immaturity comes losses such as the 40-0 one to Vanderbilt. And with the “young” mistakes comes annoyance from the coaching staff, at least according to Sanders.
“I think they (Whitlow and Towles) will probably like me a whole lot better in a year or two,” Sanders said. “I love them as kids, but sometimes on the field, they irritate me to death. So I’ll like them better as quarterbacks in a few years.”
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