Kentucky defeated Akron last night 47-10 behind another balanced performance by the offense and the defense. Several Wildcats saw a boost to their career numbers.
Individual Achievements
Phillips is the first UK head coach to begin his career 3-0 since Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1946.
Derrick Locke is the seventh player in UK history to reach 2,000 rushing yards. Locke now has 2,103 career yards on the ground with 166 yards tonight and ranks 7th on UK’s all-time rushing list. He needs two more to tie Artose Pinner (1999-02) for 6th place.
Randall Cobb scored one touchdown and is now in sole possession of 2nd place on the UK career TD list with 28. He now has 168 career points and ranks 6th on UK’s all-time list. He needs 24 points to tie Craig Yeast (1995-98) for 5th place.
Cobb has 995 career rushing yards and needs five yards to become the 32nd player in school history to reach 1,000 career rushing yards
Mike Hartline now has 3,182 career passing yards and ranks 10th on UK’s all-time list. He needs 198 more passing yards to tie Dusty Bonner (1997, 99) for 9th place.
Team Achievements
Kentucky has won 18 consecutive regular-season non-conference games, dating back to 2006.
With 254 passing yards and 290 rushing yards, UK has rushed for more than 200 yards and passed for more than 200 yards in all three games this season.
UK’s 544 total yards was the most since gaining 564 yards vs. Tennessee on Nov. 24, 2007, which was a four-overtime game. The 544 total yards is the most in a non-overtime game since UK had 568 yards against Eastern Kentucky University on Sept. 1, 2007.
Kentucky’s 290 rushing yards was the most since gathering 308 rushing yards against Vanderbilt last season on Nov. 14, 2009.
Kentucky posted 500 yards of total offense for the first time since the 2007 Music City Bowl against Florida State when UK scored 501 yards of total offense.
Joker Phillips Quotes
Q. On if Cobb’s health is a worry for
next week …
COACH PHILLIPS: No, it doesn't worry
me. Randall, he'll be ready to play this week and if
he has a problem, we'll get him IVed and get him
back in there. He'll be ready. No big deal.
I mean, it happens every week with a lot of
players, get IVed at halftime. That's nothing
unusual.
Q. Did you think they were thinking
about playing Florida next week?
COACH PHILLIPS: I wasn't thinking about
them. We talk about playing, I mean, living in the
moment, and the moment was playing Akron.
Hopefully we'll start thinking about Florida,
hopefully some of them have DVRed this team and
watch them tonight, but we can't look ahead,
there's no way.
Q. On the sluggish start …
COACH PHILLIPS: The way they warmed
up, the way we came out at pregame, I talked
before the game was, I mean, we looked like we
were sleepwalking during the warmup, during the
pregame. I challenged them before the game,
you've got to play with intensity, you've got to play
with excitement and you've got to play with
passion. I didn't see that out of us the first quarter.
We didn't do that. I wanted to pull them up and
give them a reminder of what we had just talked
about in the locker room, because we synched it,
we did. We synched that. We cannot relax.
And they will see next week, you can't
relax. You play like that, like we did in this quarter
next week, you'll be down two or three
touchdowns. We cannot relax and not play with
excitement, not play with passion, not play with
enthusiasm.
Q. On starting conference play next
week …
COACH PHILLIPS: My guys who played
with me will understand this statement. You guys
might not understand this statement.
Coach
Claiborne used to say, we'll be stretching, and we
would count to 10 after once he thought we were
deep into the stretch and he would wait five
seconds and say now we start. We were thinking
now, dang, that's 15 seconds.
Well, now we start. Conference play starts
and it's going to be one of those battles that you
can't relax. You cannot relax and be distracted not
be focused at any point in the game. You cannot
come out and sleepwalk through a quarter, you
can't do that, because you'll be down 14, 21 points.