Posts Tagged ‘Kentucky Wildcats’

Check out the Full Poll Results at

Team Speed Kills!

Week 3

Through 20 September 2009

Here’s my ballot for this week in the SEC Power Poll, along with a feeble attempt at explaining why I’m such a moron. Not a whole lot of ways to separate between some of the teams this early on, but at least I thought up some excuses for my decisions.

Here they are, my darlins:

Rk.	Team	Change	Comments
1.		–	Well, the Florida Gators bested my Vols, and that has to count for something. Still, I expected a bit more from the vaunted Gators — especially since they were favored by more than 3 TDs and only won by 10. On the whole, the Gators looked vulnerable when it comes to their ability to adjust to changing defenses and against a clock-control offense. Still, I think they are the best in the SEC for now.
	Result: UF 23 • UT 13
2.		–	The Alabama Crimson Tide blasted North Texas back to cowpoke-land, not that I expected anything else. They’ll have a tougher test this week against Arkansas who has players who people have actually heard of and who clearly can put points on the board..
	Result: ALA 53 • N Texas 7
3.		1	The Right Reverend Houston Nutt’s Ole Miss Rebels remain an enigma — up, then down, up then down — sort of like Nutt’s cell phone bill back when he was “textin’” in Arkansas. Still, the Rebels they look strong and will likely make a run at the west..
	Result: Miss 52 • SE La. 23
4.		1	The LSU Tigers get a nod and No. 4 from me for having actually played someone in their non-conference schedule: namely, Washington. Louisiana-Lafayette, however, was like punching little girls in the face. MSU will be better than that this week.
	Result: LSU 45 • La. Lafayette 14
5.		2	The Auburn Tigers have actually played against some real opponents, already has one win in the SEC, and notched a nice win against a decent West Virginia Mountaineers team this week. This week they look to hone their skills against 0-3 Ball State. That could get ugly.
	Result: AUB 41 • WVU 30
6.		1	I don’t know which is more significant, scoring 52 vs. Arkansas or allowing 41. Memo to the Bulldogs: a little defense would be nice. The Georgia Bulldogs are a meltdown in the making, and I imagine that Richt is beginning to feel the heat. They’re my No 6 this week, but barely.
	Result: GA 52 • ARK 41
7.		1	Sure, the Tennessee Volunteers lost to Florida. Still, the Full Monte defense managed to completely foul up St. Timm-ahy’s rhythm to the point that he was no longer able to walk on water. Add to that a nice showing by the running backs, and the Vols look to be improving. Still, it would be nice to have some semblance of a passing game, but it is what it is. Nice steady progress by the Blackjack General.
	Result: UT 13 • UF 23
8.		–	A close win by the Kentucky Wildcats against Louisville. Now, can they win in the SEC? Playing teams who name their stadiums after take-out pizza doesn’t inspire confidence, and I’m reserving judgment on the Cats.
	Result: UK 31 • Papa John 27
9.		2	The Arkansas Razorbacks, played a tough game against the Bulldogs this weekend and, on the whole, looked tough offensively. Ryan Mallett clearly has talent, a cannon for an arm, and game between his ears. The ‘Backs defense, however, was pretty much non-existent. Still, I think the Razorbacks could surprise a lot of folks this season, most notably in managing to keep Petrino in the same coaching job for more than one season.
	Result: ARK 41 • GA 52
10.		2	The Mississippi State Bulldogs are a bit of a surprise this season due to their winning record and notable lack of suckification. LSU, however, will test them sorely, I fear — as in bent over … the hard way.
	Result: MSU 15 • VU 3
11.		1	The South Carolina Gamecocks do have a winning record, but are painful to watch. The only reason that SC isn’t last on my list is because Vandy is lousy. Does the Ole Ball Coach call it quits after this season? Stay tuned.
	Result: SC 38 • Fla. Atlantic3
12.		3	All I can say is: “Damn.” Expected more from the the Vanderbilt Commodores early in the season. And what is up with the ‘Dores always losing to Miss State? Someone please tell Bobby Johnson that you get more points if you carry the ball to that big colored box at the end of the field.
	Result: VU 3 • MSU 15

The Rest of the Power Poll

Now that you have wasted your time looking at my ballot, go check out what everybody else is saying over at Team Speed Kills.

– So it goes…

Check out the Full Poll Results at:

Team Speed Kills!

Week 1

Through 7 September 2009

Here’s my ballot for this week in the SEC Power Poll, along with an feeble attempt at explaining why I’m such a moron. Not a whole lot of ways to separate between some of the teams this early on, but at least I thought up some excuses for my decisions.

Here they are, my darlins:

What, you were expecting more?

The Rest of the Power Poll

Now that you have wasted your time looking at my ballot, go check out what everybody else is saying over at Team Speed Kills, where the round-up will appear later this week.

Onward and upward …

– So it goes…

Gate 21 is proud to host this week’s Roundtable!

It’s Time…

This week’s Big Orange Roundtable is hosted by … ummm … oh, yeah, it’s our week.  We here at the Gate are proud to host the 2009 kickoff edition of the Big Orange Roundtable as we all get ready to tee it up and kick it down for the 112th season of Tennessee Volunteers Football.

With that lovely prospect in mind, let’s get down to business:

Week 8

1) (From HSH)  We’ve talked through the past month or so about just about everything we could talk about regarding this Tennessee team: the quarterbacks, offensive line, freshman, Eric Berry, finding healthy wide receivers, freshman again, etc. So the simple question is this: what do you expect or what specifically are you looking for from the Vols against Western Kentucky this Saturday?

HSH: First things first, Western Kentucky is not going to be anything close to resembling a quality football team.  They were recently a power in 1-AA, but this is their first full year in 1-A, and have the potential to be one of the worst teams to come to Neyland Stadium in a while (yes, I’m including Wyoming).  They went just 2-10 last year (the wins were Eastern Kentucky and Murray State) and return just 12 starters from that team.

So if Tennessee hangs 60 points on the Hilltoppers, oh, well it was just Western Kentucky, right?  Not exactly.  I want to see Tennessee score lots of points Saturday afternoon.  I expect Lane Kiffin will want to pound the rock with the running backs.  I want to see a confident Jonathan Crompton that doesn’t make any mistakes and crisply runs the offense.

Defensively, I want to see which freshmen make an early impact in their first games, and how they handle playing for real.  On both sides, I want to see swagger—OK, it’s WKU, but we could be playing my high school’s team and I would still want to see our players have a wealth of confidence in themselves and their coaches that creates said swagger.

Lawvol: I expect and hope to see a few things.  First, I am not exactly expecting grandeur for this first game of the 2009 season, but what I am expecting to see is poise and purpose.  I am hoping that this team brings their attitude—one which was sorely missing last season—and refuses to play down to the level of their opponent which they should beat under almost any circumstance.

Let’s be honest, Western Kentucky went 2-10 last season which made even the Vols’ 5-7 campaign seem decent.  Prior to 2008, however, Western Kentucky had a streak of 12 straight winning seasons, and look to be on the upswing.  That said, The Vols have got to play with a little spark and bring their best game to their opponent—regardless of the quality of that opponent.  The Vols have to play their game and not let it be dictated to them by their opponent.

Most of all, I am looking to see a team that is glad to be on the field playing once more.  I hope that we begin to see the development of the new Kiffin system and hopefully get a huge relief when the quarterback play is surprisingly crisp and effective.  This is a confidence game which is only a good thing if you perform in a manner that inspires confidence

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: The Tennesseeum is in its infancy, but I hope to eventually develop it into a virtual museum (hence “Tennessee-um”) of rosters, images, articles, and records pertaining to the Vols.  For now, however, it is little more than a landing page for current rosters and a few other items of interest.

If you have any content that you think belongs in a virtual museum dedicated to the Vols, feel free to contact me.

2009 Football Collection:

• 2009 Tennessee Football:

  • 2009 Coaching Staff
  • 2009 Alphabetical Roster

• 2009 SEC Previews:

  • SEC East:

    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • Kentucky
    • South Carolina
    • Tennessee
    • Vanderbilt

  • SEC West:

    • Alabama
    • Auburn
    • Arkansas
    • LSU
    • Ole Miss
    • Mississippi State

Other Collections:

The Cumberland Wing:

Dedicated to the sights, sounds and history of that little collection of buildings along Cumberland Avenue known simply as “The Strip”

• “Sam & Andy’s Forever”: Remembering the legendary hangout that was Sam & Andy’s

The Tennessee Home for the Visually Offensive:

A virtual museum of some of the finest Farks (a/k/a “photoshopped”) images from the world of sports that the web has to offer including the following sub-collections:

• Lawvol’s Masterpieces
• The SEC Collection:
  • Tennessee
  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Auburn
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Kentucky
  • LSU
  • Ole Miss
  • Mississippi State
  • South Carolina
  • Vanderbilt
• The College Sports Collection:
  • Memphis
  • The Big Ten
  • The ACC
  • The PAC-10
  • The Big XII
  • The Big East & Notre Dame
• The Professional Sports Collection:
  • NFL Farks
  • MLB Farks
• The Broad Horizons (Miscellaneous) Collection

This virtual museum is under construction.

New Collections Debuting Soon!!

This Week’s Roundtable is hosted by:

Your Mother Slept with Wilt Chamberlain

This week’s Big Orange Roundtable is hosted by Thomas the Terrible over at YMSWWC.  As you may have noticed, I have been a bit scarce this week, while HSH has been burning it up with his awesome series of 2009 SEC Football Previews (which, by the way, are now linked and accessible via the links on the countdown widget in the sidebars).  Given the fact that he has done yeoman’s work this week already (and the fact that I have been so un-helpful due to a spate of pesky depositions), this week I am flying solo on the Big Orange Roundtable.  Which pretty much means that this set of responses will suck more than usual.

At any rate, here are my thoughts for the week:

Week 3

1) Now that we have covered the receivers & QB’s, let’s get to the running game.  Just how much improved do you think the running game will be??

Lawvol: Every time I make predictions about how good someone is going to be, how many games someone will win, or how likely it is that Charlie Weiss develops a gravitational field and causes opposing coaches to go into orbit, I look like a fool.  I am awful at this sort of thing.

I suppose that Niels Bohr got it right when he said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

All that said, I do think that the running backs this year have the chance to really do some special things … or fall flat on their faces.  We really have no choice but to lean on them.  My gut tells me that Bryce Brown will be great someday, but that it is simply unreasonable to expect him to come exploding out of the gates from day one.  While he might end up factoring-in significantly by mid-season I don’t see him being the cure-all for the Vols offensive woes from last season immediately.

For this reason, I see Montario Hardesty as the man on which the Vols’ early-season offensive hopes hangs.  If he can stay healthy and stay focused, I think he has the potential to really put up some gaudy numbers behind the re-tooled offensive line with its zone-blocking scheme.  Of course, no matter how good Hardesty may be, if Tennessee cannot improve its passing game at least a little, then defenses are simply going to stack-up to kill the run all day long.  As a result, I think whether Hardesty is able to actually make things happens depends a great deal on whether the quarterback under center can play his role effectively.  If so, then I think that Tennessee’s backs should be more than strong enough to score some points.  If not, then the scores may be low—and the risk of injuries to the running backs great—as opposing defenses pound away at the Vols ground attack.

Still, I am hopeful and optimistic that running backs, now coached by Eddie Gran, are up to the challenge.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three years, three bowl games, three bowl wins.

The last time Kentucky football had seen a similar stretch of success, they had Tim Couch throwing the ball all over Commonwealth Stadium in the Fun’N’Gun-on-steroids offense of Hal Mumme.

After Jared Lorenzen became the school’s all-time career passing leader and a combined 5 wins in Rich Brooks’ first two years, Andre Woodson came in and by his senior season had not only made the Wildcats a competitive team that couldn’t be taken lightly by the SEC heavyweights, but had Kentucky ranked in the top 10 in the country after knocking off top-ranked LSU.

However, the bottom fell out on the rest of that 2007 season, and after Woodson graduated, along with a trio of targets currently on NFL rosters (Keenan Burton, Steve Johnson and Jacob Tamme), many – including myself felt Kentucky was going to fall back a little bit into their normal role of fighting with Vanderbilt to stay out of the SEC East cellar.

But, despite averaging only 18 points a game in the conference, Kentucky managed six wins (the Wildcats went just 2-6 in the SEC) and capped it off by beating Conference USA champion East Carolina in the Liberty Bowl. However, with the departure of the majority of the defense Kentucky relied and the struggles of the offense, can Kentucky reach a fourth straight bowl, something they’ve never done in 120 years of playing football?

Read the rest of this entry »

Are YOU Ready?

With the conclusion of SEC Media Days today with our very own Lane Kiffin, Montario and Hardesty and Eric Berry (all the coverage you want from the SEC website and a look from Joel at Rocky Top Talk, representing all of us here in the blogosphere), the opening of fall camps around the South are just a couple of weeks away. So I’ve taken it upon myself to take a late July look at the 2009 SEC team-by-team to get you ready for the season.

Starting Sunday and continuing through next Friday, I’ll be giving my thoughts, observations, concerns, etc. on the 11 SEC teams not named Tennessee and the prospects for each for this upcoming season. I probably won’t be breaking any new ground or giving any earth-shattering information, but it’s certainly going to be a different look.

I’ve structured these previews a little differently than last year, when I took it upon myself to preview every SEC team and every Division I conference on my own site before joining the Gate. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons: first, to make these previews ever-so-slightly different from the others thousands you’ll find on the internet. Secondly, I had to structure them, otherwise I would babble on – likely incoherently – for about 2,000 words and thus defeating the purpose.

Anyways, here’s the five areas I’ll be highlighting in these previews:

• Schedule Breakdown: I’ll be taking a look at each team’s schedule – one of the most important factors in my opinion in being able to assess a team’s odds of success a month before a season starts. What games can said team expect to win? To lose? Which games are the key to the season? I’ll take a look at that.
• STUDS: Who’s each team’s best players? I’ll take a look at three players or pairs or groups of players from whom you can expect big things in 2009.
• X-Factors: Every team in the SEC outside of maybe Florida has some questions marks, areas of concern. I’ll make my picks for those keys in determining the difference for a team’s season being good or being great.
• What’s New, and What’s (Not Necessarily) Improved: For it’s been a offseason of serious change for three schools (Auburn, Mississippi State and our own Vols), each team in the SEC will be featuring some new things from last season. And just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s going to be better. I’ll be focusing on these things in this section.
• On-the-Record Prediction: Yes, believe it. I’ll be putting my credibility and reputation on the line and to stay in the Gate 21 archives with a basic prediction for each team. I won’t be picking individual games – I’m leaving myself some wiggle room with these – but I’ll forecasting a number of wins that you can expect. If you disagree with my assessments, by all means feel free to tell me how silly I am.

I’ve been working rather feverishly on these profiles the past couple of days to get them done. To prove how dedicated of a writer I am, I’ll be posting these from Gulf Shores, Alabama, where I’ll be vacationing next week. Hence why I’m working on them now as opposed to next week…

Here’s the schedule – one East school, one West school each day (sans Auburn):

• SUNDAY: Kentucky and Mississippi State
• MONDAY: Vanderbilt and Arkansas
• TUESDAY: Georgia and Alabama
• WEDNESDAY: South Carolina and LSU
• THURSDAY: Florida and Ole Miss
• FRIDAY: Auburn

… to me.